Supporting our Year 12s

Excellence is one of our five College Core Values – and one that we continue to focus on right until the very end of our Senior Years of Education here at the College.

Currently, I have the privilege of teaching two of the many Unit 4 VCE subjects we offer at the College; and I get a front row seat in observing the hard and diligent work our students are producing. From students creating their own science practical investigation to answer their own devised scientific question, to students learning a monologue and carrying out the necessary dramaturgy to interpret that person/character behind that monologue, observing these students has simply been an inspiration to me and to their peers.

To support all our Unit 4 students in their VCE studies, every year we host a week of practice exams for all of our subjects. That week has already happened, taking place in the last week of the school break. The aim of the week is to ensure that every student gets the opportunity to experience what the end of year Unit 4 VCAA Exams will feel like, so that the process of these exams become second nature to our students. This allows them to instead focus on the content of each of their studies. I always encourage students, when it comes to studying for exams, to ‘practise as they would play’. Practising for a soccer tournament would see a player use a soccer ball during training and not a football, so why would we not practise sitting end of year exams in the exact same setting as the actual exams. With this aim in mind, we administer these practice exams in their actual Unit 4 exam rooms, at roughly the same time of day as their actual exam, with the same external VCAA Exam Supervisors who we have employed for the week. Our Year 12 students who take advantage of this opportunity have ‘practised as they would play.’

Let’s continue to pray for our Year 12s who are all completing their final preparations and studying for their Unit 4 exams  commence in just a few weeks time. Let’s pray that they continue to seek God’s guidance in balancing their rest and study so that they are both well prepared and in good physical health to take on their final Unit 4 exams.

Derek Bendall, Head of Secondary