Weekly Wrap

This week we were pleased to see our Year 7 students make their way to Camp Manyung. This marks a pretty amazing achievement for our College.

Four of the six year levels made it to camp this year. The Year 7 students threw themselves into the activities with great enthusiasm. We know they formed new friendships and connections after a year where they may have struggled to connect with friends. Listening to our Year 12 students last week, they spoke of the power of connections made in Year 7, on camp, and the longevity of those relationships. We hope the camp was as successful as the pictures we saw seemed to indicate.

On Wednesday this week, College Council held its first face to face meeting for many months. Throughout these trying months, our College Council has been wonderfully understanding and supportive. To all of you members of Council, we say thank you. I would like to acknowledge the contribution of outgoing College Councillors, past president, Jenny Silalahi, current President Lyndell Fraser and Siobhan Brady. They have all been outstanding support and enabled the College to thrive and grow under their leadership.

This week we moved into Year 2022. All subjects are embarking on new curriculum for the next three weeks, except English and Maths. Both subject areas are doing a hybrid of new curriculum and mini lesson catch ups. This has only been made possible through the hard work of Xianjun Chen, Caitlin Martin and Emily Dillon who have ensured all students in years 7-10 have completed testing in the last 2 weeks, have analysed that data and have looked for patterns where students have missed learning particular skills due, in part, to the pandemic. All teachers are very keen to make sure we don’t just push on regardless. Thank you to this great team for helping us make sure we do all we can to ensure students don’t enter 2022 with significant gaps in their learning remaining undetected.

We have also launched our “How wonderful was it when?”  This is a new initiative with staff noting down a particular teaching moment from their week when one of our young people learned a new skill or concept in their class that was particularly exciting. Expect to see these make their way home in the coming weeks.

Throughout the pandemic the College has worked on refurbishments and improvements to our facilities and grounds. One of the improvements has been the installation of new gates across the pipeline and at the back of the bike shed.  These gates block the entry to the College grounds for strangers and enhance student safety.

 

These entrances will be available to students at the beginning and end of each school day and the gates will be closed between 9am and 3.15pm.

 

Have a great weekend.

 

Dave Rogers

College Principal