Learning and Teaching 

Welcome to Term Three. I hope everyone was able to enjoy some downtime over the break and that students are feeling refreshed and renewed as they begin their studies for the final semester of the school year. 

End of Semester Reports

At the end of last term, you would have received an email alerting you to the availability of End of Semester Reports through the PAM portal. I want to remind parents of the importance of looking at these results to discuss your child’s progress and take an active role in encouraging them to perform to the best of their ability.  

VCE and School Assessed Coursework

As we work through the second half of the year students are beginning to prepare for or complete assessment tasks. Many of our VCE students are currently undertaking School Assessed Coursework (SACs). Parents are encouraged to use the online portal, PAM, to regularly check for work tasks and access student results for assessment tasks including SACs. Teachers provide students with feedback on their assessments. This may be in the form of an attached rubric, written comments on the task or as teacher feedback through PAM. This feedback is about improvement and acting on feedback from teachers allows students to move forward and become more independent learners. 

Subject Selection

Your child’s subject selection for the 2024 school year is of critical importance.  It is why we invest so much time and energy into making this an engaging process for our students.  It is important because students will get the most success in a subject when they do something that they enjoy, are good at and/or need for their chosen course or occupation.

At Mary MacKillop Catholic Regional College, the subjects we ultimately decide to run are determined by what students elect to study.  If enough students do not choose a subject, then it will not run.  Consequently, subject selection and submitting preferences is critically important for your child so as to:

• Avoid subjects not running, when students in fact want to do them
• Ensure we run an adequate number of classes for popular subjects
• Ensure that the timetable is constructed to maximise access to the subjects that students choose.
• Avoid missing out on doing subjects if they want to change subjects at a later stage
• Minimise the number of subject changes so that students do not miss valuable lessons.

Your role in this process as a parent or caregiver is important.  Firstly, I would like to encourage you to ensure that it is your child’s dreams and choices that you should foster, not your dreams or choice for your child.  You can do this by listening carefully to your child, asking probing but non-threatening, non-judgemental questions and challenging them to be open and inquiring about their future options.  Their goals can be achieved through many different pathways and so it is important that students choose courses and subjects realistically and base this upon their passions and strengths.

Over the coming weeks, students will be introduced to subject selection 2024, and what programs are on offer at each year level.  The sessions will provide specific subject advice and the chance to ask questions of the subject teachers. 

Year 10 students will have an individual course advice session on either Monday 7th August or Wednesday 9th August. These meetings will help clarify the course of study for students and provide a final opportunity to have any questions answered before submitting their web preferences. Bookings for these sessions will be done via PAM. More specific information will be sent out over the coming weeks.

Practice Papers

The two most important words for Year 12. Research shows that practice papers are the single most significant thing a student can do to increase their performance in their final year. It is unequivocal. The top students do more practice papers than other students. Indeed, the number one variable for accurately forecasting a student’s performance in Year 12 is the number of practice exams they do.

It is never too early for Year 12 students to be putting revision notes together and starting to complete past exam papers. Speak to your teachers about how best to revise. This should be a slow and steady preparation for exams, not a sprint at the end to be exam ready.