2024 School Diaries

This week we reviewed our 2024 School Diaries in preparation for them going to print very soon. It was a great time to stop and reflect on the purpose of a diary, and how we can better equip our students to use this valuable tool to increase their executive functioning and help them feel more successful and prepared. We recognise that some students have not learnt this valuable skill before and we want to refocus our efforts around equipping them for their futures.

Students and parents sometimes remark that their child is feeling overwhelmed, anxious or unsure how to approach their goals or academic requirements, especially when their assessments are due or when they have an upcoming exam. Between attending their classes, extracurricular activities, part-time employment, doing their regular homework and then working on their upcoming assessments, they sometimes can become overwhelmed and find it difficult to know where to start. This often results in unnecessary increased anxiety that starts to impact on their home and school life.

A diary is a great tool for any person, student or adult, for staying organised, prioritising tasks, increasing productivity and reducing anxiety. It assists them to map out, cut into bite size chunks their daily requirements and build good study habits. The introduction of diaries into our school in Years 5 and up has been in response to a need identified by the whole school community, and we want to equip our students to be able to organise their ideas, better focus on their goals and help them keep track of their progress to ensure they feel and are successful in their learning.

As such, the School Diary is a required piece of equipment in all classes, and teachers will be renewing their focus to help students feel better prepared for their upcoming assessments and homework as we move towards the end of the year. Teachers will use the diaries to assign homework, set draft due dates, assign assessments or parts of assessments, highlight exam dates and communicate any other notes or messages.

Also, diaries are a great communication tool between home and school. We encourage parents to regularly check their child’s diary and use it to remind their child what might be upcoming, help them prioritise their study or to focus on a bite size chunk that may have been allocated that week by the teacher for an assessment. You can also use it to share some feedback from home, write a note about and uniform issues, seek clarification about an assessment, or just to let us know something. This is a great tool to help students, parents and teachers to communicate more regularly and easily.

It also has some handy policies in it including Uniform, Assessment, Mobile Phones, Maps and some key contact people for the school. It contains a pocket for each student to keep their individual timetable safe and protected and is a key document for them to refer to when they need it. If your child has misplaced theirs, please encourage them to find it or see the Office for a new copy. We have limited copies left. We encourage you to explore it for yourself, and we look forward to teaching our students how to better develop their organisational skills more and more as they grow in grace and knowledge.