NAPLAN at St Cecilia’s

In Literacy and Numeracy over these last few weeks, teachers in Years 3 and 5 have been planning for and preparing their students for the NAPLAN assessments that will take place in Week 7 and 8.

These assessments help benchmark current student skills against nationally expected outcomes, and also provide us, as a teaching staff, with valuable feedback about the success of our programs when we consider the data in year levels.

We are also able to track our student cohorts progress over time, and compare these results to other, similar local schools.

Whilst this information is valuable to us for these reasons, it is also important to remember that NAPLAN results can never be a complete assessment of a child’s learning, as by their nature they are one test, on one day, at one point of the year. NAPLAN assessments also, by their nature, can never capture measures of other vital learning that occurs as part of a child’s education; skills such as persistence, empathy, kindness, compassion, bravery, grit, honesty, curiosity, confidence, friendship, determination and a love of learning.

Our aim for NAPLAN is to complete these assessments in a way that enables each student to do their best in the most supportive way possible, and then return to our regular school activities for the rest of each testing day.

To support your Year 3 or Year 5 child at home through these few NAPLAN testing days, please reassure them that they will know what to do (they have been well prepared!) and that their teachers will be close by to help where they can.

We wish all our students sitting the NAPLAN assessments well, and congratulate them on their calm, responsible approach to this week at school. We are already proud of you!

Tracey Toner, Literacy Leader - ttoner@scgleniris.catholic.edu.au

Kate Sutherland, Mathematics Leader - ksutherland@scgleniris.catholic.edu.au