From the Acting Assistant Principal

Senior School

Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences

In Week 8 and 9, parents and students will have the opportunity to meet teachers in WebEx conferences.  Due to the positive feedback from our community, we are continuing with the online conference structure.

Conference bookings can be found on the Community Tab on your Compass homepage.  Please note the following times and monitor Compass for information about how to book your conferences.

Week 8:

• Thursday 23rd March: 12:00pm – 7:30pm (no classes)

Week 9:

• Wednesday 29th March: 2:30pm – 4:30pm (students will be dismissed at 1:15pm)

We look forward to meeting with you to discuss your child’s progress.

Our Senior School community

There have been 665 times that Senior School students have been recognised for displaying our DARE values in classes and our community in the first half of Term 1.  It is incredible to hear from your teachers that you have been working productively in class, completing your Snapshot tasks on time, contributing to class discussions, asking your teacher questions, supporting Tutor Group development, supporting peers in your class, being on time to Tutor Group in full school uniform and completing homework to a high level.

Students are currently voting for their two representatives on our School Council.  It was pleasing to see so many of our Senior School students nominate to represent their peers for the next two years.  Student voice is an integral part of our school community, with our students having the power to influence change.  I look forward to seeing our two new representatives reflect the views of their peers in the coming weeks.

This week, students have begun completing the Pivot Student Feedback survey on Teaching and Learning.  Through their responses, students will actively shape their learning throughout the year.  We encourage students to participate in our Teach the Teacher program, a student-led professional learning session for our teachers which focuses on the trends from our Term 1 Pivot data.  In addition, students will be able to actively collaborate with their teachers, joining them for a discussion about what decisions we can make next to support student learning at Auburn.

Study Success Seminar Days

Year 10 and Year 11 students have participated in their Study Success Seminar Days this week. They heard from external speakers from Success Integrated who supported students with their motivation, organisational systems, study habits and resilience required to achieve academic excellence in Senior School.

Year 11 students were reintroduced to their My Learning Growth tool, an individualised document where they can monitor their academic, learning behaviour and attendance data to set personalised goals throughout the term.

Year 10 students reflected on their start to Senior School and their recent self-assessment data for their upcoming Learning Behaviour reports.

After a BBQ lunch, students participated in sport or team building competitions to foster connectedness within their year levels.

Thank you for our Year Level Leaders, Luke Dellorso and Sam Tolomei (Year 11), and David Felbel (Year 10) for facilitating such successful days for our students.

Attendance Requirements in Senior School

Ongoing attendance to every class is one of the essential factors for academic success.  Now that we are halfway through the term, Year Level Leaders and Tutor Group Teachers will be carefully monitoring student attendance.

Communications will be sent home for students who are below our 90% attendance requirements at this point in the term.  We ask that families support the work of the Senior School team in monitoring attendance, parents should ensure that they ‘approve’ legitimate student absences through the Compass portal.  Please upload documentation such as medical certificates for Year Level Leaders to review. Students are encouraged to also monitor their attendance through Compass.  Failure to achieve a 90% attendance rate for each VCE or IB subject could jeopardise satisfactory completion for that subject and unit.  The same requirements exist for Year 10 Semester 1 subjects.  Thank you for working with us to meet these requirements.