RJHS Newsletter - Term 3, Issue 3

KORERO FROM FRASER

Welcome to Week 6 everyone. It has been great to see our students, staff and families as a whole continue to engage with learning as per normal. Our attendance has been comparable, if not even better than at similar times last year which is positive for our learners and school.

I want to thank everyone for supporting us with the Teacher Only Day last week. The staff spent the day engaging in professional reflection connected to our timetable and learning changes which was very valuable for us and we know will make a difference for our learners. An important part of our conversation was getting our expectations right in terms of how much we expect from students in terms of learning task completion. This workload can have an impact on both staff and students if we don’t get it right. Over the last few weeks we have certainly had some feedback from staff and caregivers that it wasn’t quite right. We do appreciate the feedback and we are listening.

In terms of student workload and expectations, I do want to be really clear on what we are expecting. Our aim is to ensure learning tasks are purposeful wherever possible and that our expectations for quality and completion are demanding. We do not want the task or the volume of learning to be easy, we want to stretch our learners to ensure they see the need to develop those strategies for managing themselves that need to be developed and implemented so expectations are met. If this means some tasks need to be completed outside of school then we are fine with this.

We are putting in extra effort to follow up on those learners who are not meeting expectations and while this most often is because they require some additional support or are not using their time effectively, sometimes there simply has been too much to do and we can adapt our programme. We are being proactive about having these conversations and working with students to develop strategies for them to meet expectations.

As promised, we are going to host another information session* about our learning programmes for parents and caregivers and we would love to see anyone with questions come along. You will get the chance to experience learning from the perspective of a student and we are aiming to answer any question you may have.

Keep an eye out for some Facebook posts with ‘How To’ clips for parents and caregivers on how to access learning (including grades and feedback) on Schoology from home.

*JHS Learning Programme Information Session

Tuesday, September 8 from 5.45-7pm