Year 7 News

A considerate Term 4

Year 7 students have moved on from virtually beginning their year again this semester. Our goals have been to revisit home learning, rebuild relationships, restore confidence, activate concentration and encourage respectful behavior towards others in the classroom and school grounds. Alas, this has been a steep climb for many students so we are looking forward to a new, more predictable year ahead. To parents who have struggled supporting their Year 7 children’s return to school, we have been really impressed with the attitude of most students’ motivation to get back into the routine, have a serious go at the Common Assessment Tasks (CATs) and keenly participate in the annual Thinking Olympics.

CATs and the Olympics

Teachers devoted 6 weeks this term to classroom instruction, making no assumptions about students’ knowledge and skills following learning at home. Re-teaching, recognising progress and providing modelled practice tasks placed students well for doing their best in subject CATs. Congratulations to students who made the most of Week 6 and Week 7 to apply skills to a new challenge! 

This effort was followed by the Thinking Olympics, a massive effort from Mr. White and the Year 7 Team in organising team activities where students re-charged themselves to take on peers who were grouped into little known countries. As you can imagine, our mixing of friends and student skills into unfamiliar peer teams was uncomfortable for some. An activity or 2 later, it was terrific to see students working well together to ‘go for gold’. We hope the interest and happiness shown in the photos this edition flows into the final days of term and celebration of completing an extraordinary start to secondary school!