7 minute read
Our contributors
Mariel Lombard
Mariel Lombard is Head of Year 7 and a dedicated French teacher. She has been at the College since 2012 and has worked within the Wellbeing team during the past six years in both the Middle and Upper Schools. Mariel has a Masters degree in Educational Leadership (School Education) and is passionate about student wellbeing and girls’ education.
MARIEL LOMBARD
HEAD OF YEAR 7 Mary Nicolas
Mary Nicolas commenced teaching at Pymble in early 2020. Prior to her teaching career, Mary held positions in training and development which provided a great segue into teaching. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in History and Politics and a Master of Teaching in History and English, she decided to pursue her love of Theology and completed a Graduate Certificate in Theological Studies, specialising in Biblical Studies and Ancient Languages. Mary has a passion for the promotion of girls’ education and engaging students in inquiry-based learning. She is currently enrolled in the University of Melbourne’s Master of International Education program specialising in the International Baccalaureate (IB).
MARY NICOLAS
RELIGION AND ETHICS TEACHER Anna Plant
Anna Plant is a passionate educator and innovative thinker and has been the Deputy Head of Junior School at Pymble for six years. She believes in finding ways to engage with and enable every child to find their voice and a love for learning. She works alongside staff to encourage them to be creative in how they design learning to meet children where they are at, to stretch them and to ultimately have fun in the process. She believes it is our roles as teachers to unpack the languages of a child and set them free to play, learn, socialise and dream bountifully about their own future. Anna is a keen learner and leader and is driven by the concept that there is always more to learn. Prior to joining Pymble, Anna taught K-8 at William Clarke College in a variety of roles. She has also stepped into the role of Acting Head of Junior School at Pymble. Anna is intrigued by how an educational leader can use action research to bring thought change to a learning community, leading to tangible changes in teaching and learning practice.
ANNA PLANT
DEPUTY HEAD OF JUNIOR SCHOOL
Kathleen Rushton
Dr Kathleen Rushton is interested in supporting students from culturally and linguistically diverse communities to develop agency in the use of translanguaging. As an experienced primary and secondary EAL/D teacher, Kathy is also interested in the impact of teacher professional learning on the development of language and literacy, especially for students from socio-economically disadvantaged communities. She has undertaken peerreviews for several refereed journals and is an Editorial Board member for SCAN magazine a journal published by NSW Department of Education and a council member of both ATESOL NSW, the professional association for teachers of English as an additional language, and The Foundation for Learning and Literacy, an organisation which is committed to building and supporting the capability, professional respect and confidence of language and literacy educators.
DR KATHLEEN RUSHTON
LECTURER UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY Mathilda Shephard
Mathilda Shephard is a recent Arts and Secondary Education graduate of Macquarie University who completed her final practicum in the English Department at Pymble Ladies’ College in 2020. With Justine Hodgson as her supervising teacher, she taught Year 7, Year 8 and Year 11 where she planned and implemented innovative lessons which facilitated collaborative project-based and experiential learning experiences to enhance socioemotional and cognitive development. Mathilda’s teaching practice has been shaped by one-on-one and small group tutoring work, and her voluntary work at Galston High School where she has assisted Extension 2 English students develop and edit their creative projects. She is passionate about literature and lifelong learning and is excited for future opportunities to further develop her capacity to empower young people through education.
Student contributors
Lucy Clark
My name is Lucy Clark and I am a Year 10 student at Pymble Ladies’ College. Through various opportunities in Secondary School, I have developed an interest in research and investigating the world to gain an interest in academics. In 2020, Charlotte and I developed our own original research and, throughout that process, learned the importance of students’ understanding of research and how to enter the world of academia. I am an artistic gymnast and coach which means that a large area of my interest is in the area of sport and how people can better develop their sporting skills.
LUCY CLARK
YEAR 10 STUDENT Charlotte Hartin
My name is Charlotte Hartin and I am a Year 10 Student at Pymble Ladies’ College. I love digging deeper into research and learning more about topics in depth. Together with Lucy, we developed our first original research project for Sokratis 2020 which was about the personality types of elite Pymble athletes. It was a great learning experience to develop the research question, create the questionnaire, analyse the data, provide interpretations and draw conclusions. I enjoy rowing for Pymble and playing tennis.
CHARLOTTE HARTIN
YEAR 10 STUDENT Luke Derrick
Luke Derrick is a second year Master of Teaching student studying at Macquarie University’s School of Education. A strong background in performance underpins Luke’s teaching and was the focus of his English curriculum digital portfolio that informed Luke’s contribution to this paper. Luke is a keen advocate for making embodied pedagogy a routine practice in classrooms and of finding ways to make English lessons creative and engaging whilst maintaining academic rigour.
LUKE DERRICK
EDUCATION STUDENT MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY
The Primary/Junior School to Middle School transition
A review of the transition processes at Pymble Ladies’ College
BY MARIEL LOMBARD
The purpose of this paper is to review the effectiveness of transition processes in place for Year 7 students at Pymble Ladies’ College as they start in secondary (Middle) school, and to provide recommendations to refine the current programs and activities. After providing a brief overview of the contemporary conceptual context as it relates to transition programs, the paper will examine feedback collected from student focus groups and surveys on the main transition activities in place at Pymble. Finally, the paper will summarise key recommendations for improvement based on the literature and student feedback.
BACKGROUND: THE CONTEMPORARY CONCEPTUAL CONTEXT OF PRIMARY TO SECONDARY SCHOOL TRANSITION PROGRAMS
The transition from primary to secondary school is a significant event during a young person’s educational journey. The move to secondary school requires students to make a substantial adjustment to their educational setting. This means adjusting to new surroundings, new teachers and new peers, learning new rules and routines, and understanding new ways of learning. It also means adjusting to a disruption of their social network (Education Review Office, New Zealand Government 2016). The move to secondary school also coincides with important social, emotional, physical and physiological developments for young adolescents (Wenden, 2015). As young people begin to question and to define their identity separate to that of their parents, the need to belong and to be accepted by their peers increases. They may also feel increasingly vulnerable and self-conscious as they develop emotionally and physically. In the context of this change, whilst primary school can often represent a small, intimate educational context, the move to a bigger school environment can mean a loss of individual attention and a feeling of being lost within the crowd.
Research around the transition experiences of young people has been extensive, particularly with regard to the impact that these may have on educational outcomes and student wellbeing. Australian and international research has revealed a distinct ‘dip’ in educational outcomes during the transition from primary to secondary school (McGee et al, 2003; Serbin et al, 2013). According to McGee et al. (2003), there is a strong correlation between the extent to which students experience difficulty following transition and the likelihood of young people becoming disengaged with education. In research commissioned by the Victorian Department of Education (2016), the researchers found that academic outcomes and engagement with school decline after students transition to secondary school. Whilst transitions occur at different ages in different countries, the researchers found that the same dip could be observed in cases from a range of international educational systems, suggesting that the change itself is more significant than the age of transition.
