From Bluff Road

Life is like riding a bicycle; to keep your balance, you must keep moving.” 

This  quote from Albert Einstein reminds us of the need to keep moving forward with a positive Mindset, despite the challenges we have been facing over the last few years. 

Its with much pleasure that we welcome everyone back to the new school year and special welcome to the newest and youngest members of Sandringham College, our year 7 cohort. It has been fantastic to see how easily and well everyone has settled back into school life, especially the year 7 students. After such a disrupted and challenging last two years of their primary school life, Year 7 have met the challenges of transitioning into High School with enthusiasm and motivation. It has also been great to see our Year 8 & 9 students respond to the expectations of their new subjects and programs equally with rigour. Here’s hoping that the days of online continuous learning are now behind us and we can focus with minimal interruption on moving forward with our College goals of:

1. Maximising student outcomes
2. Creating people of good character

The college has extensive plans around achieving these goals, including a newly revised Study Skills program at all year levels across the college to complement the work being done by the Wellbeing Team on Life Skills. 

Study and Life Skills

Year 7 students have already had several information sessions since returning to school. The first was one of a two-part presentation on Organisational Skills, based around “how to organise your locker to achieve learning success”. This was coupled with a presentation on how to upload learning tasks onto Compass for assessment. The next presentation will be developing a Study Planner to assist organisational skills around balancing school life with homework, activities they need to do (basketball training, dance classes, etc) and things they like to do (Netflix, socialising, etc). This will take place before the end of term. They have also had a presentation around “friendships and fallouts” which focussed on making new friends and how to manage changes in friendships. The Year 8 & 9 groups have had a presentation on our College Values and another around the global issue of vaping and its consequences. They will also do an organisational skill session as well as a Growth Mindset Session before the end of term. 

Djeembana

The Year 9 Djeembana Program has commenced in term one with 9G and 9H both participating for the term in a variety of learning and social activities outside of their core curriculum studies. So far, they have participated in a Self Defence Course, Entrepreneurship Skills with Gen Z, Financial literacy including budgeting skills, as well as Resume Writing. The Djeembana Curriculum is designed to enhance Creative and Critical Thinking, Personal, Social and Ethical Understanding and stimulate engagement and thoughts around future pathways and life skills. There is a separate tab for Djeembana in this newsletter with further information and updates regarding this fabulous program. 

New Parent Night

We are pleased to announce that due to the lifting of restrictions, we can now run our New Parent Information Night. This will take place next Monday 7 March at the Bluff Road campus. All new families to the College, from year 7 to 12 are welcome to attend. The format of the night is a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style evening, where parents/carers will be asked to choose 5 out of the 7 information sessions and then be allocated to that session. Each session will run for 15 minutes in duration and there will be 5 minutes between each session to change locations. If you are a New Parent to the College, you will receive an email and link by the end of the week to help secure your booking for this Information Night.

NAPLAN readiness

As many of you know, NAPLAN is the measure through which governments, education authorities, schools, teachers and parents can measure the literacy and numeracy skills of young Australians and provides the critical foundation for other learning and for their productive and rewarding participation in the community. As NAPLAN will be online throughout the whole of Victoria in 2022, all students in years 7 and 9 will participate in a NAPLAN Schools Readiness Test before the end of term. This is to ensure that all systems  can cope with the demands of online NAPLAN when the actual testing occurs in May. If your child has had special arrangements for NAPLAN in the past, please contact myself, Simone Garraway or Suzanne Trease so that we can ensure all appropriate arrangements are in place for your child. If you are new to the Australian Education system and believe that your child might be eligible for special arrangements (use of laptop, rest breaks, etc) or exemption from the testing please contact us for further discussion. 

Student Leadership

Congratulations to our Student Leaders at Junior campus for 2022. We are proud and excited that they will lead the cohort and work with the SRC on being the voice of the students in 2022. We are yet to announce the year 7 leaders and hope to do so within the next few weeks.

The SRC (Student Representative Committee) is open to all students and any student who would like to join the SRC may do so. Please keep an eye out on Compass for more details regarding meeting times and days.

Vivienne McElwee

Campus Principal

Year 7 Report

by the Year 7 Year Level Leaders Mr Vasey and Miss Slingsby.

The Year 7 cohort have made a great start to the year. It has been fantastic to see the students settle into their form group and subjects.

Mr Vasey and Miss Slingsby have been impressed with the cohort’s demonstration of school values in the class and the yard.

We are all very excited for camp in week 5. We can’t wait for the fun daily activities, the talent show and memories that will last a life time.