Welcome back to Semester Two and another busy and productive school term. I sincerely hope everyone in our community, especially our students, found some time to rest and re-energise during their holiday break. Semester Reports were distributed during the holidays and these give our students the opportunity to reflect on the feedback from teachers contained in these reports, to set goals in order to consolidate what they have learnt in Semester 1 and to use this process to see them through the second half of the school year. For our senior students, there is the opportunity to gain insights to help them rise to the challenges of their upcoming end-of-year assessments.
In the first few weeks of this term, class teachers in Year 5 and 6 and Pastoral Mentors in the secondary school will be receiving self-reflections on their reports from their students in which they set goals based on this feedback. In undertaking this process, we hope that students will acknowledge what they have done well as much as the areas of their work which still need improvement. These self-reflections provide the students with a focus as to the way forward with their learning and also serve to provide teachers with some insights into students’ own understandings of their learning. These are powerful tools for encouraging a growth mindset within our student body.
Our teaching staff also continue a similar process whereby they worked in teams with partners under the guidance of a trained coach, to reflect, set Knowledge and Practice goals, devise actions to progress towards them and gather evidence of this progress to review at the end of the year. These Professional Growth Partnerships are part of an annual process at Tintern, which represent a cycle of professional learning for our teachers with an emphasis on collaboration and coaching.
The ability of our students, staff and families to participate in these continuous learning cycles so openly, positively and collaboratively is a marker which sets up our school to continue to develop a culture of learning which encourages growth, greater understandings and deeper learning in all of our classroom experiences and beyond.
