Greater Shepparton Secondary College Newsletter

 

 

Teaching & Learning

The last fortnight saw staff and students at Greater Shepparton Secondary College return to remote and flexible learning for three school days. We are so pleased with how smooth this process was for our students and families and credit this success to all of the strong organisational structures we put in place in 2020. 

 

With limited notice on Friday 12th February our Leadership Team were able to put in place a solid plan to support our students and ensure that they had engaging work for the duration of the circuit breaker lock down. 

 

We acknowledge that this lock down was extremely difficult for our Year 7 students and new students to GSSC in 2021. However, we are so proud of the persistence these students displayed to engage with one of the many forms of learning we offered to accommodate for unfamiliarity with our Remote and Flexible learning practices. The leadership Team will undertake a feedback review around how to further improve our remote and flexible learning processes.

Student Devices

I would like to take this opportunity to remind our students and families that students are required to bring their charged devices to school each and every day. 

 

Our staff have written an engaging and innovative curriculum from Years 7-10 and this curriculum includes the use of engaging eLearning activities on a daily basis for all subjects. 

 

For students to have the best opportunity to engage with our exemplar curriculum we ask that all students manage their personal learning and bring a charged device to school every day so that they are ready to learn.

Senior School Update

At the Wanganui and McGuire Campuses, our Year 11 and 12 students have settled into their senior programs. This year we have further developed our Wednesday ‘AVID’ and ‘Structured SAC and Exam Preparation’ classes to assist our VCE students in maximising their time management, organisation and study techniques. Focusing on these key areas will equip our students with the necessary skills that they need to be successful in VCE. Throughout Term 1, students will be supported in the following areas:

  •  Organisation and time management
  • Organisation (why is it important? Examples? How do you want to set things up?)
  • Time management (complete a time log, look at barriers and solutions to effective time use, create a homework planner to use).
  • Test taking tips and tricks
  • Test anxiety thinking traps
  • Strategies to reduce test anxiety
  • Common test taking problems
  • Pre-test checklists
  • Focussed note taking
  • The 5 step process
  • Examples of note taking styles
  • The forgetting problem
  • How can you make time to review notes regularly?
  • Inquiry skills
  • Why is it important to ask questions?
  • The three levels of questioning
  • How to write and use questions effectively
  • Command Terms
  • What is a command term?
  • Why is it important to understand what command terms mean?
  • Critical Reading
  • Problems with reading and memory
  • The critical reading process
  • Critical reading experiment
  • Collaborative Study Groups
  • Benefits and Problems when studying in groups
  • Introduction to the collaborative study group process
  • Students to practice a collaborative study group for a subject (e.g. English)

 

 

 

Megan Michalaidis

 

Associate Principal of Teaching & Learning