Student Wellbeing:

The Wellbeing department has been actively supporting our students managing their return to school. As always, they are there to help offer advice and support for a large range of issues that students face. We are currently booking in our Wellbeing days for 2022 with a specific focus for each year level. This is very exciting and I’m sure that the students value the effort that goes into these days.

Respect:

Recently assemblies have been held where a key focus was respect. It has been pleasing to see how well the students have taken this on board and the subtle changes many of them have made. Could you please speak with your child/ren about this to ensure that we are promoting a shared understanding of the importance of respect in our every day lives.

Buildings Grounds and OHS:

A reminder that Emerald Secondary College is a BARR school. This means that we are sitting in an area that has a heightened risk of bush fire. The Department has once again given us some much needed funding to help reduce/remove fuel in and around the school grounds. As such, our fire mitigation works have started. A key to this is identifying the Emerald Star Bush that we have on site. I am please to inform the community that our list is continuing to grow.

There has been a lot of work regarding the upgrades of teaching and learning spaces. B3 is now fully operational and will become a key room in delivering excellence in learning. B2 is currently being converted into a purposeful Literacy, Numeracy and Tutoring space which is really exciting. Tables and chairs are continuing to be replaced.

G Block has had all of the whiteboards and display boards replaced. When the carpet is also replaced over the summer break this could quite possibly be ‘the place to be’!

Lots of associated works are being conducted to allow for the building program to commence.

Kick start timetable for Senior School Students.

This week has been the beginning of our Kick-Start program for our senior school students. We have had our year 11 students embark on a week of classes in their year 12 VCE subjects. Students have been able to immerse themselves in their new studies and be introduced to the requirements, knowledge and skills that they will be studying throughout next year, in order to achieve their Victorian Certificate of Education. Students have been able to join new TEAMS accounts to access any resources needed and ask clarifying questions of their teachers that have taken their classes for kick start. The week has been bookended with an assembly at the start and end of the week.

We are very impressed with the mature nature the students have approached their studies in kick start this week. We look forward to supporting them through their studies next year and wish them well in the journey ahead.

Next week we start the year 11 kick start program for our current year 10 students moving into year 11 next year. VCAL students have organised a work placement for the week, or will be present at school for a VCAL kick start program. Students undertaking a VCE program in 2022 will undertake a week of classes in their enrolled classes. Events are up on Compass for students to follow.

We look forward to welcoming our current year 10 students into the senior school and wish them well for the next two years of learning while they undertake the requirements of the VCE or VCAL certificate.

End of Year Activities Program Year 7-9

After much planning from our Domain leaders and teachers, we are happy to release our End of Year Program for our year 7-9 students. Events opened for students to sign up for experiences off site during the End of Year program on Friday.

For every day of the Program there will be activities that students can choose between at the College for each day of the program. For the days students do not attend a camp/excursion, we will meet at the gym each morning to sign up for their chosen activities each morning.

Please note, some camps/excursions have a limit on student numbers.

The full list of activities can be found on Compass and in the table below. Consent and payment can be made through the Parent Portal on Compass.

We are looking forward to a fantastic week of activities, linked to each learning area.

Jonathon Rogers & Janine McMahon

Emerald Secondary College Newsletter

Access to Excellence

Issue 14 · 26 Nov 2021

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