Deputy Principal - Teaching & Learning, Ms Elizabeth Watson
Are these testing times?….or a time to reflect?
As Semester 1 draws to a close, our boys are finalising their formal examinations and assessments and our teachers are assiduously marking papers and projects to provide informative feedback and report on student achievement and areas requiring attention.
Waverley’s mission is to empower all students to realise their academic and personal potential to actively contribute to society. Our aim is to ensure that all boys can achieve growing academic success by all its measures. Feedback and reporting are essential in helping our students reach their learning goals. A key element of achieving success is resilience and building capacity for continuous reflection.
To this end, more important than any mark or grade is the conversation at home and at school with our boys that gets them thinking about the specifics of their efforts and helping them develop strategies that will make a difference for future learning.
Our reports provide information to help parents start the conversation with their sons about their work in individual subjects and how to support them in looking ahead.
The challenge for our boys is to be actively reflective throughout their learning rather than wait for a mark from an examination to answer the question of ‘how am I going?’. When reading their Semester 1 report, I encourage the boys to take some time to ask themselves ‘what will I do differently next time?’ and to think about strategies that will improve the quality of their work rather than focus on marks or ranks.
