Teaching & Learning

Due to the recent turn of events with Covid-19, Wednesday 5th August saw Greater Shepparton Secondary College return to Remote and Flexible learning. Teachers will post in Compass one weekly Remote Learning Task for each class they teach which will cover all of the work the students need to undertake for each class for the week. For Year 7-11 classes, teachers will be available on Teams for each timetabled session. This will include a minimum of one live video lesson for each class. 

 

For Year 7 – 10 Elective classes that span two sessions per week, the teacher will be available for all timetabled sessions. This will include a minimum of one live video lesson per fortnight. 

For Year 12 classes, teachers will conduct a live video lesson for all scheduled classes. Remote Learning will again be managed via Compass and Microsoft Teams, and teachers will offer support with materials, guidance and regular communication with their students within school hours. 

 

For remote and flexible learning students are required to log into Teams in their Learning Mentor Group once per day, before 10am. The Learning Mentor will mark attendance each day on Compass by 11:00am using the data from the students Teams log-in. 

 

During Term 2, the Greater Shepparton Secondary College Literacy Strategy was completed and now we are currently working on completing our Numeracy Strategy. We also have some fabulous professional learning coming up for all staff; these are focused on GSSC’s Instructional Model for learning and reading comprehension strategies.

 

The Greater Shepparton Secondary College High Abilities Practice Team has been established and are meeting to plan the implementation of the program, which is focused on improving student outcomes. We will hear more about this exciting initiative in the weeks to come.

 

Each fortnight we will feature teaching and learning highlights that are taking place at one of the Greater Shepparton Secondary College Campuses. This week we take a look at some of the exciting teaching and learning events that have taken place at the McGuire Campus.

 

The Year 7 Lighthouse Reading Mentor program is up and running online. This program has a number of our Year 7 students reading online, via Microsoft Teams, with volunteers from the Lighthouse Project. Students, staff and volunteers have worked tirelessly since remote learning to get the program up and running. This is a major accomplishment as the program normally runs with the volunteers coming into classrooms, but with Covid-19 we have had to adapt to an online program.

 

The Year 10 Italian students at the McGuire Campus have been dedicating the beginning of each class to reading the newspaper, ‘IL GLOBO’, which is an Australian newspaper written in the Italian language. After having a read, every student shares, with the class, an article/heading which they have found interesting. It’s been a great way to ‘set the mood’ and learn current Italian language; to see language they have learnt in real action and to learn new vocabulary. It has become an enjoyable and also a very educationally valuable routine which has improved every student’s confidence.  It has also given the teacher an insight into each student’s interests from the articles which attract them.

 

The Year 11 Psychology students at the McGuire Campus are currently doing a series of taste perception experiments, so we look forward to hearing about their results once completed.

 

Year 7 student, Tylah O’Brien’s, has had a sensational achievement with her personal narrative, ‘Hope’ being shortlisted in the Furphy Literary Awards. Well done, Tylah. What a stunning accomplishment. 

 

An initiative that is currently underway on all three Campuses is the use of Education Perfect for our Language classes. Education Perfect is an online learning tool that supports students to engage with tasks via the platform. We began using this program during remote learning and were able to continue, and adapt to using it when back on site, and now when back to remote and flexible learning.

 

Along with all Campuses, the McGuire Campus are also currently setting up the Student Representative Council. They received 64 applications for the Student Representative Council, which is sensational. Now, they have to get that number to 18; it will be a challenging task! They are so impressed with the number of students taking a keen interest in this student leadership program.

 

McGuire Campus have also completed a lot of work relating to literacy and numeracy. They have begun to implement the Middle Years Literacy and Numeracy Support (MYLNS) program with a number of the Year 10 students. This is a program that is implemented to assist students with their literacy and numeracy skills. It may be support in classes, small group work and sometimes 1:1 work.

 

The Maths teachers at McGuire Campus have also been working with Chris Coombes, a Mathematics Consultant, and are currently implementing strategies and innovative approaches with our Year 7 maths classes.

 

Next fortnight we look forward to sharing some of the exciting teaching and Learning highlights that have been occurring on the Mooroopna Campus. This will be followed by highlights from the Wanganui Campus.

 

 

 

Megan Michalaidis

 

Associate Principal of Teaching & Learning