English
Parent Meetings & Reports Semester One 2023
In the coming weeks student reports will be released to parents. In conjunction with Parent Teacher Progress Meetings, these serve as a fantastic way to touch base and note all the successes of our students at the mid point of the year.
Like every element of education, reports have evolved over time and are much different to the way they were presented back when parents and our teaching staff were at school!
I thought that for this week's news I would take the time to unpack the process behind creating a report. This is our English section of the report but this process applies to each subject in the curriculum.
Curriculum
All teachers in schools in Victoria work through the Victorian Curriculum which is mandated by the Government. This outlines the skills and concepts which should be taught at each year level. Some concepts are grouped into two level groups, such as Year Three and Four, but the core concepts of English and Mathematics are separated into each year level. The Curriculum can be found here. This is a website that is almost constantly open on our teachers computers!
Skills
Teachers take the concepts outline in the curriculum and design skills for their students. These are seen in the twice yearly student reports. All skills start with a verb, and describe an achievable and identifiable skill. This means that they are not vague, but rather concepts that can clearly be shown by our students. Skills may start with verbs such as:
-Discusses
-Draws
-Researches
-Combines
-Contrasts
-Identifies
-Locates
-Models
etc
Teaching
We are extremely proud of all our teachers at St Anthony and the rich and vibrant lessons they design. Students are exposed to the curriculum concepts in a great variety of ways as they talk, read, and work through them. Skills are scaffolded, meaning they build in complexity over time allowing students to develop their understanding. Further to this teachers decide an appropriate amount of time to teach each area. This can also be flexible! If teachers notice that a cohort needs additional time on a skill, or the alternative are quickly strongly demonstrating it, they modify their plans as needed.
Assessment
This is something that has been discussed before in this area, but assessment has come such a long way in Education too!
Think about it this way. If someone asked you to describe an Earthquake, how confident would you feel in doing this? What would work best for you to show this knowledge?
Would you do the best job by just explaining it to someone aloud? Would you need some time to jump on the computer and refresh your memory? What about by looking at images and labelling them with information? Would you like to read a book on Earthquakes and highlight the information you think is most important? Would you like to shake the things on your desk to physically model elements of an earthquake? How about all of these things to paint a full and complete picture of your understanding of earthquakes.
This is what is offered to our students at St Anthony's. A report skill is never judged on one lesson, one test or one conversation. Teachers work hard to triangulate all the information that is presented to them to understand the strengths and challenges of each student.
Reports and Teacher Meetings
This is what is approaching as we close this term. Teachers look forward to discussing with parents how each student is going, however the way we work at St Anthony's is based on consistant communication. There should not be any surprises in student reports as our teachers strive to keep our parents in the loop at all times.
The Skills that have been decided for a semester of learning are used to asses each student. You will see students commonly assessed on skills as below:
Working Towards:
This means a student is still practicing to demonstrate this skill consistently. They may still be challenged by it or may need an amount of support from the teacher. This does not mean a student cannot do this at all! In most cases this stays as an area of future learning for these students.
Achieved:
This means a student is demonstrating this skill in line with the curriculum expectations, but importantly doing this consistently and independently. This skill will be shown across a students body of work during the term.
Above Expected:
This means a student is confident in this skill and demonstrates it effectively and consistently. A student above standard in a skill may be starting to demonstrate skills required in older year levels and going above and beyond what is expected. Please note that being marked as above expected is not always appropriate in all curriculum areas, even when a student is strong in this area.
Please look at the two examples below for what I mean:
Example Report Skill #1
-Participates in whole class discussion on reading concepts.
This is a skill that is appropriate to be marked as above expected. A student may demonstrate additional skills to what is outlined, so doing more than just participating. A student who consistently raises their hand, listens to others, tracks the reader and/or asks clarifying questions can demonstrate above what is expected.
Example Report Skill #2
-Differentiates between opinion and fact when reading.
This would be a difficult skill to demonstrate as being above standard. If a student can clearly identify different examples of opinion or fact within a text, and identify examples aloud confidently, they are strongly demonstrating the skill, but there is not a great deal of scope to go above the expectation.
The set of skills are then taken into account when giving the student Achievement Score This is a numbered value for an area that demonstrates where students skills and understandings are.
In what can be a little bit of a confusing concept, in the mid year reports students at standard are marked with the .5, meaning they are correctly half way through that year level.
For example a student who is at standard in Year Two will be marked as 1.5 on their report. This is meant to signify they are half way through the Year Two curriculum but as mentioned is a little confusing!
I hope this information has assisted in understanding our upcoming reports and Parent Meetings. Please feel free to contact me if you would like anything else unpacked!
We look forward to celebrating the achievements of each of our students! We strive to do this by acknowledging challenges or difficulties in learning areas, but also showing our classes how proud we are of how much they have improved and how much hard work has been completed!
Take care everyone,
Tim O'Mahoney
English Leader