We have a couple of exciting events around the corner including the annual TAISM swim relay on Monday. Last year students represented the school really well and gave a really determined performance. We hope for another strong showing this year and have organised a bus so that students can travel up together and build up some team spirit to get them in the mood. If you have a free afternoon we would love to see you there. Mr Carberry has all the details.
Usually, I write about what students are up to and of course this will continue to be the case, though this week I will write about the teachers, who met today to discuss the most significant educational research into student achievement ever released (by author Professor John Hattie). It compiles over 50 000 studies and 800 meta studies (studies of the studies) to build a picture of what works best inside and outside the classroom. If you are interested in this then please visit this website: http://growthmindseteaz.org/johnhattie.html
As a school, we use this research to guide us on our teaching practice and how we can get the most from our students. We will be having numerous teacher workshops this year that will help us improve our education practice and enable the school to achieve its mission of empowering students to reach their “full potential” and become “lifelong learners”.
With six weeks of the school year now gone, we have had a useful amount of time to see how our language and maths programmes are working. Having had conversations with students and observed their learning needs, we have evolved some areas of our intensives/independent learning programme. We have increased the time that students have allocated to Maths and French by 40 minutes each, as well as increased the time that they have access to maths teachers, Mr. Adams and Mrs Graves, which worked well this week.
Have an enjoyable weekend!