Term 4 2022
The end of the year is fast approaching with the Year 12 students and Year 11 students now finished for the school year. Year 10 students will finish on Friday 2 December (Week 7), with Year 7, 8 and 9 students finishing on Friday 16 December (Week 9); with an early dismissal at 2:20pm.
On Thursday 24 November, we farewelled our Year 12 students at our annual Year 12 Graduation Ceremony, hosted at the Adelaide Town Hall. This year we decided to introduce a Middle Year Graduation Ceremony to celebrate our Year 9 students graduating to the senior years. This meant that our Year 12 graduation ceremony was focused solely on our senior students and ensured the evening was shortened to two and a half hours, following feedback from 2021. Throughout the evening, we presented the Year 12 Graduation Certificates as well as acknowledging students individually for the academic, leadership, service and subject awards. Overall, the evening was a fantastic success with lots of positive feedback from students, families, guests and old scholars. The music performances were also a highlight of the night. The Middle Years Graduation Ceremony is on Thursday 8 December (Week 8) at the Woodville Town Hall.
The Term 4 assessment window for the Middle Years will close on Friday 2 December (Week 7). Week 8 will therefore be ‘report writing week’ so that reports are ready for the last day of the school term. Middle Years reports will be given to students on the last day of school. Any reports not collected will be posted home. All Senior Years reports will be posted home.
Our Term 4 Snapshot Reports were posted home in Week 3 this term to indicate to families if their child was not on track to achieve a ‘C’ grade or higher for the term. We moved the snapshot report timeline forward in Term 4 due to Year 10 and 11 students finishing earlier in the term because of their exam preparation time. This term we have introduced a ‘Snapshot Recovery Period’ to encourage students to access extra tutoring support to complete their learning goals and tasks. All students who received a snapshot report in Term 4 were required to attend our Homework Centres throughout Week 4 and 5 until they were up to date with their learning. A letter was sent home to families with the snapshot reports to inform them of this change and to remind families where the Homework Centres are located. In Week 9, the Learner Review Team will review the effectiveness of this strategy to see if it will continue in 2023.
This year we have continued our whole school curriculum review following the release of the department’s curriculum scope and sequences in 2021. The curriculum has now been mapped for every subject area from Year 7-12 and teams have used the Curriculum Review Days to collaboratively review, improve and innovate their units of work and assessment tasks. Next year, we will continue to invest in the Curriculum Review Days to allow teachers time to collaboratively review, improve and innovate their curriculum, as well as providing an opportunity to share practice and moderate together.
The Leadership Team will meet for a full day on Thursday 15 December to review the year and to plan for 2023. There will also be a session on the new Art & Science of Teaching Framework, which will inform the Student Free Day on Monday 30 January 2023 (Week 1, Term 1). This will be an opportunity to reflect on our progress towards our School Improvement Plan and School Strategic Plan and to plan accordingly for next year.
For more curriculum matters, please contact me via email luke.smith563@schools.sa.edu.au
Luke Smith,
Deputy Principal
