From the Assistant Principal Teaching and Learning

It is a Wrap:
from Michelle Deschamps

I wish every family and our students a joyous and blessed Christmas and New Year. During my time at St Andrews I have been privileged to be a large part of, and work alongside the most dedicated staff who are focused on consistent professional learning in order to continually improve their own professional capacity, to affect student growth and in turn enable every student to achieve their highest potential. 

Having said that, it has been necessary to change the learning culture from one focused on grades and marks, to one focused on feedback for improvement. Therefore, student capacity to continually improve and develop a growth mindset to enable them to be change agents in the world, is every teacher’s goal. Staff want students to develop into independent, interdependent and autonomous learners, whereby feedback is their friend and learning from mistakes is key to learning. 

I acknowledge my own growth whilst at St Andrews, and my learning is continual despite 32 years of teaching. The message here is that we are all learners, no matter what pathway we pursue in our lives. The importance of being in a Catholic community is that we are empowered to be change agents in our world, therefore our focus on being a person for others and going beyond is fundamental since we all have the ability to affect change. So every family, student and staff member at St Andrews is reminded they are on a learning journey at any point in time, therefore everything we do, think and say matters. Our challenge is to make the most of every moment, opportunity and challenge. 

I wish the St Andrews community - families, staff and students every success into the future. I am blessed to have been a part of a fantastic community, and I know my experience will set me in great stead as Principal at St Rapheal’s Catholic School, Cowra. God Bless.

What Makes a Good Learner @ St Andrews

The following are more responses from our student survey - What Makes a Good Learner at St Andrews. The collective student responses give us great insight into our wonderful student voice. 

There is a good representation across Year levels:

What makes a good learner great?

Year 7

• What makes a good learner great is their want to keep going. Their motivation to continue with whatever they are learning.
• Listening 
• A good learner can become great by listening to others, respecting their opinions and be able to teach others.
• The fact that they are able to interpret this knowledge we gain.
• Doing things better than you normally would, always trying to be better and learn better
• Helping others when they are struggling 
• Their ability to achieve great things by motivation.
• A good learner is honest, caring and will take time away from running and playing games in his or her recess and lunch just to help other children. They are also good role models for younger students at this school.

Year 8

• A good learner is someone who is willing to ask for feedback on their learning, so that they may improve in their learning. They also manage time effectively in different ways, such as scheduling homework during free weekends or taking short breaks in between study sessions.
• Always being ready to learn.
• A good learner is great as they show the ability to take ideas and explore things making them wiser by the day.
• You need to participate
• Good learners then become great when they’re organised and on top of every single task, submitting and getting good grades. 
• They are good listeners and they take their time to learn new things

Year 9

• A good learner is someone who is always achieve for their best and is willing to dedicate their time and effort into school and in every class. They are great because they have the ability to show a sense of proof through their hard work and efforts.
• a good learner needs discipline, the ability to control the extent of learning they give themsleves. they understand that its ok to not get what they want and they take it as motivation to become better. 
• Someone who understands the work, not just memorises it
• In my opinion practicing your subjects and your reading is what makes a good learner. 
• A good learner is one who can work well in a group, encourage others, and produce useful results. A excellent student possesses the qualities of being optimistic, helpful, cooperative, and pleasant. When these youngsters grow up, they become excellent team players and leaders.

Year 10

• attending school everyday and not missing school and listening to my teachers
• Asking questions in class when you are unsure about something is what makes a good learner great. 
• A great learner is an individual who can apply their knowledge to different areas outside of the prescribed subject
• They are always trying there hardest and never give up. 
• A good learner becomes great when they demonstrate their learning and understanding in other aspects. For example, students at St Andrews become great learners through using their creative writing skills in English class and applying them to writing competitions promoted by Mr Dewar throughout the year. Good learners become great when they can apply their knowledge and skills to other areas of their learning.

Year 11

• Things that make a good learner great include being able to listen, having communication skills and being able to actually learn from mistakes rather than being upset or caught up on it.
• The ability to not only learn but apply the knowledge in real world scenarios.

What type of feedback is important for learning?

Year 7 

• Constructive feedback. This feedback is important as the student can focus on their weaknesses and improve them and they are aware of their mistakes.
• The errors you make should be the feedback you receive as you know what to do next time.
• Verbal feedback
• Never giving up on listening and trying to apply feedback
• Constructive feedback. Telling what should change and what is good in our work will be both complimenting us and telling us how to fix our work to make it better.

Year 8

• Feed forward so I know what I need to do to improve in my next work
• Formative assessments are important as feedback, since it helps students understand what they've succeeded or need to improve in a particular subject. This helps to improve their learning in that particular subject, which later helps them better prepare for summative assessments such as oral presentations or exams.
• Critical feedback is important for learning as without it it becomes much harder to improve and pick up on our own mistakes.
• Constructive feedback as not only does it encourage you to work harder but let's you know what exactly to work on.
• The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning.
• i believe formative Feedback is important for learning because it checks where the students are at with their learning.

Year 9

• Critical feedbacks personally inspire me to do better, I usually like to learn things i can’t do so that i can grow as a well rounded student.
• Feedback is assuring and it presents a sense of guidance for the student to grow and improve in that certain area of knowledge. Good feedback always has something the student is good at or was able to achieve and also what they could work on for future matters.
• Feedback that doesn’t diminish someone’s work, but doesn’t praise someone’s work is crucial for learning as diminishing someone may lead them to not do it better as they think they can’t improve. However, praise would let them think they’re at their peak, that they’re can’t improve anymore. A perfect balance (via constructive criticism) is a good balance between making someone try while not being tired of it (or themselves).

Year 10

• ​​good quality feedback because the teachers can help me improve things in my learning
• Feedback that is important for learning is how to improve your work and where/how you can improve your work
• In most cases I’d rather hear negative feedback over positive feedback, negative feedback really targets the issues, positive feedback just provides reassurance. 
• Feedback that highlights what you did wrong plus which direction you need to look at within your progress.