Tag Archives: NAPLAN

NAPLAN Results show amazing growth!!

Click on the following links to see our Student Growth in the 2011 NAPLAN.

Our school is the green bar.

In all areas our student growth is above state average.

SchoolGrowth Numeracy

SchoolGrowth Grammar

SchoolGrowth Spelling

SchoolGrowth Reading

The results are amazing and a tribute to the focus, the analysis, the training, the passion and the persistance of teachers and students working together towards improving learning for all.

Our Literacy groups and all of our teacher professional learning are showing results and those results centre on our students and seeing them grow as learners.

 

First Day of NAPLAN over!!

All our Year 3 and Year 5 students completed two of the four NAPLAN Tests that we must sit. These tests are Australia’s equivalent of the American High Stakes testing and the United Kingdom SATs.

Today we did Language Conventions, grammar, spelling and punctuation and then Writing. The Writing topic was about Games and the text type was persausive, that is, the writer has to agree or disagree with the statement like in a debate.

It was such a nerve wracking day for all students and teachers. It is hard to write a one off piece of writing when you are used to writing like an author with many drafts, rewrites and chances to REALLY check spelling using a dictionary and / or a spellchecker.

Anyway we made it through and only Reading and Numeracy to go.

NAPLAN Tests coming up this week

IMG_3579

As reported in the Newsletter, at Parent Interviews and on the blog we will be participating in the NAPLAN Tests this week.

Please make sure your children have a healthy breakfast and plenty of sleep.

The tests will be on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. All students in Years 3 and 5 will be doing the NAPLAN with their teachers.

Years 4 and 6 will be doing a follow up school based NAPLAN to see how they have progressed since last year’s NAPLAN.

NAPLAN Testing to go ahead at our school.

The NAPLAN Test will go ahead at our school during the week of May 9 to 13.

This does not mean we accept the publication of League tables as reported in the press. In fact we consider them to be destructive and misleading.

The staff believe our core business is the education of children. We have invested 100’s of hours in training and developing our new staff, resources and literacy program. We are a proud dedicated group of professionals who want to make a difference to the learning of the children in our care.

We have nurtured our students’ learning. We have small groups operating in each class to personalise our students’ education, enabling diagnosis and remediation to occur immediately thus giving the best chance of succeeding in a world which sadly reveres test results beyond the more important aspects of the curriculum.

We have worked too hard not to see the results of our labour, even if based on one test on one day. The test can actually provide a wealth of valuable information if used in an educationally sound way.

Do you know engaging, enrichment activities, sport and art have a greater impact on students’ level of achievement than any rote chalk and talk based learning?

Our parents are welcome in our school anytime and we openly share what we are doing through the school blog. Our school is an active, vibrant, caring, learning rich environment and this is recorded for all to see on this blog.

The 2010 NAPLAN will provide us with a measure of learning growth that will show the quality of teaching in our school and provide data which we can share and celebrate with our community.

At our school we will be having Parent / Student /Teacher Interviews during the week before the NAPLAN Tests to explain to our parents where their children are now and the kind of results to expect of them from the NAPLAN Test. Parents will talk with the teacher and their child and go through a portfolio of work samples to give a clear and authentic picture of what the child can do.

We will also have Parent / Student / Teacher Interviews after the NAPLAN results in Term 3 or 4. This will enable clarification of results and the answering of any questions that might arise. At this time the parent will talk with the teacher and their child and go through the portfolio of work samples to see what the child can do and how this has developed and changed since the Term 2 interview.

In our school’s case it will be excellent to have included on MYSCHOOL Website: financial information that fills in a vital part of the picture – the resources each school has available to enable them to do their work — Michael Coutts Trotter NSW DET Dir. General.

Do you realise our school gets no extra assistance at all? Whereas other schools in our local area are receiving 100’s of 1000’s of dollars to raise their results.

We OPPOSE LEAGUE TABLES.

We will share our results with our school community through explanation, reasoning and by providing superior alternative options to the one size fits all mindset promoted by NAPLAN.

Back to school for teachers

Our teachers began school today. We spent time talking about Quality Teaching, how we can do things better and how we can help our students enjoy learning and do even better at their school work.

In groups we evaluated how the Literacy Program is going. We explored the following:

  • What is working well?
  • What can be changed / improved?
  • Any questions?
  • The organisation of the program.

We discussed reports, parent/student/teacher interviews, the NAPLAN Tests and our whole school scope and sequence of learning.

In between time we did lots of talking and catching up over a lovely morning tea and a great Italian lunch.

After lunch we were all keen to work in our teams to plan for our classes as well as our own professional learning.

What has S3 Fred Hollows been doing this week?

Hello everyone! Have a read of what S3Fred has been doing this week!!

Our class had to decide on a class name. We voted for Fred Hollows out of Nancy Bird, Ned Kelly and Pemulwuy. We voted for him because he was very intelligent and he gave back eyesight to people. He worked with indigenous people to build a medical centre to treat eye disease. He then went to work in Africa in a place called Eritrea. He created a lens factory and trained other people to treat the eye disease. He died in 2008 from cancer but his wife created the Fred Hollows foundation to continue his work.

Once we had decided on our name we could get down to real work!

We did some contract work, we had to choose what activities we wanted to do and when we wanted to do them. That was a lot of fun!!

We explored Bloom’s Taxonomy tasks, the levels are remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating and creating! They are from low to high thinking skills.

bloomstaxonomy

Also we did our reading tasks, we picked a book to of which we had to read chapters 1 and 2 and then choose to do some different tasks. A few examples are draw your favourite character from the book and 5 questions you would ask the author and there were more activities to choose from. That was really an amazing thing to do!!

reading corner

S3Fred have been studying for NAPLAN. Last week we did a math test to see what things we need to learn and we set our goals from what we didn’t know. Miss York set us some work that matched our goals. We do worksheets and play Mathletics to help us achieve our goals.

mathletics

We have been negotiating and writing our narrative quality criteria. These are expectations that make a good narrative. Hers are some of our criteria: complex sentences, orientation, complication, resolution, who, what, where, when and why. We have also been learning about writing interesting descriptions for our narrative. We had to use our imagination and think about different settings. We were playing a game called the Circle Game, whoever had the ball had to say something that is shiny. Some of our answers were: gold, earrings, necklace, diamond and a gold key.

For NAPLAN we have been learning about our senses. Thinking through our senses helps us write a better narrative. We had to think about our five senses and pretend that we were in a setting eg shopping centre, cemetery, hospital, jungle, desert, and forest.

classword