Awards Night – Tuesday 3 November

Awards Night is a celebration of GCC students’ learning journeys and their achievements  It is  an opportunity to showcase the highlights of each year level through photo stories and a few of our best artistic items. Awards Night is an excellent evening for families to share and have insight into your child’s school year.

Attendance is compulsory for all students.  All students must wear full formal winter uniform (jumper not required). Please remember to note this evening in your diary.

The following Middle School Awards and items are a part of the evening:

• Academic Awards are presented to ten students in each year level who have achieved the highest grade point averages. The top five students receive a Gold Award and the next five students receive a Silver Award.
• Diligence Awards are presented to five students from each year level who have been nominated by their teachers for consistent effort or for their outstanding improvement due to hard work.
• GREAT Awards go to students who have been observed over the course of the year consistently displaying the characteristics and values that are our school’s GREAT values.  These are:
  • Godliness
  • Respect
  • Excellence
  • Attitude
  • Teachability
• Year 9 Dux, Year 9 All Rounder, Year 9 Principal’s Award
• Year 9 students graduation from Middle School into Senior School.

Student-Led Conference Survey feedback

Thank you to all the parents who gave their feedback on the recent survey on ‘Student-Led Conferences’. An underlying theme in the comments was the desire to have constructive conversations and genuinely engage and work with your child’s teachers. It has been a common problem across many schools that Parent-Teacher interviews are poorly attended and even more so in the second half of the year. The survey revealed that you as parents see value in your child taking ownership of their learning through goal-setting and evaluation and the conversations around this, but also that  there needs to be an opportunity to have these discussions with the relevant subject teachers.

I have a confession to make, when my oldest son was in Year 10, I was rung up by his school to ask, ‘When I would be booking the Parent-Teacher interviews’. When I replied that I didn’t think they were necessary as we communicated well with our child on all school-related matters I was told that I needed to make a booking; it was not an option. After attending, I was so grateful for the opportunity to chat with his teachers, meet them face to face and come away from those conversations with the overriding knowledge that they knew him well and had his best interests at heart. It added and gave me further insight into the discussions I had with my son about school.

It is our intention and desire at GCC to provide the best possible educational journey for your child. I look forward to next year’s interviews and encourage you to continue to give feedback.

French Trip to Noumea

Have you seen the photos from the Noumea French Trip in this week’s newsletter?  What a privilege it was for our students to do this trip – they improved their language skills and experienced another culture. I would like to thank Mrs Gordon for making this opportunity possible. Photos here.

Jacqualina Vreeling, Head of Middle School