Focus on Learning

 Our writing focus is alive and well across all classrooms at St Joseph's!  

As part of our uninterrupted literacy block, all students partake in modelled, shared, guided and independent writing tasks daily.  These task are tailored to their individual needs, and focus on the key elements of the NSW English Curriculum.   One factor of this writing is VCOP.  Every child is introduced to the characters of VCOP and the key writing aspects they represent: Vinnie Vocab, Connie Connective, Ollie Opener and Penny Punctuation.   These parts of writing are investigated and explored with the students, so that they feel comfortable adding them to independent pieces of writing.  Each element adds value to a piece of writing.  

In each classroom, we display 'the third teacher'.  This concept relates to the displays, posters and other visuals around the room.  Students are encouraged to use these displays to assist them with their learning each day.   Below are some photos of our writing based displays; these include: VCOP walls, A-Z Word Walls, Learning Intentions & Success Criteria, Bump It Up Walls, STAR Word displays, InitiaLit "Tricky Word" Trees, as well as our newly established Big Write Celebration Pinboard.  This is an initiative that will continue to grow. 

Big Writes are conducted regularly in all classrooms.  This is an opportunity for students to put into practise, all the writing skills they have been learning about in the past week or fortnight.  Students are given their 'Talk Homework' prior to Big Write, and it is highly recommended that students are given every chance to share their ideas and thoughts with as many adults as possible.  An essential step in the writing journey, no matter the age or skill level, is to be able to verbalise before being asked to write.   Big Writes have a relaxed and supportive feel; dimmed lights, candles, soft music all contribute to the atmosphere. 

At least once per term, all teaching staff are involved in collaboratively marking writing samples from across all year levels in our school.  This involves analysing the writing, identifying strengths and areas of improvement for individual students, and discussing collectively, teaching strategies that could be employed to directly target the areas of weakness. 

All of these elements come together to support student learning - the success of this can be seen in our NAPLAN Writing results, where all students tested achieved fantastic results!  More information about our school NAPLAN results will be released in September, when more detailed analysis is available to schools.  

Coolamon Challenge - Week 6

Congratulations to our winners from Week 5 - Zack and Molly S!  They received a voucher for a complimentary ice-cream courtesy of The Coolamon in Quirindi. 

This week's challenges are literacy based.  Entries are due by Friday morning.