ERC Updates

From the Director of Learning & Teaching

Having a core reason, identifying your WHY as Simon Sinek refers to it, can help transform a student’s individual motivation.

Often, we can get caught up in what we need to do and how we need to do it. Both what and how questions are important. However, to discover your purpose, your belief, your inner motivation you need to ask “Why is this important”?

When students discover their WHY, that is, their reasons for why school or a subject is important –
those answers increase their inner motivation and drive. Speak to your son(s) about their WHY in relation to their learning.

Assessment Calendar

Parents/Carers are able to access the Semester One College Assessment Calendar for Stages 4, 5 and 6. To access the Calendar, enter the Parent Lounge on TASS, then click on School Links followed by School Assessment Calendar.

Stage 6 (Year 11 & 12) Assessments

With a number of assessment tasks being administered in the next two weeks, Year 11 and 12 students are reminded that if they are absent from school on the day an assessment task is due, or the day before the due date of the assessment task, they must complete an Illness Misadventure form.

Evidence, such as a Medical Certificate for illness, must be attached to the form to support their absence from school. If unable to book an appointment with a general practitioner, a medical certificate can be obtained from a pharmacy or a hospital (if necessary). If these options are not possible, a script can be obtained online through ‘Instant Scripts’. The medical certificates are unable to be backdated.

The Illness/Misadventure Form is due to their classroom teacher within three days of the due date for the task.

CHAT GPT

As mentioned in the previous edition of the newsletter, ChatGPT can be a valuable resource to support learning, providing quick and accurate answers to questions and assisting with homework. It can foster a love of learning, inspiring both curiosity and exploration. Following are ways that ChatGPT can support and enhance student learning and teaching for both students and teachers:

  • generate formative assessment questions that help student understanding and identify areas for improvement.
  • generate examples of responses to assessment type questions
  • generate a glossary of terms and definitions that are relevant to the syllabus or unit of study.
  • generate prompts for structured reflection activities that encourage students to think about their learning process and progress.
  • generate self-assessment tools, such as rubrics or checklists, that help students evaluate their own work.
  • generate prompts for open-ended questions that align with the learning intentions and success criteria of the unit of work.
  • analyse generated responses from ChatGPT.
  • provide feedback on how to improve a generated response from ChatGPT.

In the previous edition of the newsletter, it was also mentioned that caution needs to be exercised to ensure that the use of ChatGPT does not undermine the integrity of the evaluation process for assessments. Design principles that faculties will implement to minimise this impact include:

  • regular hand-in tasks to support students with the preparation of an in-class component
  • assessment tasks to focus on the analysis of provided sources
  • focus on the process of a hand-in submission task e.g. submission of multiple drafts to enable the teacher to monitor development of a task response
  • where the use of ChatGPT is an accepted part of the assessment – this must be referenced as per College guidelines.

PARENT WEBINAR – HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR CHILD’S MEMORY

Elevate Education’s next free webinar will be taking place on Wednesday 29th March, at 6:30pm focusing on Memory. The following will be covered during the webinar:

  • How memory actually works
  • The most effective environments to assist in memorization
  • Three techniques you can implement overnight to improve revision.

Click here to register for free

NAPLAN

Congratulations to our Year 7 and 9 students on the manner in which they completed their Naplan tests over the past two weeks.

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

With students preparing for upcoming assessment tasks, the Study Skills: Test Taking Techniques module will provide some excellent strategies to support your son in preparing for these assessments. Click here to access the resources.

Dr Sozio
Director of Learning & Teaching