Project Based Learning

Congratulations to the Year 7 and 8 students who participated in Project Based Learning (PBL) Week. There was a high volume of energy throughout the week in the Narandha Learning Centre with students working on their projects. PBL Week provided a showcase of students engaging in authentic learning experiences allowing them to further develop their transferable skills. Students throughout the week were working collaboratively in teams and bringing to life their critical and creative thinking, through their communication and problem solving.

Excellent feedback was provided by the students who engaged with the learning experiences. Students indicated they enjoyed the practical nature of the problems, the opportunity to work collaboratively with their peers, the relevance of the experiences and being able to make deeper connections with their learning.

Our Learning and Wellbeing Framework includes the statement that the College is a learning community that is relational, resourceful, reflective and resilient. This was evident during PBL Week. The students showed they were relational in how they were able to learn with each other, they showed they were resourceful by being ready, willing and able to learn in different ways, they showed they were reflective by being strategic about their learning and understanding that plans can be changed, and finally, they showed they were resilient by being absorbed in their learning and persisting with the problems, even when they were challenged.

The four dimensions of the Learning and Wellbeing Framework; Respectful Relationships, Quality Learning & Teaching, Building Resilience and Formation for Learning, also came to life during PBL Week.

Once again, congratulations to all students in the manner in which they engaged with their learning during PBL Week and a special thank you to the teachers who prepared and facilitated the learning experiences for the students: Mr Dempsey, Ms Gazzola, Ms Gregorio, Ms Ndaira, Mrs Shumack, Mrs Thompson and Miss Tomasi.

Preparing for the Higher School Certificate Examinations

Earlier this week, Edrolo delivered a webinar to Year 12 students. The webinar focused on how students could best utilise this resource to complement their preparation for the Higher School Certificate examinations. In the previous newsletter, Mr Milner encouraged students to work towards increasing their mark by a single mark each week which could lead to an improvement of 10% before the HSC exam. The use of Edrolo will support this. Many students throughout the state score HSC marks on the cusp of a higher Band e.g. 89 or 79. The use of Edrolo, complemented with other strategies, may provide the edge to achieve that higher Band result.

Following is a link to the recording of the Edrolo presentation: https://bit.ly/3pZ9z4I

NESA has recently released resources that may support students in preparing for the upcoming HSC examinations. These resources have been shared with Year 12 students.

Following is a link to the 2022 HSC Study Guide:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/hsc-study-guide-20220719-p5b2lr.html

In addition, NESA has released the ‘Stay Healthy HSC’ website:

https://education.nsw.gov.au/student-wellbeing/stay-healthy-hsc?q=

Study Samurai Library

All families have access to the Study Samurai Library. The Study Samurai Library includes the Study Skills Module website which provides advice and resources on developing essential skills for academic success. To access the Study Samurai Library website, go to www.studysamurailibrary.com and login with these details:

Username: edmundrice
Password: 13achieve

This fortnight, families are able to spend time listening to Prue Salter speak about Practice Methods. Click here to access the resource.

Please do not hesitate to make contact if you have any questions.

Ben Pearson in Year 7 created an off grid housing simulation of a wind turbine and a solar panel (Year 7 Science).

Mr Gerry Sozio
Director of Learning & Teaching