Teaching and Learning

Term 1 Teaching and Learning Update  

Overview 

What a huge Term we have had! We welcomed over 220 new Year 7 students to the College and helped them access Teams, Compass and the NAPLAN Locked Down Browser to support their learning throughout the term. In terms of NAPLAN, over 450 students across Years 7 to 9 participated in the annual testing, we were impressed by their efforts and the respect shown throughout all four tests. This term has also seen the full implementation of the Victorian Curriculum 2.0 across the College, which necessitated changes to our assessment practices to best support the implementation of this updated curriculum.  

Assessment updates  

All students in Years 7-10 complete Common Assessment Tasks (CATs) for each subject. These tasks can be found on Compass as ‘Learning Tasks’. Following the completion of a CAT, the teacher will provide feedback and a judgement of the Victorian Curriculum Level that has been attained to the student on the CAT Template (parents will see a blank copy of this template attached to the Learning Task on Compass). 

This feedback will share:  

• The Level the work submitted best aligns to in the Victorian Curriculum 2.0. 
• An indication of what this level means in the context of the Expected Level of Achievement for each year level.  

• An assessment of how much effort the student has put into the task.  

   

  Feedback that is: 

• Kind – tells the student what that have done well 
• Specific – tells the student what area/s of improvement there might be  
• Helpful – tells the student how to action improvement advice.  

The results for each CAT are also published on Compass and the end of Semester report and are used to determine where the student sits in relation to the Achievement Standards outlined in the F-10 Victorian Curriculum 2.0. 

The big change here is in the feedback approach. Feedback used to be posted on Compass with the CAT and was limited to comments pre-prepared by teaching teams for that CAT. From both experience and student preference, we know that feedback is at its most effective when students have time to consider individual and targeted feedback on their work in class and consider steps to take on future tasks to improve. These new CAT Templates include space for students to record what they have done well and what they would like to improve next time. This student reflection is designed to encourage more ownership of learning and therefore continually support students to take the steps to become better learners in the future.  

This approach also replicates our SAC and SAT Feedback sheets in the senior school which are returned to students after the completion of these major assessment tasks and provide students with clear comments on what has been achieved and what needs to be worked on to improve.  

Thank you for your support of our students’ learning at home. Please take the time to discuss their CAT, SAC and SAT results with them to encourage them to use their feedback to improve their learning. I hope you have a wonderful Easter break.  

Samantha Jeacle 

Assistant Principal: Curriculum Operations