Dear Parents and Carers,
NAPLAN
Next week will see our Year 3 and Year 5 students participate in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN). These online tests will occur between Wednesday 13 March and Monday 18 March.
NAPLAN assists parents, carers and schools to ensure that children are meeting important numeracy and literacy standards. In addition to other assessment tools, NAPLAN is used to support school improvement processes by enabling teachers to monitor their students’ progress over time and to identify areas of strength and development.
The National Assessment Program highlights for families that NAPLAN tests the skills that are essential for every child to progress through school and life, such as reading, writing, spelling, grammar and numeracy. It is important to remember that NAPLAN is not about passing or failing, but about assessing learning progress.
Each day over the testing period, students in Year 3 and 5 will complete the different online tests. The Online NAPLAN tests are designed to provide precise results and are engaging for students. The tests are tailored (or adaptive) which means that each test presents questions that may be more or less difficult depending on a student’s responses. This helps students to remain engaged with the assessment.
If your child is absent for a particular test, where possible we may arrange for individual students to complete missed tests at another time during the testing period.
Introducing Positive Behavioural Interventions & Support
We are introducing a behaviour education and support program at our school called Positive Behaviour Support (PBS). PBS is a way to teach all students positive behaviour and encourage them to use it. This will contribute to the positive, safe and supportive learning culture at our school and enhance our existing wellbeing and behaviour supports. This approach aims to help all students feel valued, connected to the school community, and achieve better academic results, with staff and students having more time to focus on relationships and classroom learning. Our staff are being trained and supported through Catholic Education SA as we implement this new program in 2024.
I invite you to watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTTivxa9br8 to learn more about PBS and its benefits.
Our thanks to the Department for Education for their provision of a Wellbeing Boost Grant which has enabled our school to undertake this new program.
More information will be shared as we progress through the roll out.
Building site Visit
It was wonderful to see the students engage and participate in our building site visits this week. The students and staff had a sneak preview of what is going to be like in the Learning Street. We believe this was a wonderful learning experience for all our students and I would like to thank Geoff Steele and the building team for organising and providing this great opportunity.
Kind regards
Adrian Grbin
