From the Principal's Desk
Term 1 is flying past and next week brings us to the middle of the term…. meaning conversations around refining homework routines, assessments and exam block, should be taking priority for our students.
Part of our A.B. Paterson College Vision in aligning the Strategic Pillars, means we are conscious of the balancing act that students have between their co-curricular involvements, completing their homework and for our older students, planning for future assignments. Our College teachers try to facilitate a community of learners by creating opportunities for our students to work together collaboratively on projects, not only in lessons, but before and after school too, which is the foundation of our Pillar: Education and Care.
For parents of students in our Junior School, you would have received via email a Curriculum Overview, to help you reinforce the habits of organisation and planning that go hand in hand with successful performance at school. As students grow, develop and become more independent in the Senior School, their workload increases, and they have the chance to apply and build on the foundational skills developed throughout the Junior School. For our Senior School parents, your children have access to their assessment calendar that shows the upcoming assessment for each term. For parents to access this, please log into parent lounge:
In speaking to the many and varied successful alumni that have graduated from A.B. Paterson College, there are several key themes that become clear in how they have approached their learning. Firstly, their parents knew what assessment were coming up and encouraged their children to organise themselves across the term to enable them to have the best preparation for exams, assignments and performances.
Successful students organise a space in their home specifically for homework, where they have room to work. They pack their bags themselves, and always have everything they need, including a fully charged device. In addition, many also participate in a range of co-curricular activities, so their mornings and evenings are peppered with an abundance of activities. Those students manage their own organisation of the before school activity, their academic day, their after-school activity, as well as planning time to complete their homework. Additionally, these students have, over time, developed a system where they write down homework and key tasks in their school diary or some type of planning calendar, then tick them off when complete. Further, they have a study timetable (a timetable in addition to just homework) that maps out all of their assessment, so they can be more prepared. For students in the Senior School, backward mapping their assessment is a technique that works well. For example, if the due date for an assignment is Wednesday Week 7, and this will realistically take seven nights of work for two hours each night, then the preparation needs to be started at least seven or eight nights before the due date. Of course, with all other subject assessment and co-curricular obligations added in, a study timetable is an ever-changing schedule, but having it mapped out early, helps students successfully plan out their time from now until exam block in a few weeks. Often it is when exams or assessment deadlines loom when parents first hear about the worries or concerns about concepts not understood or grasped. Faculties in the Senior School have tutorials a number of times each week, and the best advice for setting your son or daughter up for success is to reinforce if they don’t understand something in class, remind them not to sit quietly hoping to work it out later, but to ask questions, and make a practice of attending the tutorials each week. Teachers would much rather go over something again in class than discover the student had not understood it when they see their results later in the term. Learning is like building a brick wall, miss a brick at the bottom, then you will miss two in the space above it, then three in the space above that and very soon, you have a gap in your learning. Students need to be encouraged to do everything they can to help themselves understand a concept – ask a friend, ask your teacher, research, ask your parents.
Despite the constant reassurances from our children, students never have no homework! There is always something they can be doing every night to lessen their assignment load, help themselves to better understand a topic, rehearse a performance, study for a test, or just revise the classwork from their lesson. If students put aside time every night to focus on revision of classwork, they tend to manage their workload better. D2L is the College Learning Management System and has resources, practice quizzes and an abundance of resources for students to access at any time.
For Year 7 students new to Senior School, there would have been a realisation that homework and assessment is different to the system used in the Junior School. It often takes time to adjust to having to plan their work across the week themselves, but it is the first step in developing new habits, better organisational skills and honing the critical concept of time management – all techniques that will serve them well in life beyond A.B. Paterson College.
As we head toward the middle of the term, I encourage every parent to start those conversations with your children to prompt them to be aware of what the next part of the term brings.
Joanne Sheehy - Principal/Head of College
