Over the last two weeks the Year 3 and Year 5 students have participated in the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) testing.
Both year levels completed tests in Writing, Reading, Conventions of Language and Numeracy. The Year 5 students completed all tests online. The Year 3 students completed 4 tests online and completed the Writing test on paper.
On Tuesday the Year 5 students experienced difficulty commencing the Writing test and we required technical assistance from the Testing Administration Authority (TAA) to solve a technical issue that was beyond our control.
The students were extremely patient and resilient as waiting for a test to begin can be an anxious time.
In June the Year 3 students have been selected to be a part of a Pilot Project where they will complete a NAPLAN style writing test online. These tests will not be assessed as we are just helping the TAA to ascertain if this is the way to move forward with the Year 3 NAPLAN writing test.
In a small community, like ours, it is a whole staff exercise to make sure the tests run smoothly. I would like to thank Tom Atyeo, Courtney Quigley and Heather Docherty for administering the tests to the students, while making them feel calm and totally supported. Thanks to Gina Margush and Maria French who supervised the Year 4 and 6 students during the testing periods. Thank you to Kim Martin whose IT expertise was invaluable during our testing difficulties on Tuesday. I also thank the entire staff who were so flexible in altering the specialist lesson timetables to accommodate the testing times. Finally I would like to sincerely thank our Principal Peter Mercer. His calm presence and help in organising and administrating the catch up tests this week has been invaluable.
Last Wednesday 12th May I was fortunate enough to participate in the Professional Learning day, Professional Learning Communities @ Work, facilitated by Gavin Grift. This was a very engaging day as Gavin spoke about our school as a whole, being a Professional Learning Community and meeting collaboratively, as teams, as a way of working within that community. He used the analogy of an orange. The whole fruit is the Professional Learning Community and the segments are the way we work collaboratively within it.
He defined working collaboratively as 'An ongoing process in which educators are committed to work collaboratively in recurring cycles of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.'
He discussed meeting protocols such as creating recognised norms of practice to make meetings as effective as possible. His norms of how to disagree respectfully and turning 'yes but' into 'what if?' when you come up against obstacles particularly resonated with me. I am looking forward to using this new way of working with the Junior Primary Team at our next Collaborative meeting.
Sarah Byrne
Leader of Learning