Communications

Over the past few weeks, we have received feedback from our parent community regarding Compass Notifications that are being sent to parents.  As many of you are aware, Compass is one of our major forms of communicating with families and communications include a range of items including general news, student achievements and learning tasks, student attendance and also student behaviour notifications.  It is this final item, student behaviour notifications that has been generating a lot of discussion and mixed feelings for some in our parent community.

As a school, we believe that communication with our families is essential to building a positive and supporting partnership in order to Build Bright Futures for our students.  This means that we are going to communicate with our families around the celebrations, achievements, and positive interactions that we see our students making.  This may be communicated through Compass, via our Positive Impression Cards or via a phone call home.  It also means, that at times when student behaviour or academic achievements are not hitting the mark, that we also contact home, and this will be through a Compass notification for our Minor Behaviours and through a phone call home for the Major Behaviours.  Whilst this information may be confronting or frustrating at times, it ensures that there are no surprises for parents and that we can all work together towards developing our young people to be healthy, happy and curious learners today and citizens of the future.

Our approach in this space is not haphazard and is part of an evidence-based approach known as School Wide Positive Behaviour Supports and links with our College values of Belonging, Curiosity and Achievement.  We have included below our Expectation Matrix and our Behaviour Flowchart, which clearly outline our expectations for student behaviour and our process for managing behaviours around the College.

For the many families that have been actively supporting our work to build a strong and positive learning culture at Walcom Ngarrwa Secondary College, thank you.  Your ongoing support and assistance is amazing and greatly appreciated.

I would like to encourage those families who are finding this approach to student management challenging or difficult, to approach me directly, so that we can explore this further and look at how we can better communicate with you and how we can work together to develop our learners of today, as leaders of tomorrow.  Our current Year 7 students are in a very privileged position, they will always be the leaders of our school and we want to be able to support them to put their best foot forward and be amazing role models for our future students over the years ahead.

Semester 1 Reports

With the end of term fast approaching, our teachers are making their way through the final assessments for students in Semester 1 and busily completing reporting requirements.  Our semester 1 reports will go live on Compass on Friday 28th June.  Families will be notified via Compass when the reports are ready to view.

Attitudes to School Survey - Enhancing the Student Culture

The Annual Student Attitudes to School Survey has been completed over the last few weeks.  The purpose of the survey is to obtain student opinion on the quality of the learning environment and student connectedness to school. 

As our results become available we look forward to working with students to unpack their survey results and develop action plans to further enhance our college community.

National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) 2024

The NAPLAN tests for our Year 7 students took place in Term 1 from Wednesday 13 March 2024. I would like to acknowledge Mark Garner, IT Manager,  and Adam Powell, Assistant Principal, for their outstanding efforts in ensuring the smooth administration of NAPLAN. Students approached their tests with seriousness, reflecting the school's commitment to accountable and disciplined learning. Schools will receive their comprehensive NAPLAN results, including writing scores, this month. Subsequently, parents and carers will receive their child's Individual Student Report at the start of Term 3. ACARA is then expected to publish the National Results in August 2024. Once again, thank you to all involved for their dedication to our students' academic success.

Parent Contributions/School Fees

A reminder to all families that we still have some families who have not yet paid their parent contributions/school fees for 2024. These contributions allow us to fully resource our school and help us to achieve strong learning outcomes for our students. If you have yet to pay your 2024 contributions, we kindly ask you to do so at your earliest convenience. Your ongoing support is greatly appreciated by our staff and students.

Finally, please remember, we always welcome any feedback you have about our school, so please feel free to pop in and see me or email me at anytime, at bradley.moyle@education.vic.gov.au with any thoughts, concerns, feedback or suggestions that you may have to help continue to make our school a place where we Build Bright Futures for our students and staff. I will get back to you as soon as I can and really do appreciate any feedback that you have to share.

Have a great week ahead and enjoy the last few weeks of Term 2.

Brad Moyle

Principal

Student Positive Impressions.

As the end of Term 2 draws nearer, many classes will be starting their Semester 2 content.

Teachers are busy entering assessment scores, so it is important that students complete and submit any outstanding assessment tasks (CATs).

Please contact individual teachers if you have any queries about Semester 1 CATs

Next week students will enjoy a humanities incursion to finalise their learning around "Water In The World".  

On Thursday, a team of Environmental Scientists and Engineers from Decmil, project partners on the Ison Road Overpass Project, will visit our school to explore the economic, cultural, and aesthetic value of water for people. 

This incursion aims to enrich students' understanding of water's significance and inspire them to think critically about sustainable practices.

LITERACY AND NUMERACY SUPPORT NEWS!

Literacy and Numeracy Support is now up and running in the Red Giant and WOW!

What an amazing start it has been.

We have been really pleased with our student’s Achievement,Belonging and Curiosity as they take on this new part of their weekly timetable.

We have already seen so much growth in our students and their participation has been fantastic.

Both of us are really looking forward to continuing on with our programs in Semester 2 and watching our students shine!

A huge well done, thankyou and congratulations to all of our participants.

Melissa Thompson and Susie Blake.

Ekphrasis: Writing inspired by art

Our students have been busy developing their writing skills this term in our study of Ekphrasis: Writing inspired by art.

The word ekphrasis is a Greek word meaning the ‘written description of a work of art’. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art. It means ‘to explain’, to tell. In

ancient times, it was considered a rhetorical technique, a test of a speaker’s ability to evoke not only the likeness of a person, place, or thing, but also the emotional aura of that subject.

Here are some exemplary pieces of student work from students in 7A: Axton, Abbey, Mae, Farheen and Kaysie. 

Wyndham Youth Services

This semester, our Year 7 Leaders attended the Wyndham Youth Services in Hoppers Crossing over four sessions for the Wyndham Student Representative Committee. Through this program, our students developed a plan to roll out engaging sessions to run through our weekly Inspire sessions that challenged the cohort to work together to build their collaboration and teamwork skills.

On the final WSRC session this Tuesday, our leaders presented their work to the other schools in attendance. The students who presented demonstrated an incredible ability to speak publicly and engage a crowd. Throughout this program, our student leaders represented Walcom Ngarrwa Secondary College exceptionally and we are very proud of these students for all of their work.

Students in Materials Technology finished up their Timber Pencil Boxes last week. Well done to everyone who completed their project and safely used all of the new tools and equipment. Miss Kelly and Mr Johnston can’t wait to see the Metalwork creations that students will be working on in their next unit!