It has been a busy start to the year in teaching and learning. With the changes to COVID restrictions, our College has started to operate a little closer to normality. This includes having parents back on site for Open Day, a number of Excursions and Incursions going ahead and a range of parent information sessions including Year 12 HSC survival evening, Year 10 ROSA Information Evening and Year 7 Welcome and Meet the Teacher event. It was wonderful to be able to welcome parents back on site and continue the important partnership we share in educating your sons.
The teaching and learning focus for 2021, is on improving our students’ writing. This builds on the work we did last year on improving the feedback we give to our students. We now want to focus that feedback specifically on writing. Our KLA Coordinators have been engaged in some professional reading, collaboration on best practice and are planning for the implementation of writing Professional Development for staff and the revision of our writing framework for Year 7-10. This is an exciting time as we strive to support the writing of our students.
Other initiatives for 2021 around writing, include the expansion of the Cars and Stars program from Year 7 to include Year 8 also. This will be driven by the English faculty in Year 8, and the Embark team in Year 7. Two of our Year 7 classes will also be participating in a trial of an online writing feedback tool called Ecree. This tool gives immediate feedback as the student is constructing sentences for their tasks. Finally, during our Staff Development Day in Term 2, staff will undergo training in a Literacy and Writing Workshop. This will be designed to better equip our staff with a common language we can use with our boys in relation to their writing.
I look forward to seeing the development of our teaching and learning for 2021. There are many exciting things occurring, and our teachers are working hard to improve the learning outcomes of our students.
Mr David Gerlach
Director of Teaching and Learning
