Year 11
Mr Mark Barroccu
Leader of Wellbeing – Year 11
Year 11 began the Senior School journey in such a positive way. Refreshed from time away from the College, our Leaders of 2025 returned ready for new subjects and new opportunities.
As well as students starting new courses, we have several participants in the TAFE NSW School based apprenticeship scheme and others studying a trade or practical subject at TAFE. We wish these students well as they transition to adult learning spaces and commence temporary work placements.
From a pastoral perspective, our focus is on self-care. This has seen students learning about organising their time according to study, extra-curricular and work commitments to achieve their goals during the first semester. Our most fruitful pastoral time together to date was the launch of Project Compassion this year. Homeroom Leaders organised several activities in the classroom, as well as time to unwind playing sports. This included football, table tennis and basketball. The goal was to raise some much-needed funds for Caritas Australia’s charity work overseas. I thank the Leaders here for their diligence and effort. We also had a number of students generously donating their time to selling drinks at recess and lunch with all proceeds going to Project compassion. In addition to these, the Homeroom staff have rallied hard for their classes to donate what they could during this time. Overall, Year 11 raised approximately $2,500 towards Project compassion this year. A great effort by all.
Our Open Day was busy again with Year 11 leading the tours with our new students from Year 7. The day ran smoothly and many positive comments from prospective families were received.
Year 11 had the first taste of exam style privileges. Rather than exams, students attended the College only for skill development workshops in their chosen subjects. This afforded the students an opportunity to work from home to prepare for assessment tasks. Our TAFE and SBAT students were able to gain some further work experience during this time.
The tutor program is currently a slow burn for Year 11. Although the focus of this is our current HSC cohort, a number of students from Year 11 have been studying in the library and aligning themselves to the tutors for assistance. I am confident that these students will see some benefits in terms of their understanding of content and hopefully success in their first set of assessment tasks.
Students had a number of excursions this term. Visual Arts saw the most recent HSC artworks at Artexpress, a showcase at the Art Gallery of NSW. The Geography class ventured to Mt Kiera to conduct fieldwork for their unit on Earth’s Natural systems and the Investigating Science students explored the new Penrith lakes precinct. This involved testing the health of the local ecosystem.
I trust you have a restful and quiet break and look forward to a busy Term 2.