What a wonderful start to the term!

Many people have commented that Term 3 is their favourite term of the year, as we start to see a turn to the warmer weather and it tends to be filled with lots of enriching activities and opportunities for our students.

Barely two weeks have passed, but we have already participated in Footsteps Dance lessons (K-2), a whole-school uniform free day, Kenny Koala visits, an assembly, and a 100 days of Kindergarten celebration! Not to mention all of the incredible learning that takes place within the classrooms.  Lots of learning is underway about our whole-school Global Concept of ‘Change’. We can’t wait to see the new knowledge and understandings that students gain about this concept during Term 3!

NAPLAN

This week, families of students in Years 3 and 5 should have received their child’s NAPLAN results. In each envelope, families have received an individual student report, a letter from the Education Minister and a parent information brochure. For the first time in 2023, NAPLAN is reported against ‘Proficiency Levels’ instead of the previous numerical NAPLAN bands. Student results show how they performed in each of the NAPLAN assessment areas against the four new proficiency levels of:

• Exceeding: The student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing.
• Strong: The student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
• Developing: The student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.
• Needs additional support: The student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.

The new proficiency levels will make better use of the online adaptive tests. Results from 2023 can not be compared to results from NAPLAN assessments taken from 2008-2022 .

NAPLAN assessments are a snapshot of a point in time in your child’s learning journey. The school uses NAPLAN data to inform some school-wide decisions, however, it is not used to form a basis for teacher judgements and assessment of student learning at a micro level. If you have any questions or would like to discuss your child’s NAPLAN results, please contact your child’s classroom teacher or myself (kate.herrington@ed.act.edu.au)

Kate Herrington