SECONDARY NEWS
From the Assistant Principal

Miss Kim Bailey
kbailey@arm.catholic.edu.au

Good luck...

Good luck to all students who are representing the Armidale Diocese at the NSWCCC Cross Country Championships in Sydney.

Congratulations...

Congratulations to the Secondary students who assisted with umpiring last week at the Netball NSW Cup Primary Competition. Many positive reports were received about the way in which they conducted themselves and represented the school.

Congratulations to Elkie Sargeant and Jess Hill, who had a great week participating in the Far North Coast Dance Festival.

Congratulations to all the students who represented the school last week at the Cochrane Cup and League Tag diocesan carnival.

Winter Uniform

Winter uniform is now compulsory. All students are required to be in full winter uniform. Many students are already wearing the winter uniform and are to be congratulated for their efforts in being dressed according to the uniform policy. If students are not correctly attired, they are required to present a note to their Pastoral Care teacher and to remedy the situation as soon as practicable.

Expressions of Interest for Year 8 & Year 9 Term 3 Excursions

Notes have been sent home with students in Years 8 and 9 outlining the dates and approximate cost of their respective excursions in Term 3.

It is important that these expressions of interest notes are returned as soon as possible so that numbers and costing can be finalised. Final consent and payment will be required on Compass.

Reports

Most students have completed their assessments for the term; however, there are still some tasks to be completed in the coming week. Reports will be finished in the next few weeks and will be distributed to parents in the last week of the term. If there are any concerns or queries regarding this matter, please contact the school.

Elevate Education

Upcoming webinar for parents: Exam Room Skills - Minimising Stress and Maximising Marks

Elevate Education will be hosting a free webinar for our parents on Wednesday 21 June.

Elevate Education works with our students, delivering high impact workshops on study skills, motivation, wellbeing, and exam preparation. By tuning into their webinar series you will learn how you can help better support your children at home through reinforcing the skills they learn at school:  

Wednesday 21st June @ 6:30pm (AEST) Exam Room Skills - Minimising Stress and Maximising Marks

Click here to register for free

Here's what Elevate will be covering:

What to do in the final days before any test or assessment
How to establish a good routine for the night before
How to optimise exam-room performance

MAKING THE MOST OF FEEDBACK

Throughout the year, you will have been receiving feedback from your teachers about your assessments. But are you making the most of this feedback? Many students are too focused on what mark they received and neglect to make the most of the feedback they are given.

It’s not just about what you did wrong, either! The feedback is a chance to celebrate what you did right, what you understood and the skills and learning you demonstrated.

However, it is also a chance to address areas you found difficult or did not perform as well in.

Below are some questions you can ask yourself when an assessment is returned to make the most of the feedback you are given.

When a test or exam is returned:

What specific feedback did your teacher give you, and how should you use that feedback?
Will you be tested on these topics again, or are they important for overall understanding in this subject?
Which areas do you need to ask for help on as you still don’t understand?
Which questions from your test paper should you re-do? Re-do them!
Should you re-write any questions or essays and re-submit?
Was there any revision work you did not complete before the test?
What topic areas do you need to review and revise, what should you do to address these?
Are there topics you still need to finalise study notes on?
Are there sections of your study notes that you need to re-do?
Did you plan ahead to give yourself enough time to revise?
What changes do you need to make in the way you study for that subject next time?
Are there students who did really well that you can talk with to find out what they did differently?

For other types of assessments:

What parts of the assessment did you do really well?
What did you enjoy about the assessment?
What can you learn from the feedback you were given?
Is there any part of the feedback you don’t understand that you need to discuss with your teacher?
Can you ask a student who did really well if you can look at their assessment so you can see what is needed to get top marks?
What could you have done differently?
Do you understand what you need to do to improve, or do you need to ask your teacher for more guidance?

Living Well, Learning Well

Emotional Wellbeing

Our Emotional Wellbeing is healthy when we use our top strengths to mindfully be in charge of our emotions and look for what is right in what we are doing and looking at. Most of us can think back to times when our emotions hijacked the way we thought, spoke and acted, and we regretted it afterwards. Because students’ good decision-making centre, the Pre-frontal Cortex, is not fully wired up and operating to capacity, emotional hijacking can occur when they feel under pressure from stressors.

To build students’ social-emotional resilience to reduce the likelihood of this happening, they need to be involved in discussing positive, negative and mixed emotions and identifying the body language they show when their emotions begin to intensify. Using their top strengths to create positive coping strategies and plenty of positive self-talk are the growth mindsets they need to overcome these challenges to maintain and build their emotional wellbeing.

The most difficult thing about doing this with 21st-century students is slowing them down to think hard about the above issues. To do this, ask them to reflect on the achievements they are proud of, the emotions they felt and the body language they showed.

Reference: The Learning Curve

Safe on Social - Roblox

If your child is one of the 43 million plus users of Roblox each day, the information sheet below provides useful information for parents.

ROBLOX.pdf

Device Use Reminders

A number of students have had devices confiscated in recent weeks for breaches of our school policy. Please discuss this with your children and remind them of the expectations at school.

Consequences for breaches of the rules for devices

Confiscated devices are kept in Miss Bailey's office for students to collect at the end of the school day.
If a device is confiscated twice, parent phone calls are made by Stage Leaders to inform them about this and the consequences of a device being confiscated for a third time.
If a device is confiscated a third time - the device remains at school until it can be collected by a parent.

ICAS Competition Registration for 2023

Students from Years 3 - 10 have the opportunity to participate in ICAS testing. Three testing topics have been organised; English (reading comprehension), Mathematics and Science.

More information regarding the test can be found via this link https://www.icasassessments.com/products-icas/subjects/

If you are interested in registering for this, please click on the link below; there is a cost per test associated with wanting to undergo this test (average cost $20).

All payments are to be made online.

https://shop.icasassessments.com/pages/pps

School Code: PNO972