From the Director of Teaching and Learning

Over the last few weeks, I have really enjoyed the opportunity to meet with members of our community at special assemblies, Parent-Teacher interviews, Opus 1, Mother’s Day Breakfast and the Gibson-Campbell Chapel Service. It has been a busy start to the term, as we celebrated many events that were rescheduled from Term 1. Year 12 students had their first Block Exam, and students in Years 7 and 9 engaged in their first NAPLAN online. I look forward to meeting with Year 10 parents and students over the next few weeks to discuss senior pathways and subject choices. 

Teaching and Learning is at the core of everything that we do at Clayfield College, and we know that students learn both within and outside the bounds of the classroom. The Academic Captains, Nysha Kapur and Kaylin Barrie, have been working hard to implement several co-curricular initiatives to enhance student learning and engagement. Some of these, such as Clever Crocs, were new initiatives in 2022, and others, such as the Peer Mentoring Program, were carried over from last year. 

Nysha and Kaylin share their thoughts with the Clayfield Community below:

From the Academic Captains

We are Nysha and Kaylin, Clayfield College’s Academic Captains for 2022. Despite the challenging start to the year, Clayfield students have worked hard and achieved so much this semester. As the year unfolds, we aim to further share with each student our passion for learning and encourage them to strive for their personal best. 

In Term 1, effectively implementing Clever Crocs was our main objective. Through trivia-like quizzes each week, Clever Crocs is a program that focuses on improving Clayfield students' literacy and numeracy skills. 

Throughout the semester we identified students who displayed high achievement and significant personal improvement and were able to congratulate, celebrate and encourage these students during assembly. As we continue through the year, we aim to acknowledge further improvement and excellent scores. 

Inspired by last year’s captains, we revoked the Peer Mentoring Program this year. Students are allocated a Year 12 mentor for subjects of their choice and can meet with their mentor to strengthen their understanding of subject matter. We believe this program positively impacts both parties, allowing both the mentor and mentee to learn in different ways. This also emphasises our College’s community spirit of giving, as different grades work in unison to overcome challenges and achieve excellence. We strongly encourage everyone to sign up for this beneficial program.

Given our passion in the area of STEM, Masterminds is a new STEM based challenge that we have planned for Term 3. This challenge involves creating a Rube Goldberg Machine, which is a simple chain-reaction type machine which utilises different energy transfers.

Pastoral Care Groups will work together over three weeks to create their own machine. Once the machine has been created, prototypes will be judged and awarded against two criteria: firstly, creativity and execution, and secondly, the greatest number of energy transfers. We envisage this challenge to provide students in Pastoral Care Groups the opportunity to work on a problem cohesively, building unity between students across year levels whilst deepening their knowledge of energy transfers and transformations. 

We also thought this an opportune time to provide some study tips which we have found helpful in the past for all students to try:

1. Our first tip is to avoid falling into the trap of exclusive passive study (re-writing and re-reading notes, highlighting large chunks of text, etc.). While it is certainly important, remember to leave time for more active study techniques, such as answering practice problems from your textbook, using flashcards and teaching someone else the content. This allows you to test yourself and deepens your critical thinking of the topic
2. Our second tip is to remember to always reward yourself with effective breaks to reset your mind! Going for a walk, doing some light exercise, listening to music and other purposeful breaks can reset and clear your brain for your next study session
3. Our third tip is, don’t hesitate to ask for help. We are so privileged to have wonderful teachers and older students who are more than willing to help us out when we need it, so if you are struggling with a topic make sure to attend a before or after-school tutorial with your teacher. 

We look forward to the rest of the year filled with growth and learning and feel so privileged to be a part of this amazing learning community.