Brigidine Campus Update

Welcome to the start of Term 2. Over the coming weeks students will have the opportunity to work closely with their Learning Mentor to discuss the successes and areas for improvement from the feedback given in the Term 1 Summary Report. It is important for all students to be striving for improvement and re-energising their learning goals for the term can help with this. Students should be asking themselves: “How can I improve my learning behaviours?” This could be aiming to move from ‘sometimes’ to ‘usually’ or from ‘usually’ to ‘consistently’ on the continuum. They can also ask “What can I do to improve my assessment tasks so that they are a true reflection of student learning and capability?” This requires students to engage with the learning happening in the classroom, to proactively seek feedback from their teachers and to push themselves to give their best, always! 

This week’s Learning Mentor lesson is based on the character trait of perseverance. It highlights the importance of showing perseverance to enhance academic achievement. The lesson will help students to develop a plan for showing greater perseverance. When I visit classes to check on how students are progressing with their learning, a few things stand out. Firstly, those students who are listening to the teacher without distractions or disruptions had a better grasp of the key concepts being explored and the work they were required to undertake. Secondly, when doing work in their books and not on their laptops, students who had their laptop completely closed got more work done; they were less distracted by other stimuli. For those doing work on their laptop, they were getting more work done when they had all non-required tabs closed. The temptations to quickly check out another website (often football related) were avoided. Thirdly, students were building their learning stamina the more they stayed on task and avoided any of the varied distractions that occur in a classroom. They ignored students who called out or walked around the room and were able to stay focussed on their learning. We all know how easy it is to be distracted, but this is a huge limiting factor to student learning. Students (and adults) need to work hard at staying on the task at hand and not switching between reading information, checking out a non-related website, jumping onto emails and when at home onto our phones. Multitasking is a myth, all it really means is jumping quickly from one task to another and back again, and therefore doing both tasks poorly. 

This idea of building learning stamina and showing greater perseverance in the classroom will be great skills for the Year 10 and 11 students to practice as they approach the end of semester exam period. Success with the exams requires an organised approach and the establishment of good study routines. If students start now then they will remember more by the time the exams come around. This helps to reduce all stress related to exams. Exams don’t need to be scary, students just need to be prepared. When people say that they thought they knew it all but walked into the exam and forgot everything probably spent more of their study time getting the information into their brain and felt comfortable with the content, but didn’t spend enough time practicing getting the information out of their brain (which is what they need to do in an exam). Over the next week, students will be getting outlines from their teachers on what will be on the exam and will be given tips on how to best prepare for exams for specific subjects. Mr Leslie will outline some good study habits to students in year level assemblies and Learning Mentors will help students to practice using these skills as they prepare for the exams. The key for students is to start now, do little bits often and come June they will be far better prepared than if they tried to do a lot of study right at the last minute. 

Geraldine Ryan

Director - Brigidine Campus