Overview and Breakdown of Kolbe Catholic Colleges Student Demographics

Kolbe Catholic College, in Greenvale Lakes, is a relatively new 7-12 secondary school. (It only had its first year
12 cohort last year). Many of the students have either recently immigrated to Australia or are the children of
immigrants. Many of the families associated with the school are of Middle Eastern descent and for many
students English is their second language. The languages that are mostly spoken in the homes of these families
is Arabic or Chaldean, and students often have little opportunity to practice their English skills outside of
school. Consequently, teachers often need to rely on other students to translate classroom instructions if
there is a language barrier and the schools full-time interpreter is not available. The school hires numerous
interpreters for large school community events, such as parent-teacher interviews and feast days, to allow
effective (and accurate) communication between parents/guardians and teachers.
If the students have recently immigrated to Australia, there is a large probability that they have not received
continuous, standardized schooling (often due to the unstable nature of their countries of origin, or
unorthodox teaching practices), and thus the students within one classroom can vary greatly according to their
existing knowledge and skill sets. Therefore, the school relies heavily on curriculum differentiation, through
the use of Individual Learning Plans (ILPs) to meet students needs and appropriately advance their abilities.
Kolbe Catholic College supports this differentiation process through the employment of learning support and
integration aides, who provide outstanding assistance in the classroom.
Despite these difficulties, the school has a rich culture and a unique atmosphere. I know from experience how
satisfying it is to be able to teach these students a new skill, or have them understand new content on the first
try. There is an astounding connection between students of all year levels, and a friendliness that is extended
to other members of the community.
Pre-testing Students:
In order to gauge the level of each of the students in the class (Year 9 History), I pretested students on their
knowledge of World War I by using a KWL table (what I already know, what I want to know, and what I have
learnt). On the 5
th
of May in a Year 9 History class, I had the students construct a mind map on the board of
what they already knew about WWI under the following sub-topics: dates, impacts of war, locations and
countries involved. We then discussed what aspect of WWI they would like to focus on in this unit there was
a lot of focus from the male students on weapons and trench warfare. In the last lesson of this unit, the class
recreated this mind map on the board, added what they had recently learnt and compared it with the one they
made at the beginning of the unit. This lesson also involved students relearning content that was not
successfully received in the previous lesson, before completing fun activities on the topics of weapons and
trench warfare. (These activities can be found in Section 1.2.3).