LITERACY /

LEARNING & TEACHING 

Literacy Learning at Holy Name

Dear Parents/Carers and Community,

It has continued to be a busy time of learning in and out of classrooms across Holy Name for both teachers and students these past two weeks. It has been wonderful to see all students settled into the reading and writing routines within their writing and reading sessions. 

During this period, our Year 3 and 5 students have participated in NAPLAN. We have been very proud of the way in which these students have been resilient and approached the assessment with maturity.  This National Assessment is a point in time assessment that supports schools with future decisions about teaching and learning. It is predicted that schools will receive their full results, including writing, from June 2024, after which parents and carers receive their child's Individual Student Report at the start of Term 3.

Holy Name will notify families when these become available.

Last week, teachers and leaders gathered to moderate student writing samples to plan the next learning steps for their students in Term 2. 

Moderation is the practice of teachers sharing and developing their understanding of what learning looks like by examining examples of different types and quality of students’ work and comparing these with formal standards and success criteria (the Victorian Curriculum F-10 Achievement Standards). 

The practice gives teachers and students the collaboration structure and processes to look closely at evidence (student work samples) to establish: 

• what is to be learned? 
• how is learning progressing? 
• what will be learned next? 

Next term we will welcome back Mrs Maria Lontos as the Literacy/Teaching and Learning leader. It has been a pleasure to be in classrooms with students and learning alongside the teachers at Holy Name. 

It was also lovely to meet several parents throughout the term who made me feel very welcomed. Thank you!

Here are some ideas for continuing to build literacy understanding at home during the holidays:

• Create a schedule - One of the first things kids see when they walk into a classroom is a schedule with pictures of what they will do for the day. You can ask your child to draw pictures for each activity, which gives them some ownership over the schedule. 
• Chart the weather - Creating a meteorology chart to track the temperature and the forecast allows children to use their knowledge, senses, and curiosity to explore the weather and its effects. For slightly older children, around age 5 and 6, you can ask ‘why’ questions, like: why do you think it’s hot today? You can start to explain bigger concepts like the relationship between the sun and the earth and how seasons work, depending on your geography.
• Scavenger Hunt - When you create your scavenger hunt, you can show your child what a list is and why we would use one. You can ask them to find something that is a circle or a triangle. Find a letter S. Find a clock. Find something with the color green. The possibilities are limitless. For slightly older kids, you can let your child do the hunt themselves and give them a time limit. Be sure to use a timer they can see, to keep them on task.
• Read Aloud - Kids are innately brilliant, and books are a way to spark a child’s imagination and develop early literacy skills. As you are reading the book, make sure the child can see the pictures. Ask them what they notice, in both the narrative and the pictures, especially about details like characters’ facial expressions. When you finish the story, encourage them to respond to the text. Maybe that’s drawing a picture of their favorite part. Or asking them to explain why they like or dislike a particular character in the story. You are providing opportunities for your child to explore their own ideas, extract information, form opinions, and infer.

Kind regards,

Helen Butler