Teaching and Learning Report – May 25, 2017

Assessment and Reporting at St Patrick’s College

The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) publish guidelines for schools relating to the planning and implementation of the new F-10 Victorian Curriculum. One important consideration noted within these guidelines is a move from the one-size-fits-all approach to reporting to providing schools with the capacity to adjust their reporting to reflect their teaching and learning program. This, along with rapidly increasing use of digital technologies to provide students and their parents with online access to real-time, continuous assessment, feedback and reporting of academic achievement, has rendered the previous summative end of semester report to parents obsolete.

In response to the new F-10 Victorian Curriculum, the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria (CECV) produced the Reporting Student Progress and Achievement -“ Guidelines for Victorian Catholic Schools. This document further emphasised the importance of providing timely assessment evidence and feedback to inform students, their family and teachers as to what students need to learn next.

In summary, we have been challenged to review and update our assessment and reporting structures with a view to establishing procedures that provide students and parents with timely, clear and concise feedback that informs and furthers each boy’s learning journey.

As you will be aware, St Patrick’s College has, for some time now, been utilising the Parent Access Module (PAM) in SIMON to report student assessment results and provide access to the feedback given to students. I am pleased see so many parents regularly accessing PAM to support their son in ensuring all his assessments are up-to-date, that they remain informed about the allocation of assessment results to submitted pieces of work and that student feedback is being considered in preparation for the next assessment task.

The teachers of St Patrick’s College are committed to real-time, continuous reporting, and much progress has been made to ensure that this is being achieved. Practically speaking, this means that:

• Student performance an all summative assessment tasks are now being uploaded to PAM within two weeks of the assessment being submitted.
• Feedback for each assessment task is being provided in one a number of forms including assessment rubrics, criterion sheets, annotated assessment tasks, or direct use of the written feedback section within PAM.
• The traditional End of Semester report has been replaced with a Statement of Attainment for all subjects studied in any semester.
• Reports for Pastoral Care, Instrumental Music and Boarding, previously integrated into the end of semester report, are now available as -‘stand-alone’ reports.

The new Victorian Curriculum Graph

Reports for Year 7-10 students completing studies in any of the subjects aligned with the new Victorian Curriculum will include an updated Victorian Curriculum Graph.- Please click on the following link to- view- a document that- outlines the new Victorian Curriculum Graph and explains how it will appear.

Please click on this link– for the new Victorian Curriculum Graph Explanation

The change to real-time, continuous reporting as the basis of our reporting structures has been a significant one. Consequently, we will continue to support students and parents to ensure that this important development is fully integrated into our classroom programs to further the learning outcomes for each of our boys.

If you have any further questions or require additional support to access PAM, please contact the College by phoning 5331 1688.

Term 3 Whole-Staff Professional Development Day – Wednesday August 2

At the invitation of the Principals Association of Victorian Catholic Secondary Schools (PAVCSS), and with the support of the Catholic Education Office, Father Ronald Rolheiser OMI will be working with a significant number of Catholic secondary schools throughout Victoria later this year.- Staff from St Patrick’s College will be joining their colleagues from Damascus College and Loreto College for a professional development day to be led by Fr Ronald on Wednesday, August 2.

Father Ronald, a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio Texas, a position he has held since 2005.- He received his doctorate at the University of Louvain and is a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America, the Canadian Theological Society and the Religious Studies Association of Alberta. He is a specialist in the fields of spirituality and systematic theology. He is also a community builder, lecturer and writer. His books are popular throughout the English speaking world and his weekly column is carried by more than seventy newspapers worldwide. His latest book -Sacred Fire- was named the -Top Book in Spirituality- in the USA in 2015.

Proposed aspects to be covered during the day include:

• Being missionaries to our children -“ secularity and the Gospel
• Teaching and ministering within tension and tiredness: how to minister to others while still taking care of ourselves
• The pedagogy of the right brain; understanding our faith through stories and poetry.

I ask that you note that this professional development day, which has previously been calendared as a student free day, is taking place on a Wednesday. This may require you to consider other appropriate arrangements for your son on this day.