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Reporting to Families

Student Assessments

Staff regularly connect with students and their families to report on learning progress. Class newsletters, diaries, communication books, phone calls, assemblies, school concerts, sports events, meetings and informal dialogue all form a valuable part of the communication between home and school.

We also have a formal structure that ensures that all families have the opportunity to stay well informed about their child/ren’s learning progress.

This includes:

Term 1 Meet and Greet Night and Interviews

Term 2 & 4 Written Report

In the early years of primary school, teachers undertake regular assessments to inform their teaching. Students are tested on their alphabet knowledge once or twice a term.

Phonological awareness screening tool is used each term to identify all reception to year 2 students’ phonological awareness skills appropriate to their year level.

Oxford sight words are used as a teaching tool for building and assessing sight word knowledge for reading.

PM Benchmark Running Records are used to assess reading knowledge and comprehension twice a term.

Spelling assessement for high frequency words and writing assessments are undertaken during the term to inform teaching practice.

In term 1 and 4, students in years 3 to 6 sit the South Australian Spelling Test, TORCH Reading Test and/or Waddington’s Reading Test. These provide teachers with information about student progress in literacy.

Students in years 3 and 5 will participate in NAPLaN testing. The results of these tests are published at the end of term 3 for schools and families. Our staff analyse these results to help them in future planning.
Students from years 3 and up participate in school based online testing in term 3. The PAT Maths and PAT Reading tests allow students and their teachers to see which skill areas they need to work on to improve their learning.

Students in year 3 to 6 also have access to the Scholastic Literacy Pro program. This program assesses student comprehension to assist them in choosing appropriate books to read from the library. The aim is to encourage students to increase their ‘Words Read’ score and improve their reading skills.