It was an absolute joy last week, standing at the gate greeting the first phase of returning students as they entered School.
It’s hard to believe that for many of our students, they will have been engaged in online learning for about nine weeks by the time they return. Just as they adjusted to online learning, they will need to readjust back to a face to face classroom setting. Our VCE students were very excited to return and towards the end of last week I spoke to a number of students who were able to provide me with some great advice for our younger year levels as they return on 9 June. For many students, they have enjoyed the structure of the online learning lesson where they have had some ability to self-pace their learning by determining the effort and time spent on a task which often in a face to face lesson structure, are typically directed by the teacher. They also have had all their material close by for their classes so will need to be organised for physically moving between classrooms again. Online learning is also a lot quieter than a face to face classroom. Online discussion often takes place in Microsoft Teams channels, with just one person talking at a time or students posted written ideas and responses. For some students this means they may also have to get used to again posing questions and contributing to class discussions face to face.
Here are the top tips as advised by some of our senior students: