Learning and Teaching
Maths News
Welcome to a new year of learning! As your new Maths Leader, I look forward to sharing my knowledge and expertise in Maths with the whole school community.
Currently, all our teachers are busy conducting a range of assessments in Mathematics to learn more about your child’s maths skills and understandings and to assist them in planning meaningful lessons that cater for the needs of each student.
The Prep-2 Team has already participated in some Professional Learning on how to use an evidence-based, curriculum-linked teaching resource called OCHRE Education. Alongside this, they are trialling different high-impact strategies to ensure all students are interacting meaningfully with content throughout whole-class instruction.
GETTING READY IN NUMERACY - GRIN
Mel, Lipo and Kim, three of our learning support officers, are also on their way to becoming GRIN Tutors, having attended professional learning at Monash University last week. GRIN is an intervention program which helps get students ready in Numeracy by arming them with pre-knowledge of relevant language and concepts, prior to the Maths lesson taking place. It has had great results across the school in past years but we are delighted that we can extend it further in different year levels.
Keep an eye out around the school and the newsletter for all things Maths!!
Anna Hendy
St John's Math Leader
ahendy@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Literacy
In the last few weeks, you might have heard your child say “we had to do a test today”. At St John’s we use a range of assessment for our students, but by far the most effective assessment is when we seek and interpret evidence and data from ‘tests’ in order to understand where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there. We call this formative assessment or “Assessment for Learning”. It helps to inform our teaching by allowing us to modify our teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment.
For example, one assessment that takes place at this time of year is an online set of Reading Comprehension questions that are aimed at each student’s level of understanding. Results from this assessment (PAT-R) help us determine the placement of students into Reading groups in our learning areas and highlights what each group needs to focus on to move forward in the Progression of Reading Development. This data is then supported by a great deal of other data (BAS, EOI), observation tasks, analysis of individual and group readings and responses to teacher questioning. We understand the importance of using a range of different findings to determine the student’s developmental stage. We are also using a program called Brightpath to help us moderate our students’ writing and determine the next steps for each student to show the desired growth in their writing.
Another use of assessment at this time of year is to determine what Literacy Intervention is required for our students with additional needs. This may include participation in
- Reading Recovery,
- Enhancing Reading Intervention Knowledge (ERIK) focus groups,
- Oral language support,
- Phonological Early Reading Intervention (PERI) focus groups
- English as an Additional Language (EAL) support,
- Group Reading & Rereading Easy Appropriate texts Daily (GRREAD) focus groups to improve reading fluency,
- Toe-By-Toe reading program
- Extension groups
- or a tailored one-to-one reading program for specific needs.
A great deal of planning and teacher knowledge is used to determine the learning needs of our students. We are fortunate to work in a small environment where we know our students well and work collaboratively as teachers, supported by our fabulous Learning Support Officers (LSOs) to continuously improve outcomes for all of our students.
Ange Crowe
Literacy Leader
acrowe@sjmitcham.catholic.edu.au
Marathon Club
Tuesday and Thursday
Have you ever been wondering about what we do at Marathon Club? St John’s Marathon Club starts at 7:45 in the morning and finishes at 8:30am on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Marathon Club is fun because you get to hang out with your friends and have a good time. It’s good for your health and it helps you with your fitness. It is a great way to exercise.
You also get a good breakfast of toast with butter, jam or vegemite and milo!
Every Tuesday and Thursday we walk or run up to Halliday Park and do laps. The cost is $10 to help pay for the breakfast for the term. There’s also a member’s t-shirt that you can buy for $10 to wear while you are running. You can change into your school uniform before school starts. We hope to see you there!
The Marathon Club.
NAP Testing
