Illuminate & Boost

Boost is back!

We are very happy to see a fresh new intake of Year 8 students commencing their journey in the Boost Program. Twenty-six students have been identified to participate in 2018. This will allow them to engage in daily, small group sessions that help to boost their reading comprehension skills and build their vocabulary. An essential component of this program is to help students develop a wide range of word solving strategies that they can then apply during independent reading to any new words that they encounter. This will help them meet the goal of learning 3,000 new words each year.

Illuminate in action

Students across the college have settled down into their independent reading routines across the college during Illuminate. It has been wonderful to see them select books of interest to populate their classroom libraries and begin to use their new Reading Records.

The Year 9 students have demonstrated a commitment to meeting their agreed expectations around behaviour and application. We congratulate them, and all students, on the great start to the reading year!

A reminder to students and parents, Illuminate is compulsory for all students, from Years 7 to 12. We look forward to seeing them in class every day, on time, ready to learn.

Staff enthusiastic in their ongoing Professional Learning

When the students go home, the teachers return to the classroom to become the student and work collaboratively to continue developing their own knowledge. Monday night Professional Learning meetings have focused on improving our understanding and application of Reading Comprehension across the college. Staff have worked together to practice and discuss their conferencing skills to assist them to engage in meaningful discussions with students about their texts and application of reading comprehension strategies. We have also been working on deepening our understanding of how to guide students to use context clues to help them discover the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary in texts across all areas of the curriculum. Our work will continue throughout the year to ensure that we continue to deliver best practice to the students of Cobram Secondary College.