Curriculum Enhancement Week - November 2014

Curriculum Enhancement Week (CEW) is one of the highlights of the school year at Chatsworth.

On Monday this week, we released the October 2014 CEW Program Guide for Parents and Students, and we followed up this week with CEW meetings for parents/students on Thursday evening, and also CEW Presentations for all Secondary students on Friday morning.

The registration system is open now for parents / guardians to ensure that they all have access to the system, so when the registration window opens tomorrow for CEW program registration, you are all ready to go and there are no last minute glitches.

The CEW Program Guide and various registration presentation slides are available on our website.

Just a reminder that on-line program registration opens on Saturday August 30th at 9am, and programs are first come - first served!

Thanks very much for all the parents who came out last night. We appreciate your support of our programs.

Introduction to Secondary Night (Parent Evening)

We hold numerous parent evenings all through the year, the first of which is the Introduction to Secondary Night (Parent Evening).

We nearly packed out our hall with parents this year, which was great to see such support.

A copy of our presentation can be viewed here for parents who missed the event.

The first 45 minutes was spent as a big group, in the hall. 

Then we broke into smaller Year-level groups for more interaction and more relevant questions and answers to parent questions. 

Welcome Back Student Council BBQ

One of the highlights of the year, which happens at the start of every school year, is our Annual Welcome Back Student Council BBQ. With nearly 100% attendance, after school on Friday, this was a huge success.

Our students council arranges a massive BBQ, and with the generous support of parents who supply drinks and snacks, we have a huge feast of satay and sausages.

It is always nice to see graduates every year as our BBQ as well.

Great job, Student Council!

IB Diploma Student Orientation

We start each year with various orientation programs within Secondary, during the first weeks of school.

An important orientation is the Orientation to the IB Diploma for Year 12 (Grade 11) students. Through multiple “pull out” periods over a few weeks, we bond them together as a group (this helps bring the new students into our culture), go through all components of the IB Diploma (CAS, Extended Essay, TOK, study skills, organization management etc) and more.

Talking with IB Diploma Coordinator Mrs Saxena.

New Student Orientation

Each year, Chatsworth Secondary students host “new students to Chatsworth” in the New Student Orientation. 

I think this is fantastic for a few reasons 

(1) who better than our existing Chatsworth students to tell new Chatsworth students all about what “life is really like” at Chatsworth, and 

(2) what a great way for our own students to extend their leadership, teamwork, interpersonal and communication skills in a real life experience. 

This is so much better for everyone than teachers doing it :-).

Name games

Processing questions in small groups

Teacher Orientation Week

Students don’t often know what happens before the school year starts … but as any teacher will know it is lot of work getting ready for the first day of school. In many ways, the comparison is like that of a plane using a huge percentage of its fuel just on take off, to get itself into the air. 

As of August 2014, the MYP has changed (and improved!) and much of our work was in rewriting MYP curriculum, as well as using student data to assist teachers in planning.

Secondary teachers also did our own team bonding activities, just like students do!

Paper Rock Scissors!

Using data to inform instruction

Unlocking the secret code.