At Ivanhoe Girls’ we focus, through the strategies discussed on the preceding pages, on developing four key capabilities in our students. Extensive evidence shows that these capabilities will both equip our students for the changing world of work and developa life-long love of learning.
The middle years of schooling are a significant time for brain growth and development. It is very important for students to practise and gain skills in all learning areas. With this in mind, all Years 7 and 8 students study a core curriculum in a broad range of subjects.
Students are expected to take responsibility for and to be actively involved in their own learning. They are encouraged to collaborate with as many different students as possible and the timetable is constructed with this in mind.
“I like having different teachers for different classes. It helps you meet new people, and it means that the teacher you have is specialised in that subject.” — Year 7 student
The Year 9 program is designed to empower students to develop a deep sense of self-efficacy; that is, to be confident in declaring “I can!”.
By the end of Year 9, Ivanhoe Girls’ students will be able to state: “I can connect, I can create, I can know and I can think” and will also be able to demonstrate that these statements are true.
The “I can” model underpins all learning that takes place in Year 9 electives and all learning activities make concrete links back to this model. The model encourages students to experience learning at Year 9 as increasing levels of mastery across these four domains, rather than seeing Year 9 as just a collection of discrete and unrelated subjects and disciplines with separate knowledge, skills and competencies.
“It not only gave me the opportunity to learn things about my peers but also gave me the opportunity to make a change towards problems I am passionate about.” — Year 9 student
Typically all students in Year 10 will commence one VCE subject that will enable them to complete one four-unit VCE subject by the end of Year 11. This enables the students to take up an additional VCE subject in Year 12 or alternatively to place greater focus on the remaining VCE subjects being studied. The VCE program is extremely flexible, making it a superior program to others offered globally. Some of the features of the VCE include: