Deputy Principal Teaching and Learning

Holiday Workshops and Trial Examinations HSC and IBDP

HSC and IB Diploma teachers ran study sessions for their students in the first few weeks of the holidays. With the Trials starting this week, it seems to have helped the students as they entered the first exam yesterday calmly and confidently. We appreciate the teachers providing this opportunity to support our Year 12 students. 

Academic Resilience

The Academic and Pastoral teams have combined to support our students with an academic resilience project we are working on this year. One aspect of this program is for our students to review their semester report, celebrate the successes and analyse what they can do to make improvements. The students were allocated Community Time this week to read the report and complete a reflection tool. This document will be uploaded by the students to their electronic portfolio on VO and can be shared with parents on this platform. 

Coding in Year 7 Technology Mandatory

Students in Years 7 and 8 rotate through several different technology units, one of which is coding. I recently visited a Year 7 class and sat with two students as they analysed the code for their Micro Bop project. Charlize explained:

During this technology learning experience, we learned how to code a robot and make it dance to a catchy song we enjoyed listening to. We loved working with our peers and friends. Grace and I had no idea how to code anything, let alone a robot, but this class helped us improve our coding skills. Grace and I really enjoyed creating a coded dance to a song as we are both dancers, and it is something we enjoy doing. This was a fantastic opportunity, and we believe the future year sevens will look forward to attending the micro-bop class

Charlize
Year 7

Grace explained that their group chose the song ‘Mother’ by Meghan Trainor. She said,

We selected this song as the music was very fun, pop and catchy. The reason we selected this cool music was because it included all our thoughts and ideas as a team. It allowed us to include many movements such as; spinning, digital facial expressions, wiggling and moving forwards and backwards.

Grace
Year 7

These students were telling me how excited they were to be moving to Food Technology in their next rotation.

Scientific Research Project

Year 10 Science are conducting independent investigations into a topic of their choosing. They are required to complete experimental work as part of the Scientific Research Project. Students start by developing a hypothesis and plan a controlled investigation to test this hypothesis. I was welcomed by a hum of energy when visiting two Year 10 Science classrooms today. The students demonstrated confidence in conducting their experiments and articulated what and how they were testing. 

Some of the experiments being conducted by our students include: titration, testing the viscosity of slime, testing the accuracy of reported sugar levels in energy drinks, and a comparison of the DNA between strawberries, kiwis and bananas. 

Jacqueline Pugh
Deputy Principal Teaching and Learning