NAPLAN

NAPLAN testing is now complete.  Congratulations to all of our Year 3 and 5 students and teachers for their hard work during the testing period.  Results will be made available to schools later in the year.

Individual student performance is shown on a national achievement scale for each assessment. This scale indicates whether the student is meeting expectations for the literacy and numeracy skills needed to participate fully in that year level. A NAPLAN individual student report will be provided to parents later in the year.

It is important to remember that NAPLAN tests are just one part of our school learning assessment program.  NAPLAN tests do not replace the extensive, ongoing assessments made by teachers about each student’s performance. Your child’s teachers will have the best insight into your child’s educational progress,

As a school, we use the NAPLAN results in a variety of ways including:

• Teachers use the results to help identify students who need greater challenges or extra support and plan units of work accordingly.
• Identifying strengths and areas of need to improve our teaching programs, and to set goals in literacy and numeracy.

Clarity

All schools in the Cairns Diocese are working in conjunction with Lyn Sharratt, a world renowned educator and author, to become clearer about learning, teaching and assessment in their school.  Last year, St. Clare’s embarked on this Clarity project.

Clarity is about being explicit about what really matters in learning and teaching.  It’s about working collaboratively to improve the outcomes for all students.  Clarity is work that is being done everyday, in every classroom, for every student in our school. 

Teachers are involved in PLTs (Professional Learning Teams) where student data is closely and regularly monitored; and teaching plans are targeted to promote student growth.  This allows for rich discussions, where teachers can share their knowledge to support their colleagues and promotes a shared ownership of each and every student in our school.

The Leadership Team go on regular Learning Walks and Talks in classrooms, where students are asked about their learning.  This enables teachers to fully understand what the students need to focus on next to continue their learning.  The questions students are asked are:

• What are you learning?
• Why are you learning it?
• How are you going?
• How do you know how you are going?
• How can you improve?
• Where can you go for help?

Teachers are working on developing the Third Teacher for student learning.  After parents and teachers, the classroom environment is the Third Teacher.  Research

shows that a literacy rich classroom with co-constructed work is vital for student growth.  The classroom walls become interactive learning spaces in which students can take some control of their own learning.  Teachers are beginning to display:

• Co-created anchor charts
• Deconstructed learning intentions
• Co-constructed success criteria
• Learning walls
• Bump it up walls
• Annotated student work with strong and weak examples

By focusing on these areas we can improve learning outcomes for all of our students. 

Safe holidays
Chris Edwards