Assistant Principals' Report 

Reflecting on the last few weeks, we have all been very busy with some amazingly inspirational activities at the school. In the last newsletter article, we celebrated International Women’s day. In the Year 7-9 Connect Classes students were taught a wide range of engaging activities that highlighted the importance of this day. 

On the 25th March we had the college Athletics Day which was a fantastic day of student participation in a variety of activities. 

We also had our annual Explore night where myself and Ms Thomson were able to meet and chat with prospective parents and students.

On the Wednesday 6th April, we held our Annual Induction Ceremony to celebrate our new Student Leadership Team, we have already worked on a number of events with this team and are looking forward to more events.

In Year 7 to 9 Goal Setting has been undertaken this term in Mathematics, English and Connect classes. Students were highly engaged in this task and self-motivated to create and select goals to monitor and progress their learning this Semester.

Individual student goals are now available on Compass Insights and were published with Interim Reports. Parents and Carers were also given an opportunity to review and comment on goals in the last question of the form. It is not too late for students to complete their goal setting task if any classes were missed over the last fortnight. Parents and Carers can also access the form and add comments.

If you would like some assistance to access the goals, please contact your child’s teacher, Ms Dunne or Ms Thomson.

Over the term our Year 7 and 9 students have also been preparing to undertake NAPLAN online this year. We have checked that students have the NAP browser installed and asked that students do not delete this from their laptop. We have completed 2 practise tests, which were a requirement before the actual tests in May.

NAPLAN Online tests are interactive, students answer questions by clicking, typing and dragging. Some questions include audio or interactive tools​ and all questions can be reviewed and answered, or flagged and returned to later. NAPLAN Online Numeracy, Reading and Conventions of Language are tailored or adaptive tests. ​Students start with a similar set of questions, then depending on each student’s answers, the next set of questions may be easier or more difficult, giving students greater opportunity to demonstrate what they know.​ No student is disadvantaged if their device stops working during the test. In the event the device stops working, all responses will have been saved and the student can complete their test on another device or in a rescheduled test session. ​

For more information about NAPLAN Online, please visit https://www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment

There is also a Public Demonstration Site where students, teachers, parents and carers can familiarise themselves with the types of questions and related functionalities available in the online NAPLAN assessment https://www.nap.edu.au/online-assessment/public-demonstration-site

A schedule with test dates for each year level will be published at the start of Term 2.

Term 2 will see the launch of the Positive behaviour merit exchange program where students that have received a merit from a staff member at the college can exchange these for tangible items. This will be officially launched to students at the Anzac Assemblies in Term 2.

We would like to wish all our families a safe and happy holidays and hope that you all manage to have a well-earned break.

Rose Thomson and Glenn Jenner