Dear Families,
This week, our Grade 3 and 5 children are completing their NAPLAN assessments. The NAPLAN is an important assessment that helps parents understand their children’s progress and allows schools to monitor their progress in comparison to other assessment tasks they complete throughout the year.
However, the NAPLAN assessments need to be treated with caution. They are not the only way to assess a student’s progress. Some children find the testing environment quite stressful, and this does not, therefore, accurately reflect that child’s capabilities. Furthermore, NAPLAN is one test on one day. A wide variety of circumstances can impact a child’s ability to engage with the test on that particular day.
As an educator, I have always been concerned about the concept of teaching to the test. While assessments are critical as they provide data to enable educators to determine at what stage a child is at in their learning, what they know, what they have yet to embed and where they need to go next, there is so much more to a child’s developmental progress. While we obviously want to reduce a child’s anxiety when asked to undertake assessment tasks like NAPLAN, teaching to the test distorts a child’s learning in order to gain a better result in a particular assessment.
From experience, NAPLAN results rarely produce surprises for teachers. In a process educators call triangulation, the results from NAPLAN should be cross-referenced with the results from other assessment tasks the children complete during the year, as well as from the learning the children complete in class.
As a school, we are working hard to collect this data, analyse this and use this information to determine the learning needs of each of our students. We use a data-tracking spreadsheet to clarify what it is the children already know, and where the gaps in their understanding might be and, from this, ensure we provide targeted explicit teaching. Collecting a wide range of data allows us to gain a better picture of a child’s progress. When our data from NAPLAN assessments does not correspond to the other data we collect (which is not frequent), we need to ask the question, why?
It is important that parents and guardians take time to review their child’s NAPLAN data when they receive this later in the year (which is again one of the concerns given the time delay between the assessment and the data being provided), but it is equally important to reflect on this within the scope of the bigger picture of your child’s progress at school. If we continue to work together, and if we continue as a school to strive to improve on our educational practice, I am confident that we will continue to support and develop the learning needs of all of the children in our school.
CATHOLIC EDUCATION WEEK
MORNING PROCEDURES
Some staff members have raised concerns about the morning procedures for getting the children into the classrooms at the beginning of the school day. This is taking much longer than it should, which makes the children very unsettled as they come in, which consequently negatively impacts how the day starts for our classes.
We pride ourselves on our communication, however, we would request that parents and guardians do not try to engage in conversations with teachers before school, unless this is critical or a meeting has been scheduled with your child’s teacher (this would need to take place before school starts). These conversations can add significant time to the start of the school day, and make the learning for the children start late and run over time.
We also notice that some of our parents and guardians are standing in the lines of children, or to the side of the classes. This is again unsettling for the children and makes it much more difficult for the teachers to get the children settled, calm and quiet before they enter the building. We are requesting that parents and guardians stand behind the lines of children and give them plenty of space to line up.
Lastly, we remind parents and guardians that the school day starts at 8.50am. Children should arrive at school before this time so that they are ready to start their day. Once the school bell rings at 8.50am we would like parents and guardians to leave school promptly so that the children can start their learning and so we can lock the gates and ensure the school grounds are secure. Again, if this takes an extra 15 minutes each day to do, then the staff member responsible for doing this is not able to do their job in supporting the children in class. Your cooperation in this matter would be appreciated.
HARMONY DAY
One of the great joys of our school community is reflected in our school’s diversity. Last year, I roughly calculated that we had children from more than 70 different cultural backgrounds, with families who use more than 50 different languages at home.
March 21 (next Friday) is Harmony Day where we celebrate the cultural diversity of our school. We are working with our staff to prepare some engaging learning tasks specifically related to Harmony Day for next Friday; you might recall that last year, we created a giant world map with all the children’s names on it, indicating where their family was from. If you have any great ideas for Harmony Day, please let me know so that I can discuss these with the staff as we plan for this event.
FROM OUR SCHOOL WELL-BEING LEADER:
After School Questioning
We’ve all been there, right? You get the kids in the car, you ask how their day was, eager to know what you’ve missed, and you get “fine”, “ok”, “good”. Six hours summed up in one word.
Today I thought I would share a couple of different strategies that you may like to try. And just maybe, you’ll get more information in the process.
Parenting expert, Maggie Dent, often talks about feeding them first. For some reason, although they have had time to eat, and full lunchboxes, the afternoon hunger provides a barrier in them being able to process the day. ‘Hanger’ is real! They also need time and space to process, as often the last negative is the first thing you hear about, and not all the wonderful things that happened earlier in the day.
There is a wonderful episode of Bluey that made a big impact with my family a few years ago that demonstrates this beautifully. In the episode “Favourite Thing” (Season 2) we see the family play ‘what’s your favourite thing today?’ around the dinner table. Everyone has some distance from the day and a better ability to work through the ups and downs. Below I’ve listed some questions we now ask as well:
- What was the silliest thing that happened today?
- What was the hardest or most challenging thing?
- What made you sad today?
- What was the most interesting thing you learnt?
Let me know if this starts a better conversation in your house!
Stay well,
Courtney Daly
Wellbeing Leader and Mental Health in Primary Schools (MHiPS) Leader
LEARNING EXPO
As I have frequently stated, we pride ourselves on our communication with our parents and guardians. One of the most effective ways we do this is through our school Learning Expos. While assemblies have an important role in celebrating the learning of the children, they do not always provide the opportunity for every child to demonstrate their learning. They also do not allow parents and guardians who work school hours the opportunity to come and see the learning that their child has been doing in class.
As indicated in the school calendar for Semester One that was sent home at the beginning of the year, we schedule Learning Expos in Terms One and Three and assemblies for each Learning Community in Terms Two and Four. Our first learning expo for 2025 is scheduled for Thursday, March 27 from 2.30pm – 6.00pm. I hope that all our parents and guardians can attend and share in the learning journeys of their children. This will be for all classes from Exploration to Challenge and also for our specialist teacher classes (excluding PE).
Upcoming Dates
March
12/03 – 24/03: NAPLAN Testing Window
Prayer Service: Grade Two & Three / Grade Four – Six @ 2.40pm
17/03 – 21/03: Catholic Education Week
19/03: Confirmation Parent Info Night @ 6:30pm
Prayer Service: Grade Two & Three / Grade Four – Six @ 2.40pm
PSGs
21/03: Harmony Day
St Patrick’s Day Prayer Service (Snr School @ 9.15am/Jnr School @ 11.30am)
22/03: Confirmation Commitment Mass @ 5:00pm
26/03: Prayer Service: Grade Two & Three / Grade Four – Six @ 2.40pm
27/03: PSGs
Exploration – Grade Six Learning Expo: 2.30 – 6.00pm
28/03: School Photos
April
02/04: Easter Prayer Service (Exploration – Grade Two)
03/04: Easter Picnic
Easter Prayer Service (Grade Three – Six)
04/04: End of Term One: Early Close @ 1.30pm
God bless,
Bill Hill
PRINCIPAL