Principal's Update

Reporting to Parents

At the end of this week on Friday, Progress Check 1 will be released to parents and students on Compass. These progress checks focus on our students’ learning behaviours which link to our school values, their attendance, and their academic progress.  Please download and discuss with your child/ren. In addition, continuously during the semester, students will receive specific written feedback from their teachers on benchmark tasks and SACs in which they will be given some class time to reflect and identify areas for improvement.  Please ask your child/ren about the feedback they have received this term on their benchmark tasks and SACs.

A reminder of our reporting calendar published in a previous edition of our newsletter in February and attached here again for your reference. 

Details relating to the four aspects of our progress checks are listed below:

Parent/Teacher/Student interviews

During our periods of lockdown over the past two years we have conducted very successful online interviews. We received very positive feedback from parents about the efficiency of conducting the interviews online, without the travel time and having to wait in line to see a teacher when held onsite. We hope that parents and carers will value this opportunity to speak with teachers online about their child/children’s progress to date this semester and will therefore attend the online interviews.

The interviews will be held on Wednesday 6 April. Classes will be cancelled on the day and students are required to attend the online interviews with their parent/carer. The times will be confirmed in next week’s newsletter after being tabled at our School Council meeting this week for endorsement. One of our Assistant Principal’s, Andrew Moffat will open bookings on Compass for parents by Wednesday 23 March. If you have any issues with making the bookings on Compass, please contact the general office for assistance or Assistant Principal, Andrew Moffat. 

Leadership Assembly

On Tuesday 8 March we formally recognised our students who have been successful in achieving a leadership position for this year, within our new leadership structure – the Mordialloc College Student Council. We conducted this whole school assembly remotely from our Performing Arts Centre with all classes viewing via Google Meet, along with parents who were able to attend online. Mr Tim Richardson, MP, Member for Mordialloc and Mr Mark Dreyfus, MP, and Federal Member for Isaacs were in attendance to make a speech and join with me to present the leadership badges and certificates.   Mr Simon Cummins, Director of Student Engagement led the assembly. 

Our new leadership structure is set up to provide opportunities for authentic student voice and agency across six student led sub-committees including: Curriculum, Wellbeing and Community, Facilities and Environment, The Arts, Sport, Publicity and Fundraising. This new structure still includes our traditional School Captains and Middle School Captains. We have Year 12 captains for each sub-committee and then House Captains at each year level selecting the sub-committee they would like to join. I congratulate all students who were prepared to nominate and go through the selection process during Term 4 last year, with Year 7s having this opportunity during the first half of this term. There is still opportunity for other students to express interest and join a sub-committee.

Facility Development

For a couple of weeks access was restricted down the left-hand side of the EZ building when concrete was poured for the external entrance and pathways to our new two storey building. This has since been opened again to students. Internally work is continuing to progress well, and on Wednesday 9 March we took our Year 7 & 8 core teaching teams for a tour of the new facility after the site meeting that morning. They were very excited to see their new teaching spaces from next term. 

In addition, I was able to take Mr Tim Richardson MP, Mr Mark Dreyfus QC, our school captains, and middle school captains on a tour of the new building after our leadership assembly and they were all very impressed. I also took this opportunity to speak to our local member Tim Richardson about a funding commitment to complete the next stage of our masterplan, the development of a new Arts/Technology building and the expansion of our current gymnasium. 

We have scheduled a handover meeting in the last week of this term and all the new furniture and new lockers for students in Year 7 and 8 will be delivered and set up during the first week of the April school holidays. 

Transition

An important part of our publicity in the lead up to our Sports Excellence Program and SEAL information night (Thursday 28 April) and Open Night (Thursday 5 May) are the visits we make to our main feeder primary schools (Aspendale PS, Aspendale Gardens PS, Edithvale PS, Chelsea PS, Chelsea Heights PS, Mordialloc Beach PS and Bonbeach PS). These visits will be taking place next week and involves myself, Tracey Bastin and Daniel Williams taking some of our students to visit each school for 40mins. Most schools are keen for us to speak to Grade 5’s and 6’s. On each visit we have taken a group of current Year 7 students and two Year 12 students to speak about their experiences as students at Mordialloc College. All students give a speech complimented by a PowerPoint presentation about the College and programs offered. I would like to thank all students for their involvement in this program, especially our Year 7 students who will be speaking at each visit: Madeline Goulding; Nash Jazownik; William Lawson; Ava McIntosh; Dylan Palmer; Lola Siddall.

School Tours

We have been able to re-commence school tours since the beginning of March and I have been running two tours each week to meet the demand of prospective parents and students. Given there was little opportunity last year due to COVID it has been important to offer extra opportunities to see the school in action. We are capping tours to no more than 25-30 people on each tour and it usually takes 90 minutes with a big group to get around the whole school, speaking at each main building and following up with plenty of questions asked along the way. I take most of the school tours, with one of the Assistant Principals stepping in when I am not available.

Extra-curricular activities and lunchtime clubs

There is a fantastic array of lunchtime clubs and extra-curricular events on offer for our students this term. I would like to thank all teachers who are involved in providing these opportunities for students. Mr Simon Cummins, Director of Student Engagement has already shared our Term 1 calendar of events and clubs with parents earlier this term.  I would like to highlight the following clubs/groups currently on offer: Philosophy Club, Coding Club, Chess Club, Gardening Club (Stephanie Alexander Garden), French Club for Middle School, French Club for Senior School, VCE Maths Club, Lit Chats, Snapshot (the student driven magazine), Breakfast Club, Respect Group, Japanese Club, and our Mordialloc College Student Council and related sub-committees meet regularly throughout the term. 

Parent Voice

Last year we introduced parent voice sessions, one per term, conducted online, to offer parents a voice in the school, outside of school council involvement and to also provide them with an opportunity to meet a member of the Principal Class team and to ask questions. After a positive first session in Term 1 last year, numbers did dwindle once we were impacted by COVID-19. We are planning to offer this again this year and Director of Student Engagement, Simon Cummins is organising a parent voice session for this term in Week 9. An invitation will be sent out by Simon soon. 

Staff Professional Learning 

Our whole staff meeting schedule includes Wednesday early dismissal day for our staff to meet in their allocated Professional Learning Communities (based on the main subject/s and year level they teach in) to follow the “Mordialloc College Cycle of Inquiry” for an hour, followed by one hour of collaborative planning. Our staff workshop afternoon has changed to Monday 3.30pm and our workshops are focussed on several key priorities for professional learning stemming from our Key Improvement Strategies in our Annual Implementation Plan for 2022.

Our Key Professional Learning priorities includes:

• Connecting feedback to data following a cycle of inquiry in Professional Learning Communities (PLC’s) e.g., Year 7 Discovery team of five teachers, supported by our Triad peer coaching program and Learning Area focus in supporting the use of assessment data to improve teacher’s ability to diagnose and evaluate student learning growth over time. This includes using multiple data sources to identify our instructional groups and track student growth and for differentiation to be evident in lesson planning and feedback to students.
• Continuing to embed the MC Instructional Model (for consistency of teacher practice) supported by our triad peer coaching program 
• Continuing a whole school literacy focus on Reading and Writing 
• Positive and engaged learning/classrooms – following the Mordialloc College 5 R’s of returning to onsite learning, student, and staff wellbeing. 

We are measuring improvement in teaching practice and precision through the PIVOT student perception data collected towards the end of this term. This year we are focusing on the questions relating to classroom environment, classroom instruction and relationships.  We will use this whole school data and student focus groups to continue to implement strategies to address any highlighted areas for improvement. 

Michelle Roberts

Principal