Junior School
We feel grateful this week to be able to celebrate the return of our ‘other half’, our Year 6 students. Welcome back boys! I am sure there are some parents feeling quite different than they did only a week ago. Bedroom desks, lounge rooms and dining tables that resonated with the sound of Teams lessons and the click of keyboards and track pads have suddenly reverted to their normal personalities. Meanwhile, the opposite has happened here on campus and we can begin to feel, bit by bit, a little closer to normal again.
As you have been informed, we are taking sensible precautions in the Junior School, encouraging students to wash their hands often and use sanitiser, alternating gathering times in the Powell Pavilion and staggering movements through the corridors where possible. In class, teachers have had time to experiment with furniture arrangements to find the best ways to maximise space around and distance between students in the room.
Students and parents have been informed about upcoming cross grade tasks that will supplement the information teachers already have about student learning from Term 1 work and online work. I encourage families to support a program of revision at home that reinforces learning (students should be doing this at all times); however, I stress that these are NOT high stakes assessments. Please do not create an environment that results in young boys stressing about ‘tests’. Primary school teachers are very well accustomed to looking at ALL class tasks as sources of assessment data that help us understand how students have developed and what we still need to teach. Please don’t place an unbalanced emphasis on the importance of just one task on one day. Mr Fields has a few more words to say about this below.
This Monday we celebrated the feast of one of our nation’s patron saints, Our Lady Help of Christians. If we can imagine an ‘Australian spirituality’, what do our patron saints tell us about this spirituality? I imagine Mary standing by the cross, a witness to brutality and tragedy, a grieving mother, and it makes me think of the way Australians responded to the bushfire crisis last summer. In the face of seemingly unbelievable circumstances, we saw many examples of people standing by those suffering even at great cost to themselves. Perhaps part of an Australian spirituality is that innate solidarity in the face of suffering. After all, to ‘suffer with’ is the literal meaning of compassion (com-with, passion-suffering).
Many blessings to you all.
Ben Munday
Director of Junior School
Junior School Class and Cross Grade Tasks
Junior School students have completed and will continue to complete both class based and cross grade tasks. The purpose of any such task is to give us a snapshot of a student’s knowledge, skills and understanding in specific areas. These tasks ultimately provide feedback to the student, identifying areas of strength and areas to continue to consolidate. Each lesson is therefore important in terms of active student participation, asking good questions to deepen learning and taking chances to seek clarification.
Of course, making judgements about learning using only these tasks would give a narrow view of what a student is capable of. Therefore, teachers use a range of instruments to determine both overall achievement and overall effort across all Key Learning Areas over time. The Common Grade Scale is used to report student achievement and I encourage you to refer to it. Indeed, NESA has publicly provided a range of publicly available information about assessment which is worth a look if you have the time. If you have any questions about these tasks or about assessment in general, please feel free to contact Mr Munday or me.
Dan Fields
Junior School Curriculum Coordinator