Assistant Principals News

The staff at Marian Catholic College continue to work tirelessly towards improving their practice and student outcomes.

Over the last month, staff have broken into their Key Learning Areas and engaged with our collaborative Year 8 Data Wall. The purpose of this time has been for each KLA to use the student data and trends to develop a project or focus aimed at improving a specific area of student learning in Term 4. Already some exciting planning has taken place, particularly in writing and numeracy. I look forward to sharing some of these new initiatives in the coming term.

This Year 8 data will also be used by staff to implement targeted individual interventions for students of all abilities.

Speaking of data, I am pleased to announce that Marian Catholic College has received some outstanding NAPLAN results for 2019. Students in both Year 7 and Year 9 demonstrated strong growth and improvement in all 5 domains, as did the College in comparison to previous years. This comes on the back of our fantastic HSC Minimum Standards results from last term, in which we had close to a 100% success rate for students sitting and meeting the State Standard. These brilliant outcomes are clearly a result of the College’s focus on explicit teaching and student agency. I look forward to sharing more specific details of our NAPLAN results in a forthcoming newsletter.

Further to this, Mr Herb, Mrs Segrave and Mr Seers were lucky enough to attend the 2nd Phase of CEDWW’s Professional focus - The Learning Collaborative in Wagga, facilitated by Dr. Lyn Sharratt. The two days focussed on workshopping how Schools can make learning more explicit and visible for both teachers and students through co-construction of success criteria, workshopping of student sample responses and using staff collaboration to drive change. Each School in attendance also presented back to the group a demonstration of their progress in implementing Sharratt’s program of learning and change. The feedback received from our presentation was both pleasing and affirming for the work that has been conducted here at the College by all teachers and students over the last 12 months.

I would also like to thank Mr Lyon and 10.1 for holding Marian’s first ever flag retirement ceremony. Unfortunately, one of the College flags had deteriorated beyond repair and Mr Lyon’s class was asked to research and conduct the ceremony in which they did a fantastic job. More information on this occasion has been placed in an article submitted by the class outlining the event. Thanks again for your efforts. 

Best of luck to our Yr 12’s as their HSC exams draw closer. Their final assembly was a true reflection of another great year group that will be missed. 

Yours in learning,

Damien Herb and Heath Neville

Co Assistant Principals