Shining Lights Week 4, Term 2, 18/5/2023

College Open Day

Our College Open Day is a great opportunity for our community to come and see the wonderful teaching and learning that happens everyday at Lumen Christi Catholic College. If you haven’t been for a visit for a while, please come along for a College tour. Enjoy a ‘backstage pass’ as our student guides show you the ins and outs of our school!

I’m looking forward to welcoming you to our College on Wednesday 24 May

Be the light of Christ

Smashing people  

Mr Wels  

Yes, come in. What’s happened?  

Got told to come here.  

What’s happened?  

Dunno.  

Who sent you? And I wouldn’t pick that leaf off my favourite plant if I were you. 

Mrs Jones.  

What happened?  

Everyone else was just mucking around and she picked on me. She always does. 

What happened? And  I’ve got a thing about Everybody Else, Everybody Else isn’t here.. 

I got hit by little Johnny. He’s a jerk.  

And?  

I chased him.  

And?  

We bumped some tables.  

Just bumped?  

Knocked over. 

Let’s review. Johnny thumped you and you chased him and together you knocked over some tables.  

Sort of, yeah.  

Why isn’t Johnny here?  

He gets away with everything. He such a suck. 

Why isn’t Johnny here?  

She never believes me.  

Why isn’t Johnny here?  

I was mainly the one who knocked over the tables. He said he was just muckin around and sat when she said. 

What were you thinking?  

What do you mean?  

You reckon Johnny hit you, so then what were you thinking.  

Thinkin nothin, Just smash him.  

And how was that always going to end?  

Bad.  

What do you think about it all now?  

But he started it. This is so unfair! 

So you say. But what do you think about what happened?  

Shouldn’t of, probably. But I’m supposed to just sit there and be hit? 

Why “shouldn’t of probably?” And I don’t think it sounds like your life was in danger. Why “shouldn’t of?” 

Cause I’m in trouble.  

And  

What?  

And who else was affected?  I love that plant remember, let it go …gently. 

What’s going to happen to Johnny?  

Someone will speak to Johnny, and we’ll all end up together at some point I suspect. Who else was affected?  

What do mean? Like the class?  

Go on.  

Because I was disruptive.  

And  

Don’t know  

Mrs Jones?.....  

Rude to her. But what about Johnny? 

So you were rude and disruptive – I can work with that. What happens now?  

Dunno. You get angry, Ring home. 

Ring home – good idea. What’s your best plan for fixing it?  

Apologise  

To who?  

The teacher.  

That’s a good start. But doesn’t do much if you don’t try to improve your behaviour and learn something. We’ll talk to Mrs Jones as soon as we can about how she feels about it all and what happens next. Then you and I and Johnny will chat a bit more about breaking hands off.  

Just great.  

The world is not going to end; you’re another work in progress. But what happens outside of school if “smashing people” is your answer to everything? This how far that's going to get you.  There will always be Little Johnnys pushing your buttons to watch the show…Have you ever thought about what goes through Little Johnny’s head?................. 

Giving Feedback 

Giving feedback is a critical part of the teaching and learning cycle. It allows students to know when they have achieved success and what steps they can take to improve. Unfortunately, not all feedback is equal. There are many factors that impact the effectiveness of feedback.

Feedback needs to be timely, that is it needs to be delivered at the appropriate time for students to act on it. An example of this is a teacher actively moving around the class as students are performing a task to check for understanding. This allows the teacher to correct any errors or misconceptions in real time and to reinforce student understanding. In this situation feedback might be verbal or it could involve the teacher remodelling the desired skill or task.

Feedback needs to be given in a way that students can act upon it. Teachers may encourage students to focus on a specific element of their work to improve on, such as punctuation, letter formation or work choice for writing, and ignore other errors at the time. This allows students to focus on a particular skill without being overwhelmed by too much information that will overload their working memory. Once skills are mastered and become more automatic they use less memory and students are able to move on to work on higher order tasks.

At Lumen Christi, we approach feedback as a complex and dynamic process that needs to be tailored to different settings and students. Whilst going through student work at the end of the day can be a valuable tool for teachers to assess student understanding it does not allow students to be directly involved in the feedback cycle. For this reason, teachers are constantly checking for understanding during lessons and engaging with students to provide feedback that works in context. Often work in students' books or worksheets may have limited or no written feedback at all, instead teachers can use strategies such as individual whiteboards, choral response, partner sharing and direct questioning to check that students are on track and understanding the key teaching points of lessons. 

As always, if you have any questions about your child’s learning, please don’t hesitate to contact their teacher