Assistant Principal's Update

Dear Families, Students and Community Members,

Welcome to Term Three, Week 4; for our students this is the sixth week of Semester Two, and hopefully they are all feeling as though they know what to do in order to continue to strive for success in their classes and whole-school activities. 

At this point in the year, we are continuing to extend our students' knowledge and skills, as well as preparing our senior students for their final assessments of 2023. Following over six hundred Course Confirmation conversations with families and students, we now have some of the information required to begin planning our programmes for 2024. 

This week has been another one filled with many activities and events to engage our students in successful learning at Mordialloc College. 

Some of our Year 7 and 8 students have taken part in the Victorian High-Ability Program (VHAP), a state government investment in their Student Excellence Program that promotes the development of teamwork, collaboration and resilience. 

Our Senior School classes continue to work through their areas of study, with some subjects attending excursions/incursions specific to their upcoming School Assessed Coursework (SACs).  For example, Year 11 Art (Making & Exhibiting) visited The Lume and NGV, and Vocational Major students fully planned, risk assessed and evaluated an off-site trip for other Mordialloc College students. 

Compass App and Parent Engagement

I have spoken with many parents about their desire to better support their child’s organisation; this is a conversation that is music to my ears!

At Mordialloc College, we aim to make better use of Compass as a means of sharing information with families about their child’s teaching and learning; I hope that you can continue to be patient with us whilst we improve our expertise. 

Our first step is dating Learning Tasks so that you can clearly see the due date and the submission status for each learning task. Via your Compass App, you will be able to see information similar to this:

If you access Compass via your browser, you will have the option to not only see upcoming Learning Tasks, but to also see any overdue Learning Tasks.

If you click on the ‘Send email to’ you will be provided with the option to choose which of your child’s teachers to contact as regards a subject-specific concern. Please feel free to contact a classroom teacher if a Learning Task does not have the due date provided and this is therefore stopping you from better supporting your child’s organisation. 

Student Progress Check 

This week, teachers are completing progress checks which will be released to families at the end of next week, Friday 11 August. 

With Parent/ Student/ Teacher Interviews scheduled for Wednesday 23 August, families will be able to discuss student progress based on the feedback provided in the progress checks.  These five-minutes interviews will be conducted online, and families will be able to book in with each of their child’s teachers.  Further details and instructions on how to book will be provided in the next couple of weeks. Again, if you do need to contact one of your child’s teachers to discuss a matter in more detail, please feel free to contact a classroom teacher via Compass.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN results have been released, with data being posted out to Year 7 and Year 9 families this week. 

As you may be aware, the way NAPLAN data has been categorised has changed this year. We no longer have ten ‘bands’, instead, we have four Proficiency Levels (Needs additional support, Developing, Strong and Exceeding) that describe some of the skills and understandings students can generally demonstrate at the time of testing.

At Mordialloc College, we have a strategic focus on using student data to inform the way we plan our lessons, and to better meet the needs of each of our students. All staff have received Professional Learning to support their understanding of how NAPLAN data (as part of a combination of data sets including Teacher Judgements and Formative Assessments) allows us to commit to improving whole school literacy and numeracy. 

Professional Learning Day for Staff

Each year we allocate a small number of days to dedicated ongoing professional learning for our staff.  On Friday 11 August we have our next Professional Learning Day which is a student-free day; no classes will operate on this day.  

Our focus will be on further developing our Positive Behaviour strategies, and we are lucky to be working with Glen Pearsall during that day and will continue to work closely with him for the foreseeable future. 

We encourage students to utilise this day to catch up on any work or study as well as promote the possible participation of wellbeing activities.

Rachael Stone

Assistant Principal