Happy Holidays!

It’s been a very busy term.

We’ve enjoyed celebrations such as Australia Day and Harmony Day. And we have our ANZAC ceremony to commemorate in the last week of the Term. This has fit perfectly into our HASS theme where we have been looking at the difference between celebrations and commemorations in countries from around the world. We have specifically studied some Australian celebrations and commemorations.  The children have been working on an inquiry project to present details of a festival from around the world.

Our class has been working very hard to prepare for the NAPLAN testing in May. We have concisely covered the content in Literacy and Numeracy outlined in my initial post for the year. As I have completed assessments over the term, I have noticed considerable improvement in achievement. You should be so very proud of your children. They have maintained a focused approach to their learning and are enjoying the results. I couldn’t ask for more from them. I’m tremendously pleased with their efforts.

We will continue to revise areas that could use a little further consolidation over the coming weeks. We are also learning test taking skills, such as timing ourselves throughout an assessment and how to answer multi-choice questions. Further information regarding NAPLAN testing can be found below.

Thank you for your support with talk homework. This has been a new initiative for our class this year and has had a great impact on your children’s writing. I have noticed an improvement in depth of information included in stories. We have been practising narratives for the second half of this term. All children have a goal that they are working towards. These goals are individual, set according to an area of weakness in their writing. Children must achieve mastery of their goal five times before moving onto a new goal.

Finally, I would like to wish everyone a wonderful holiday break. If your children get bored get them to read and do a quiz or maybe write a narrative story. Remember there are always books the children can read online in their Literacy Pro Library. They can do a quiz on any of these books.

Take Care

Mrs Harders

NAPLAN

Testing will be held in May.

Students are assessed using common national tests in Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation) and Numeracy.

NAPLAN is not a pass or fail type test. Individual student performance is shown on a national achievement scale for each test.

The performance of individual students can be compared to the average performance of all students in Australia.

NAPLAN Planner has been used in Term 4 2017, and Terms 1 2018

Students have many opportunities to get used to test language, content and format.

Sample questions and a sample writing tasks can be accessed on the NAP website:

www.nap.edu.au.