Principal – 28 June 2018

Shortly you will have access to the Semester 1 reports.

There will have been information along the way; sent to you via PAM, to students also via assessment or task feedback and to both via the Progress Meetings.

At this point of the year though, a summation of what has been achieved is necessary and can be very useful in ensuring that further success can be attained.

I invite all parents and caregivers to read through the information and then start a conversation with their daughters and sons. Some questions like these could help:

• • What are you most proud about this semester? Learning achievements, co-curricula involvement, relationships, personal resilience growth, self-awareness?

  • What did you enjoy most about school this semester? Learning achievements, co-curricula involvement, relationships, personal resilience growth, self-awareness?

  • What could have made the semester even better?

  • Which teachers did you appreciate the most and what was it that made learning better for you? (This will tell you something about your daughters and sons as learners.)

  • How many of your goals for the semester did you achieve? What will be your new goals for next semester?

Conversations like these will enable you all to understand the report as more than an array of grades. The old-fashioned approach was to just see the summation of a semester or year as a collection of letters and numbers. To help your daughters and sons get the best out of their schooling we all need to probe a bit more.

I hope that the list above can assist you all to do that.

Particularly for Year 7 students and those new to the College, I offer this insight from a government publication on transition to secondary school:

Students who are perceived as having made a successful transition to secondary schooling describes themselves, and are described by others, as having friends and fitting in to the school environment.

Hopefully the report confirms these things for you.

Vincent J Feeney