Year 11/12

A key addition to the curriculum for our VCE students this year has been the inclusion of time to explicitly teach academic skills and study techniques. The curriculum is designed to equip the students of Greater Shepparton Secondary College with the skills that they need to be successful in their studies. 

For Term 3, our AVID coordinators have tailored a separate program for both Year 11 and Year 12. Aspects of the curriculum have been developed based on student feedback, as well as professional knowledge and understanding. The curriculum has been developed from a wide base of educational research as to how students learn best. This base includes the work that GSSC undertook in 2019 with Professor John Hattie and the Science of Learning School’s Partnership, the Victorian Teaching and Learning Model, as well as an international program known as ‘AVID’ (Advancement via Individual Determination).

What the students will be doing:

Year 11 – Our Year 11 students now have a supervised private study session during period 2. In period 4, the students participate in an AVID session. The work undertaken in the AVID lesson will incorporate a specific skill, with time to apply this skill to the student’s own learning in their other subjects. As we progress through the term, students will also have the opportunity to participate in collaborative study groups. Again, this will allow the students to use the time to improve their understanding of a problem in one of their own subjects.

Year 12 – The Year 12 program has been specifically tailored to the students’ final year of study. 

The Term 3 program includes:

-  Structured skills sessions, with a focus on study approaches and time to apply the skills.

-  Exam and SAC preparation sessions. Class teachers provide students with material to support them in preparing for a particular assessment, including the end of year exam. The material has a focus on writing; for example, extended response exam questions.

-  The English SACs are conducted in some of the Wednesday sessions, the first of which occurred this week.

Kirsten Tozer

Assistant Principal

Teaching and Learning

Wanganui Campus

Meet the team – Coordinator Report

We have recommenced our sessions on a Wednesday, with the sessions aimed at improving the academic skills of both our Year 11 and 12 students.

At Year 12 our focus at the moment is on effective study techniques and revision approaches in preparation for the end of year exams, with the students being exposed to six effective strategies and asked to apply one of these strategies in their own study in order to improve their retention of what they are learning. 

In the first session, we went through: 

• Spaced Practice – Which is about continual revision on topics throughout the year to ensure the knowledge passes into long term memory.
• Retrieval Practice – Which is about practising recalling and applying their knowledge from memory in preparation for the end of year exams.
• Concrete Examples – Which is useful when trying to learn about abstract concepts, finding an analogy grounded in something you can visualise.

At Year 11 we are working on ‘Critical Reading’, which is a structured approach to reading a text. This approach allows students to develop a clear understanding of what is in the text, pick out the key points, and gain a deeper understanding of what they have read. Applying the critical reading process helps a student to build subject specific vocabulary and gives them practise in summarising what they have read.

Nathan Hanns & Jessica White 

Wanganui Campus & McGuire Campus

Senior AVID Co-ordinators