Curriculum

Thursday 18 September. Three way conferences for parents of Years 7-10 students.  Pencil this date in your diary.

What has already happened.  Students in Years 7-10 have established three personalised learning goals and have identified, in consultation with their teachers, manageable and measurable strategies by which those goals can be achieved. This is an ongoing collaboration between teachers, students and parents/ Thus this exciting process is constantly reviewed and refined.

Learning goals are not confined to any particular subject area. Your child has actively contributed towards the development of his/her personalised learning goals. These goals have been developed to specifically address his/her personal learning needs. For example, a particular Year 7 student may have collaboratively developed the following learning goals:

• To improve my spelling in both English and my LOTE subject
• To meet deadlines with greater regularity
• To prepare for mathematics tests more effectively

Personalised strategies have also been developed by which your child can practically work towards achieving his/her goals.  All of this can be found in your child’s “Digital Portfolio.”

What next? Throughout Term 3, students will intensify their collection of evidence. This term, the focus turns to evidence collecting which will serve the purpose of demonstrating that your child has indeed taken concrete steps towards achieving his/her personalised learning goals. Evidence can be both electronic or in “hard” copy form.

Let’s return to our hypothetical Year 7 student, whose three learning goals are listed above. Possible evidence for her first goal (improving her spelling) could include:

• Spelling tests, complete with results, which have been scanned into Hypothetical’s digital portfolio.
• English drafts and final copies, complete with teacher comments highlighting the improvement in spelling, which have been scanned into Hypothetical’s digital portfolio.
• A hard copy of several LOTE tests/projects from both Term 1 and Term 3. The contrast clearly demonstrates the improvement in spelling which has occurred throughout the year.

The Three way Conference in September is a student led initiative. It will be the students’ role to guide both parents/guardians and the Learning Goals Teacher through their learning goals as well as their strategies by which those goals were strived towards and indeed the evidence which demonstrates the exciting progress made towards those goals.

Joe Caruana, Head of Curriculum