Patrick wins national Rising Star Award

Patrick Sanders, Head of the SS Science Faculty, has been nominated as one of 30 Rising Stars across Australia by The Educator magazine. Rising Stars are young up-and-coming leaders in the education sector (from Prep to Year 12) who, according to The Educator, “eschew acceptance of the status quo and spend considerable time and energy on efforts to innovate and to improve their students’ learning outcomes by exploring new concepts”.

Patrick has worked with his team and invested a great deal of time to develop a new Years 7–12 practical report rubric to improve the ability of students to track their progress. He has also committed to improving academic literacy and has begun implementing Marzano’s ‘Six Steps’ across science. According to Marzano: “When students copy the teacher’s explanation or description of a term instead of generating their own explanation, the results are not as strong. Ideally, student explanations should come from their own lives.”

An instructional video created by Patrick will be used to teach staff how to apply Marzano’s method in their classes, regardless of subject. We’re proud to have Patrick on staff and excited by the new processes he is introducing. Congratulations!