WHEELERS HILL PRIMARY SCHOOL

Assistant Principal's Report

Leasyl Richards - Curriculum

17 May 

THANK YOUR BOSCH 

We are very excited to let our school community know that Bosch have donated a second 3D printer to our school.  We thank Bosch for providing the device and for sharing their knowledge with our Year 5 and 6 students on their recent excursion and allowing us to continue to extend our STEM resources.

When you are visiting the school on Open Night please pop by the office area and visit our 3D printer in action and see a display of some of our 3D printing.

 

NAPLAN UPDATE

We are halfway through the completion of our NAPLAN testing.  The Year 5 students have completed all tests and we are pleased to report we have had minimal disruptions to our students testing.  We have worked very hard to ensure the capabilities of our system and our devices would support rolling out NAPLAN Online smoothly. 

 

While the timing of the Writing test was mandated, each school was able to submit their own timeline for the other tests. To enable our students to undertake the testing with minimal disruption we chose to only one run test per day over the course of seven school days. This allows us time to do catch up tests with any students who are absent.  We also feel this means our students are not overwhelmed during the NAPLAN testing period.  The other benefit of an extended testing window is that there was not a huge demand on our servers and that the administration aspects of the testing were able to be managed very systematically.

 

The adaptive nature of the Online tests means that tests are targeted to individual student abilities. Questions are adjusted as the student progresses through the test based on the individual student’s capabilities.  This has a significant impact on the accuracy of student results and also student confidence in undertaking tests as they are matched to their learning level.  As a school the results will give us more precise information about what a student can and can’t do,  allowing us to reflect and refine our teaching and learning programs.

 

The Year 5 students completed their testing today. Next week our Year 3 students will undertake the Reading, Conventions of Language and Numeracy tests.

 

IN CLASSROOMS - READING IN 1EB

Last week I spent some time in 1EB’s classroom during their reading sessions.

At Wheelers Hill our reading sessions are typically broken up into three parts. We begin with a whole class activity where we tune the students into a particular reading strategy. In 1EB we participated in a Shared Reading session using a picture story book.  Each day we read through the book focusing on different aspects of reading understanding including making predictions, comprehension, fluency and using punctuation.

The second part of the reading session involves the students working in small groups to practice reading skills. Last week in 1EB there were four rotating group activities

  • A group  worked on a program called Sunshine Online on the laptops
  • A group who were practising an MSL spelling rule
  • A group were participating in student choice activates relating to the shared reading book and
  • A group who were completing a comprehension activity based on our shared reading book. 

In addition to this there is always a focused teacher Guided Reading group. Guided Reading enables teachers to target their teaching specifically to the needs of the students in a particular group. Teachers guide their students through a text focusing on decoding the text, reading fluently and with expression or comprehension.

 

The end of the session is a reflection session where students were sharing their work and reflecting on the skills they were practicing.

 

Thanks to Miss Boydell and the students in 1EB for allowing me to come into their classroom and work with them!

 

 

 

 

PREMIERS READING CHALLENGE

Congratulations to the 119 students from Prep – Year 6 who have already completed the challenge – a fantastic effort!

Congratulations also to these classes who have made a terrific start and are well on their way to having their whole class complete the Challenge.

3LS – 17 students completed

1EB -  8 students completed

3JG – 8 students completed

4SP – 8 students completed

6EF- 10 students completed

6JD- 12 students completed

6VB- 8 students completed

 Just a reminder:

Prep – 2 students must read 30 books (at least 20 from the Challenge list)

Year 3-6 students must read 15 books (at least 10 from the Challenge list) 

For those needing log in details please follow this link

https://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/events/prc/Pages/default.aspx?Redirect=1

This will enable students to enter books they have been reading and to have a look through the lists of books on the Challenge list.

Happy Reading everyone!

Leasyl Richards

richards.leasyl.a@edumail.vic.gov.au