Learning & Teaching News
Welcome Evening
At our recent House Welcome Evening all parents, including those who are new to the college, had the opportunity to meet staff who play a key role in the learning and wellbeing of their child. On the evening, all Year 7 parents engaged in a learning conversation with their son’s or daughter’s Learning Advisor. These conversations provided an important opportunity for teachers to learn more about each students’ learning journey in the primary years, as well as discussing the PAT testing that Year 7 students completed in the second week of the term. These tests are multiple-choice tests designed to help teachers determine achievement levels of students in Mathematics, Reading, Comprehension and Vocabulary. The test results help our teachers decide what kinds of teaching materials are needed and which methods or programs are most suitable for their students.
At St. Peter’s College the use of this data helps us to focus on improving the learning outcomes for every student. This means that every teacher in the school is encouraged to develop strategies that enable our students to make the greatest progress in learning. Wherever a student starts from on the first day of the year, we believe that he or she deserves to have made at least a year’s worth of progress in one year. Teachers are focused on assessing what each student knows now, targets their teaching to what they are ready to learn next, and track each students’ progress over time. Teachers then analyse their own impact, keeping what works and changing what does not. There are a number of times throughout the year where we collect robust evidence of student learning and use this data to target teach and track student progress over time.
As we work through the second half of the term students are beginning to prepare for or complete their first assessment tasks. Many of our Unit 3 VCE students are undertaking School Assessed Coursework (SACs). Parents are encouraged to use the online portal, SPACE, to regularly check for work tasks and access student results for assessment tasks including SACs. Teachers provide students with feedback on their assessments. This may be in the form of an attached rubric, written comments on the task or as teacher feedback through SPACE. This feedback is about improvement and acting on feedback from teachers allows students to move forward and become more independent learners.
The partnership between students, their teachers and parents is very important for successful outcomes and students are encouraged to talk to their teachers about their learning.
What’s happening
Year 7 2022 Information Evening and Tour will be held on Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at the Cranbourne Campus and Thursday, 19 March 2020 at the Clyde North Campus. Parents who have children in year 5 this year are reminded to register with Wendy Height (College Registrar) to attend this evening. The evening starts at 7.00 pm with a short welcome by the Principal, Mr Black and College Captains and then leads into a tour to 10 different stations for short presentations about a key learning area. The evening will finish at 8.40 pm although visitors can leave earlier without any difficulty or stay longer to ask questions of our staff if desired. If you are just interested in seeing what is on offer at either Campus and do not have a child in Grade 5, then you are more than welcome to join us at this date.
Ms Clare Tipping
Learning & Data Systems Coach
& Mr David Hansen
Deputy Principal - Learning and Teaching