LEARNING AND TEACHING

The new platform that we will be using to publish our school reports is called NForma. nForma™ is a comprehensive student assessment and reporting package for Primary and Secondary schools. It caters for teachers’ needs in data collection, analysis and reporting, keeping teachers informed regarding students and their performance. Although the way in which our reports will look will change,the process by which teachers assess our students will not. As a process, teachers:

• use the Victorian Curriculum to gauge what needs to be taught at each year level, to 
• assess what students already know, to 
• plan for lessons that include  explicitly taught concepts as well as opportunities for practice and revision and then teachers 
• assess the content and concepts that have been taught. Teachers then 
• collaboratively moderate this assessment to make a decision as to what progression point to give the student.  

The new reporting format will only include a short general comment of between 100 and 150 words. This general comment is purely about the students as a learner and will cover areas such as:

1-2 sentences about how the student has settled into the school year and an area of growth so far

1-2 sentences about their attitude/disposition to learning

1-2 sentences about attitude/disposition to other  learners in the classroom

1-2 sentences about strategies student has implemented/HABIT of MIND embedded to assist in learning disposition 

Where an area for improvement is needed, this will be included here also. In the past we have included academic comments as part of the general comment, however all academic assessments are now shown in our ‘Report Descriptors’.

Teachers use the Victorian curriculum as a guide as to what needs to be taught in a specific level. Although teachers have always been assessing against the achievement standard, and using the descriptors, we haven’t had the opportunity to share these with parents in a report format. Each term, teachers and curriculum leaders have the opportunity to pull the Victorian Curriculum apart and decide what will be covered in each semester. 

Although all areas of the curriculum are taught throughout the year, we have specific items that we are assessing against to help ascertain the progression point for each student.  

Each curriculum area will now show a progression point, a 5 point scale measuring students' understanding and report descriptors to be measured  against. 

The new reports will look like this:

Information for Week 7: Progression Points. What are these? How are they shown?