Director of Learning and Teaching
Ms Melissa Williams
The 2024 Academic year began with a wonderful celebration of all the success and hard work of the Year 12 Graduating Class of 2023. The boys were welcomed back to an assembly held in their honour, where each student who demonstrated high achievement in their HSC was recognised. We were particularly fortunate this year to be able to hear from two students who achieved excellence and who shared many words of wisdom and encouragement to the entire College community.
“As iron sharpens iron, so [too does] one person sharpen another.” (Proverbs 27:17)
Matthew Nassif, who received the 2023 highest ATAR, included the quote above to impress upon the boys the importance of committing to collaboration with fellow students to increase motivation and build collective efficacy. In Matthew’s words, “it is certainly fitting that in this Marist school we recognise the importance of brotherhood. It is our duty to “sharpen” each other in mind and spirit, to see to the needs of others and support, inspire and motivate our fellow classmates to achieve both academic excellence, self-improvement and attain a sense of self-accomplishment.”
The staff learning focus for this year is on developing consistent classroom practices in explicit teaching and structuring lessons to maximise learning outcomes and student learning growth. In particular, we have drawn on the seminal work of Barak Rosenshine to embed opportunities for daily and/or weekly review into our classroom routines. This helps build fluency and reduces cognitive load for students, whilst also providing valuable feedback to the students and to the teachers on where they are at with their learning and what the next steps should be. The increased review opportunities have been noted by students and they are already reporting the benefits of this regular practice.
I would like to thank the learning team for all their work this Term in ensuring that all boys continue to develop good learning habits in the classroom and for leading each faculty with staff that develop rigorous assessments, provide quality feedback to students and develop structured quality learning each lesson.