Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

Term 1 Week 4

I always enjoy starting with something positive, so let me share how well our students have commenced 2023. It is wonderful to see all of our young people back in school, engaging in their lessons and catching up with their friends and peers.

A gentle reminder that every school day starts at 8.55 am; please support your children to arrive at school on time, and ready to learn.

The students have been very patient with our building works and the builders have assured us that our new basketball courts will be open by the end of February. As we now have this fabulous space, unless there is a specific advertised activity, the gym will no longer be open for recess or lunchtime.

Achieving our Personal Best

We will continue to conduct progress checks every five to six weeks, reporting on our students’ attendance, learning behaviours and learning growth, plus we will provide feedback on how the students are progressing with their classwork.

Below you will find a summary of some of the key reporting dates for 2023.

Attendance

Good attendance is integral to the successful completion of units of study. At Mordialloc College, we know that students’ learning excels when they are at school with us. As such, we strive for all of our students to have an attendance rate of at least 90% according to the school/VCE percentage.

Any student who is below 90% has missed important learning and they will need to address this during the semester to support not only their return to 90% attendance, but to ensure all of their work is up to date. In scenarios where students have attendance of less than 80%, we will work with families in consultation with the Wellbeing Team and/or the Home Group/ Mentor teacher.

A copy of the College Attendance policy can be found on the Mordialloc College website in School Policies. Alternatively, please click the link below, which will direct you straight to the policy section.

http://www.mcsc.vic.edu.au/current-parents/school-policies/

Learning Behaviours

Our rubric for students and families includes Personal Best, Respect and Responsibility. This can be used as a reference when reflecting on how your child is behaving in class. Please use the attached rubric for more information.

Learning Growth

Teachers will comment on their students’ learning growth in terms of the Victorian Curriculum and/or the VCE VM / VCE / VET Study Designs.

Classwork

We expect all of our students to satisfactorily complete the classwork set during the semester in addition to benchmark tasks (Years 7 to 10), SACs/ SATs and Outcomes (Years 11 to 12).

Teachers will comment on whether the student is on track, or if there is a particular area that they need to focus on such as meeting deadlines, working to their personal best, and/ or incomplete or overdue work.

Learning Tasks on Compass

Learning Tasks are colour-coded and are a visual representation for students and families to see what type of work is due. Teachers will assign a due date for each task, and this will appear on the student’s schedule on the day that the work is due; families are also able to see these tasks and due dates. The responsibility for submitting work on time lies with the student and we hope that families will support their child’s organisation by using Compass.

If a student is not able to submit the task by the due date, they need to speak with their teacher, provide a note from home explaining why the deadline is not able to be met and then discuss and plan a new timeline for the work to be submitted.

Due dates for all Semester 1 Benchmark Tasks will be pushed out via Compass soon. If you need help using this information to support your child’s organisation, revision, and interventions from home, please let us know.

If families have a subject specific query, they are encouraged to email the relevant classroom teacher.

Exciting Events

Our House Swimming Carnival is scheduled for Thursday 23 February, and our House Athletics Carnival will be on Thursday 6 April.

On the day, students are strongly encouraged to dress up in their house colours; see below for a reminder of our Houses:

Also coming up this term, our Year 7 and Year 9 students will sit their NAPLAN tests; the tests have been moved forward this year so that schools can make better use of the information that they provide a lot earlier on in the academic year.

NAPLAN is a great way of showing us what students know in Literacy and Numeracy; we then use this information to help us to plan lessons and to continue to meet every one of our students at their personalised academic need.

The NAPLAN window is March 15 to March 27 and consists of four online tests that give us an insight into your child’s literacy and numeracy capabilities. Whilst this data is not the only information we use in Year 7 and Year 9, it is a great way to triangulate our own Teacher Judgements, and to support our informed decisions about literacy and numeracy needs in school.

Further details of this event will be shared via Compass to students and their families in coming days.

Rachael Stone

Assistant Principal

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