Curriculum Corner

By Anat Garzberg-Grant

NAPLAN

We have now completed the NAPLAN testing period and could not be prouder of the students at our school with their approach to testing. We will notify families once results are received, which should be in approximately next term. Results can be used in the following ways:

Students and parents may use individual results to discuss students’ strengths and areas for improvement with teachers.
Teachers use results to help them identify students who require greater challenges or extra support.
Schools use results to identify strengths and areas of need in teaching programs and to set goals in literacy and numeracy.
Governments and school systems use results to review programs and support offered to schools.

What did some of our students think about their NAPLAN experience?

Year Three

Eva

“I felt supported during NAPLAN because my teacher taught me strategies for answering challenging questions. My older brothers were also doing it and it made me feel strong in my thinking”

Tianna

“I enjoyed NAPLAN. If there was a hard question, I would read it again and I would see which words were important for my understanding. Especially in Maths, I had strategies to work through each of the problems.”

Arunn

“At the start, I was nervous but then during NAPLAN, I started to feel better because I realised that I can use the strategies from VOICES, CAFE and SURF to help me.”

Nanki

“After doing the practise NAPLAN tests, I knew what I was doing and how I was going to do NAPLAN. I had strategies to do answer the two step questions which helped me with the Maths test!”

Trisha

“I felt excited to do my first NAPLAN ever because I could put all my knowledge I have learnt while being at school into these tests.”

Veer

“During NAPLAN, although I was nervous, I realised all I need to do is try my best and use strategies I have learnt at school”

Year Five:

Jonathon

“My take away from NAPLAN is seeing how much I have progressed in my learning from Year 3 till now. In Year 3 I use to think “this is going to be hard” and I wasn’t sure of the purpose behind it. However now that it’s my second time and I can compare growth between two assessments, I’m excited to see how my results have shifted and changed over time.”

Ana

“NAPLAN had a decent amount of challenge for me and my key take away was seeing how much I had grown in my understanding but it also highlighted future areas of learning that I would like to improve on such as division which I now focus on during learning time in class.”

Anuki

“What I realised during NAPLAN is the amount of social-emotional maturity we need in order to have a growth mindset during assessments. Before NAPLAN my self-talk wasn’t helpful for me as I was putting a lot of pressure on myself, through learning about my metacognition I was able to self-regulate and actually value the struggle in learning. This helped me to review my responses, slow down thinking and answer with accuracy. I walked away from NAPLAN feeling really confident about my responses.”

Simon

“This was my first experience of NAPLAN as there isn’t anything similar in China. I really enjoyed the experience because it helped me to recall learning that I had done overseas and also in Australia. My challenge was understanding Tier 2 words because sometimes we name things differently in China, once I was able to translate this word in my mind, I felt confident in my responses.”

Ajuni

“This was my first NAPLAN experience as I’ve just arrived from England. I really enjoyed the reading assessment as the questions helped me to think deeply about the authors intention, the story line and text clues within each piece. I tried my personal best and felt confident after the assessment. Mathematics, was the most challenging for me however I still had strategies that I was able to use during the test, this gave me confidence that I could recall strategies we had learnt in class.”

Once again, well done to all our Year Three and Year Five students on their outstanding approach to transferring learnt CAFÉ, VOICES and SURF strategies in their NAPLAN tests.

Planning Days

Over the past two weeks, and into next, our teaching and learning teams have been working hard to plan a rigorous teaching and learning program for Term Two. Teachers have been allocated a whole day to use student academic and voice data to plan learning that is targeted to individual students’ zones of proximal development. In addition, our Inquiry units of learning all have a science focus with a thread of Sustainability across the school.

What can you expect your children to learn next term?

Prep	Science learning connecting to the question “How am I connected to the environment?” English: Letters and persuasive texts Mathematics: Working with numbers 1-20, graphs and tallies, measurement, mass and capacity, 2D and 3D shapes and positional language.
Year One	Biological Science learning connected to the question “How are living things impacted by our choices?” English: Information reports and persuasive texts Mathematics: Length, subtraction, multiplication, division, time through calendars.
Year Two	Chemical Science learning connected to “How can resources be used sustainably?” English: Persuasive and procedural texts Maths: Number patterns, fractions, length, area and data collection.
Year Three	Biological Science learning surrounding the question “How are living things dependent on each other?” English: Information reports and persuasive texts Mathematics: Length, Area, Multiplication, Division and Data representation
Year Four	Chemical Science learning connecting to the question: “How are chemicals used in the world around us?” Information reports and poetry Mathematics: Data representation, volume, capacity, mass, decimals/fractions/percentages and open ended problem solving.
Year Five	Biological Science learning connecting to the question: “What impacts the survival of flora and fauna?” English: Narratives and persuasive texts Mathematics: Angles, Chance and probability,
Year Six	Earth and Space Science learning connecting to “What is our place in the universe?” English: Book reviews and explanation texts Mathematics: Length, perimeter, estimation, elapsed time, area, volume and deepening understanding of the four operations through number.

Our teams look forward to expanding on Term Two teaching and learning in level newsletters early next term!