Senior Secondary College Exhibition Night

Senior Secondary College Exhibition Night Evidence Set Annotation

Standards: 3.7, 4.5, 5.1, 5.5

Synopsis of Evidence Set

Galilee School Senior Secondary College commenced its inaugural cohort in 2021 with an initial enrolment of approximately 20 Year 11 students. The college currently has four teachers (who all work across other year groups as well) teaching different subjects and the majority are new to teaching at Galilee School - and in the ACT - this year. I have taken on a mentoring and supporting role (further supported through Artefacts 7 and 8) to assist this group of teachers with programming, planning and assessing. As part of this, I have led an initiative for the Year 11s to host an “Exhibition Night” for families and have shared with my colleagues how I intend to explicitly integrate this into assessment while still adjusting for individual students needs.

Artefact 12A and B

Artefact 12 includes emails and planning documents developed with other staff to encourage a focus on an exhibition night in place of a standard parent night approach. This further builds on Galilee School’s Year 10 approach of “student led conferences”. An exhibition night allows teaching and youth work staff to engage with carers to provide accurate and personalised information about student learning and achievement (5.5) while also giving students the opportunity to share their achievements in their own words. It also provides an opportunity for parents to engage with their young person in the learning environment in a positive, learning focused interaction (3.7) rather than a behaviour focused conversation. For many of our families, this will be their first exposure to having a child attending a Senior College in the ACT so it also provides the opportunity to provide concrete examples of learning, assessment and outcomes before formal reports are sent home later in the term.

Artefact 13

Artefact 13 is a model assessment task for a Year 11 Connected Learning unit. It was shared with all college teachers as well as executive staff (Artefact 12A) to model an assessment outline that was compliant with BSSS requirements in the ACT and also demonstrated to colleagues different approaches to assessment while encouraging them to evaluate the effectiveness of their own current approaches (5.1). The assessment outline includes the creation of a student folio using Google Docs - including student images and reflections as evidence - and sharing this style of assessment with staff models how to promote the safe, responsible and ethical use of these digital platforms as part of their own teaching programs (4.5).

Impact

On May 26th 2021, Galilee School Senior Secondary College will host its first exhibition night which will hopefully go on to become a standard part of the calendar for Semester One each year. Students will be supported to engage in meaningful and authentic assessment in the lead up to this event across both my own subject (Connected Learning) and also as part of their Hospitality class where they will be assessed on their catering skills. Sharing the digital portfolio approach with other staff has also resulted in conversations between the teaching team about standardising this approach across subjects to address students' feedback around feeling overwhelmed with the number of assessments due at the same time in Year 11.