Assistant Principal (Years 7-9) Report 

Report from Assistant Principal Alice Paget

Dear students, parents and guardians,

This week marks just over the half way point of the Term. Last week I was fortunate enough to join our Year 7s and 8s at Camp Rumbug. It was an invaluable experience for our students and a great opportunity for everyone to step outside of their comfort zone, myself included! A big thank you to our Junior School Leadership Team (Beck Tomkins, Luciano Murray, Jessika Cichy and Reia Grey) for organising this opportunity for our students.

Professional Learning Day

On Wednesday 24h May we held our Professional Learning Curriculum Day. The focus on the day was, ‘How can our instructional model be applied flexibly in our school community, to maximise student learning and improve student engagement?’. 

We spent the day unpacking our Instructional Model, as seen below, and discussing how we can facilitate opportunities for deep learning. 

Some of the key takeaway messages we had were:

• How am I preparing my lessons to support memory retention?
• At what points in the lesson can I adjust my teaching to incorporate student engagement?
• When can I purposely build questioning into my lesson to maximise learning opportunities?
• How can I slowly release the learner to independent practice and get the student ‘doing’ as soon as possible?

Below are some pictures of the staff engaging in the Professional Learning activities. A big thank you to all the staff presenters in making this such a valuable day for the staff at Westall!

Attitudes to School Survey

The AtoSS is an annual student survey offered by the Department of Education to assist schools to gain an understanding of students' perceptions and experience of school. Over the next 2 weeks students will be asked about their thoughts and feelings in relation to their school, their learning, peer relationships, resilience, bullying, health and wellbeing, physical activity, and life in general.

We value student voice as a means to improving student engagement, wellbeing and quality instruction. 

We look forward to unpacking the data sets later in the year. With this information we evaluate, develop goals and plan actions to improve our students’ learning experience and wellbeing in the College. 

Wishing everyone a fantastic end to Term 2!

Kind regards,

Alice Paget

Assistant Principal (Years 7-9)