Assistant Principal - Learning and Teaching
Year 11-12 Academic Reports
This Term has seen the publication of Academic Reports for Year 11 and Year 12. These reports were made available by an email link and also available on Sentral’s parent portal.
Any parents who can still not access these reports are asked to make contact with the College for further assistance as we have had several instances of missing reports on several Sentral student profiles.
Although I am confident that these have been rectified, I would ask students and parents to check and contact the College if there are any issues.
Parent Student Teacher Conferences
My thanks to the families who were able to commit to attending our recent Year 12 Parent Student Teacher Conferences. These conferences are always beneficial at this point in the HSC course as the discussion of academic progress can yield some positive changes for the remainder of the year.
Student Resources on offer from the College Curriculum Office for all students to access.
The College has been focussing on student led conferences with the following key questions:
- How are you feeling about your progress in this subject?
- Have you tried hard to do your best?
- Have you been distracted/distracting?
- What goals do you have to improve your learning habits and effort?
- What strategies do you need to have in place to support your goals?
- Where can you put more effort in?
Study Skills - Structures for Learning at Home
PARENTS: Many students come home from school and end up just waiting until they might ‘feel’ like doing schoolwork. Or else they drag everything out over the whole night.
A much better way is each night to set allocated times for home learning. Many students find that learning in 20-30 minute blocks works well for them. During this time students should do homework first, then work on any assignments or upcoming tests, then use the rest of the time allocated for schoolwork to complete independent learning activities such as reviewing work they find difficult, making study notes or doing practice questions to build their skills.
All distractions should be removed during this time, so students learn to focus for 20-30 minute blocks of time. It is a great idea to make a timetable of home learning and place it on the fridge so everyone is clear when students are focusing and when they are doing other activities or having free time.
STUDENTS: Some of the benefits for students of having set times allocated for home learning are:
- You are more likely to learn at home if you know when to start and when to end.
- You will be more effective when you remove distractions and learn to focus for 20-30 minute blocks.
- In all the times NOT allocated to schoolwork you can do whatever you like without feeling guilty about it.
- Having set times stops arguments between students and parents as everyone has agreed when the timeslots allocated to students will be.
- You know that you are definitely doing enough work for school.
- Keeping your home learning and personal life separate means you will be able to manage all of the distractions in your life and still complete your work for school.
Study Skills
Learn more this year about how to improve your results and be more efficient and effective with your schoolwork by working through the units on www.studyskillshandbook.com.au. Our College access details are:
School’s Username – stjohnpaul
School’s password – 89success
In addition, our subscription to Elevate Education may assist in this area.
This online platform contains resources and useful study tips that all SJPC students will find effective. We encourage them to access this Student Portal and try some of the strategies. Students have the password to this site. The password can also be found on the Curriculum Noticeboard.
AMDG
James Furey
Assistant Principal - Learning and Teaching