Middle School
New Homework Program - Years 7 & 8.
This Monday marked the start of a new homework program for Years 7 and 8. Students will be focusing on the retention of information learned in class. Homework is often a contentious issue between parents and students for two main reasons: students are unable to complete work due the difficulty level and parents and carers get into battles where the children refuse to do homework. Our homework program gets around these two issues through trying to improve student self-regulation and focusing homework on retaining learning from class rather than new learning or completing assessments.
We have made homework voluntary. Students will be given homework and have had it explained to them repeatedly that while we are not making this work compulsory, we will be testing their retention of skills and concepts learned in class. If they want to improve, they need to practice like any athlete or artist does. When students who are not interested in completing homework see others doing it and getting better, then they need to reflect on whether they think their peers are making better choices than them. This is proven in CESE’s What works best: Evidence-based practices to improve NSW student performance. Firstly, it points out that high teacher expectations are what lead to high performance and that feedback that encourages student self-regulation is the most effective.
Retention – remembering what was learnt and how it worked – is a big challenge in an information-rich world that exists today. That’s why the learning that is handed or emailed to students will be dated. This is to overcome the ‘Forgetting Curve’ – the loss of skills and concepts overtime as the brain is ruled by two things: Use it or lose it and What fires together, wires together. Firstly, we revisit regularly enough what we need to retain and secondly, we do it in different ways – a video, a written exercise, a practical hands-on activity. This way different parts of memory are ‘fired’ to ‘wire’ together the skills or concept we want to remember.
Careers Talk - Mr Ian Targett
On Monday 3 June the Middle School careers classes had Ian Targett (Miss Targett's wonderful dad) come in and chat with them. He spoke about his nearly 40 years of working in finance, leaving school in Year 10 and the support his work gave him when he was recovering from a serious accident a few years ago.
The kids listened well and asked lots of great questions. The Year 5/6 students also had the chance to showcase the important things they focused on in their careers classes taught by Miss Targett, such as budgeting and learning soft skills.
Thank you Mr Targett for coming in to speak to us!
Middle School Debating.
On 1 May a group of keen Year 5 and 6 students travelled with Mrs Riley to Armidale City Public school to be part of the New England debating day along with students from other local schools. They were provided with some expert training and then given opportunities to argue on various topics in front of their peers. All students represented our school well.
Years 5/6 Building Challenge.
As part of our 'City Planner' unit where we have designed a new town, students were given the challenge to make a bridge out of pasta with a set pretend budget. The students researched different bridge designs and learnt that triangles are one of strongest shapes. Shaun Perkins, the Project Engineer from Walcha Council also came in to give students information about roads, bridges and other information about councils. This week tested our bridges. Three of them held a whopping 15kg! The kids thoroughly enjoyed this project and their teachers are incredibly proud of all they achieved!
