Years 7 - 9 Program Leader | Mr Damien Coman

We welcomed students across Years 7, 8 and 9 on Monday. This is never an easy time for students and they have done extremely well in their orientations so far. The reality is that the term will start flying past us before we know it. For adolescent boys, organisation is the key! Of course, this is not every student's strength. Our Formation subject takes boys through how to organise their term, how to revise and also discusses a number of pastoral matters.

Every student in Years 7, 8 and 9 will attend a Year level assembly on their first day and receive a Terrace planner to put up in their room at home. They will be taken through how to fill this out in Formation and then should place this information on the planner so it is clear to all at home, especially when tasks are due and when they should be started.

Students also received a checklist booklet, this is where they write notes, diagrams, examples etc. to help their revision throughout each week. This also contains all assignment due dates and has a ‘checklist’ of what they need to cover for subjects where they have an exam at the end of the term. In this way, it gives very clear direction to help students revise consistently throughout the term.

Finally, last year Terrace set up SchoolTV with a group of professionals led by Dr Michael Carr-Gregg (the child psychologist at the forefront of adolescent research and practices). Topics are available monthly via the College App and cover a wide variety of challenges faced by both school students and their parents. There are also archived materials on past topics. In this way, our parents have access to seeing what the leading Australian experts say about how to work with your son and what is best practice.

Year 9 Roll Call

Every Friday (with the exception of during exam block) I will meet in room 5.4 from 7.50-8.20am with any Year 9 students who wish to attend roll call. Boys can attend as often or as little as they like, they are not locked into anything and there is of course no charge. We simply go through what the main points for the week have been across their subjects. Boys found this very helpful in ‘staying on top of their revision’. A pad and pen is all that is required.