WHEELERS HILL PRIMARY SCHOOL

Assistant Principal's Report

Leasyl Richards - Curriculum

8th February 

Welcome back everyone! We are looking forward to a great 2019!

 

NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy)

NAPLAN tests are held in May each year for all students in Years 3 and 5. NAPLAN tests assess student knowledge and skills in Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language (spelling, grammar and punctuation)  and Numeracy.

This year Wheelers Hill Primary School will be conducting NAPLAN online. This means that from the 14th – 24th of May, students at our school will undertake all NAPLAN tests online in place of the paper tests. Please note that our Year 3 students will continue to complete the Writing test as a paper test.   We will confirm the exact dates of each NAPLAN test for our students as soon as possible.

Thursday 28th March is an Australia wide testing day where each school will undertake a practice NAPLAN test to establish the capabilities of the platform.  No results are seen from this test - it is purely to ensure the platform will cater for the high numbers of internet traffic.

The students will also have access to online practice tests before the official testing dates to enable them to become familiar with the new format of testing.

Further information regarding the 2019 NAPLAN testing will be sent to parents/ carers of our Year 3 and 5 students in the coming weeks.

If you have any questions or concerns about NAPLAN please email me at the address below.

 

ICAS 

The ICAS Assessments series is designed to assess students' ability to apply classroom learning in new contexts, using higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills. ICAS testing is an additional opt-in assessment program we offer at Wheelers Hill as part of our Enrichment programs. 

 

ICAS testing for 2019 is also moving to an online platform this year. The sitting dates for the 2019 tests are as follows:

  • ICAS Digital Technologies – Tuesday 3rd September
  • ICAS Science – Thursday 5th September
  • ICAS Writing – Tuesday 10th September
  • ICAS Spelling Bee – Thursday 12th September
  • ICAS English – Tuesday 17th September
  • ICAS Mathematics – Thursday 19th September

(Please note Year 3 and 4 Writing will be paper based)

 

An enrolment form with pricing for each test will be sent out via Compass towards the end of this term. 

 

MATHS 

This week we have had our Numeracy Consultant, Rob Vingerhoets, return to work with our Year 3 and 4 teams, and our Year 2 team.

Rob is working with our Level leaders to continue to refine our Numeracy planning,  modelling sessions in our classrooms to continue to engage and inspire our students with maths, and has met with the teachers to reflect and evaluate on our maths programs and approaches to assist with differentiating our teaching and learning.

 

Rob returns for three days over the next two weeks to work with our Year 5 and 6 teams, our Year 1 team and our Prep team.  

 

WRITING

Our Curriculum Day last week focused on exploring our new approach to Writing. Fiona Jackson, is a Literacy consultant, presented to the staff the 6+1 traits of writing (VOICES) that will enable our students to understand the various facets that go into producing a great piece of writing.   The staff were very engaged and interested in learning the traits and are currently working on incorporating them into our writing curriculum.  The Department of Education strongly believe that the use of the Writing Traits has a significant benefit to improving the teaching and learning of writing. 

The traits are:

Voice

Organisation

Ideas

Conventions

Exploring vocabulary

Sentence fluency

 

Fiona will continue to work with our staff later this year, and with our new Leading Teacher for Literacy, Joe Doyle, to introduce, explore and refine the teaching and learning of the writing traits. 

 

CLASSROOM HELPERS

The 2019 classroom helpers program will be on Wednesday 20th February and Wednesday 6th March from 9.15- 10.15am. While this program is not compulsory it is highly recommended for those parents who are interested in helping out in our classrooms. Attendance is required at both sessions.

The first session will focus on what it means to be a classroom helper, the types of activities that are part of our literacy program, the procedures involved in assisting , as well as relevant questions and prompts to  support students and encourage them to extend their skills and strategies..

The second session will focus solely on MSL (Multisensory Sturctured Language) ,  our approach to the teaching of literacy. This approach is a vital part of our teaching in the Junior School.

 

This year we will also be running this progam over two evenings for those unable to attend the morning sessions. The two evening sessions will be run on Tuesday 19th February from 6.30-7.30pm and Tuesday 5th March from 6.30- 7.30pm. 

 

These sessions will be faciliated by myself and Wendy Jarvis our MSL Learning Specialist. 

 

Further details on indicating your interest in attending this program will be provided via Compass.

 

LIBRARY DONATIONS

Thank you to the families who have donated books to our school library. These kind donations help us to continue to keep our library stocked with high quality literature. 

If anyone would like to donate any books to our Library please see Mrs Jo White our Library Technician.

 

Leasyl Richards

richards.leasyl.a@edumail.vic.gov.au