From the Assistant Principal - Teaching, Learning and Wellbeing

Term 4 - A Focus on Learning

Term 4 brings many things to completion in an academic year. Usually all high stakes formal assessment is completed quite early in the term which leaves the rest of the term open to students to ‘wind down’ from the pressure of exams and testing.

End of Year reports are not released until the end of Week 8 and a significant amount of the term provides students with informal opportunities to improve their final end of year grade because everything counts. A student's final grade on their End of Year report is focused on a whole year’s worth of learning, which includes the weeks at the end of Term 4. Students should see this time as a way to demonstrate what they have learnt in critical and creative ways.

It’s also a time to use teacher feedback especially in relation to our literacy and numeracy skills. Year 10 will be completing their HSC Minimum Standards tests in their transition week, these tests are mandatory for the successful completion of the HSC. “Students need to achieve Level 3 or 4 in short online reading, writing and numeracy tests of skills for everyday life to meet the HSC minimum standard.” (NESA) Only students who meet the HSC minimum standard will receive an HSC testamur.

Much of Term 4 provides important preparation for the year ahead. Year 10 will also complete All My Own Work which “ s a program designed to help HSC students follow the principles and practices of good scholarship. This includes understanding, valuing and using ethical practices when locating and using information as part of their HSC studies.” (NESA)

This program is mandatory for all students who are continuing into Year 11. “Students who have completed the program will also know about penalties for cheating and how to avoid malpractice when preparing their work for assessment.”

This course is vital, especially with more and more students relying on AI to do classwork and assessment tasks for them, the consequences of malpractice and plagiarism will have a great impact on their learning and their final course performance.

So as we draw closer to completing Term 4, we put our best efforts forward to finish the Year off with great success, knowing that we undertook every opportunity to focus on learning throughout the entire academic year.