Head of Professional Practice 

It is a time of continuing change and progress at St Virgil’s this year. As we move closer and closer to our vision for a Kindergarten to Year12 College it is important that we are all pulling together and getting prepared for this future. At the College there have been many staff undertaking exciting professional development in order to continue maximising our impact on learning. 

This week Mrs Anders and I attended a professional development workshop to begin planning the future of our College as a Year 11 and 12 school. The Office of Tasmanian Assessment, Standards & Certification ran a workshop aimed at developing a plan for how we can approach Year 11 and 12. From this workshop we have come back to St Virgil’s with clear ideas about what we want our future to be as a College. 

The focus on our present as a Year 7-10 Catholic school for boys in the Edmund Rice tradition also continues. As an inclusive College we always strive to deliver the most diverse education possible. Last week Mrs Jinadasa, Mr Morey and Mrs Anders virtually attended a two-day conference and workshops on differentiating learning. Please see below a report on this conference from Mrs Jinadasa:

“On Wednesday March 24 and Thursday March 25, three staff members attended the online conference ‘Differentiating Teaching and Learning in Schools’. This conference included lectures and workshops from a series of educators across Australia from several different schools. The aim of the workshop was to provide teachers with practical strategies on how to best meet the learning needs of their individual students as well as designing tasks that allow all students to experience success in the classroom. 

A key workshop was delivered by ‘differentiation guru’ Glen Pearsall who provided several tips and tricks on how to do this. Memorable strategies included: incorporating non-verbal signals into the classroom so students can signal for assistance, using ranking activities to generate group discussion and engage all learners in the topic being studied, designing meaningful extension work for students who need to be challenged further and templates for effective note-taking.”