NAPLAN

Our Year 7 and 9 students have completed the NAPLAN tests this week, following the delay after Cyclone Alfred. I am grateful to all students, families and staff for understanding the changes needed to the schedule. Overall, our students have been working hard in these sessions to help us have reliable data to plan for their learning. In discussions with students, I have stressed that we do not expect all students to get every question right. Instead, the data helps us to see where there are gaps in learning to be targeted and strengths to celebrate. We use other indicators to measure all the other important aspects of our school such as student wellbeing, behaviour trends and Catholic identity.

Assessment Updates

Following the cyclone, there have been adjustments needed to most assessment tasks and/or due dates. Teachers have been communicating these directly to families and students, and updating the College assessment calendar. If you or your child have any questions about the due dates or changes to tasks, please contact your child’s teacher directly. Staff email addresses can be found on the Parent Portal. Term 1 report cards do not include A-E results as assessment may not have been completed in all subjects. Where assessment has had to be adjusted, teachers will ensure that the Term 1 and 2 tasks, taken together, can still lead to reliable reporting.

Student Diary

Despite the wild weather, there is so much going on in our Year 7-9 classrooms! I was transported back to my own high school days when I walked into some Year 9 Science classes recently to find them doing eye dissections. I recall feeling a bit squeamish the first time around but students seemed excited for the opportunity this time!

Several junior Arts students, along with senior classes, attended Sister Act at QPAC! The show was full of lively costumes, dancing and music. As a Drama teacher, I always enjoy being able to take students to see live theatre. For many it is their first experience and they come away in awe.

This week was the second day of our Year 9 BECOME Careers Program. My thanks to Mrs Katie Coggins, our Pathways Leader, for her work in this space and also to Mrs Jacqui Braddon who I know played a large role in bringing together the panel guests yesterday. Authentic careers education at this stage aims to broaden the range of careers that students are aware of and ignite their curiosity into the world of work. While we certainly don’t expect students to lock in a career now, having goals and an awareness of where there schooling can take them certainly influences their effort and positive choices now.  

I am looking forward to attending BCE’s Ngutana-Lui Centre next week with Year 7 students to deepen their understanding of First Nations peoples and the deep time history of Australia. We have been exploring human migration into Australia and how knowledge and culture have been passed on for millennia, to the practices lived out today. Students will be combining their researched information and a narrative to create a dual-genre text for English and HASS.

Reading!

Our Reading focus continues this week at Carmel! In our Professional Learning Communities, teachers have been developing modelled read-aloud activities to share with students. These give students opportunities to see and hear the process to follow when deconstructing and decoding a text.

This week I have been continuing to read 1984 by George Orwell and it’s going well! Our staff bookclub decided to read a classic that we hadn’t read before. I had been jealous of the other English class when I was at school who got to read 1984 but had never gotten around to reading it since! I won’t share which book my class read; even though it is loved by many, I cannot say I enjoyed it. It is important for our students to know that they won’t love every book they read. Thankfully there are many more waiting for them and our wonderful Library staff are here to help! Perhaps in your conversations this week, you can share what you are reading with your child, and one or two books that you didn’t enjoy as much.

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” Walt Disney.

Mr Frank Turtle

Acting Assistant Principal – Learning and Teaching (Years 7-9)