NAPLAN

1. NAPLAN Preparing your students – What can you do in your teaching area?

2. NAPLAN – What it involves … • Assessment of Literacy and Numeracy • Literacy components – Reading, Writing and Language conventions – spelling, grammar and punctuation. • Numeracy Components – Number, Space, Algebra and Measurement, Chance and Data – (calculator and Non-calculator) • These are components of all teaching areas – Not the exclusive domain of the English and Mathematics teachers. Every teacher should be implementing strategies to develop student confidence and ability for NAPLAN.

3. How can all teachers contribute? • Need to have an understanding of the NAPLAN testing – what it sets out to test, the type of assessment tasks used, understand the skills required by students to engage successfully in NAPLAN assessment • Look at strategies (assessment, marking , feedback) and explicit teaching within your own teaching to determine how you can best contribute to student readiness for NAPLAN

4. How familiar are you with the NAPLAN Tests and Marking? • Types of questions used • Format of stimulus material – wording, layout and design • Marking rubric – especially for the writing task – Vocabulary, Cohesion, Paragraphing, Sentence Structure, Punctuation and Spelling contribute significantly – these are components of all writing in all subject areas and should be continually addressed and reinforced in marking of student work and feedback on submitted written work in all subject areas.

5. Some strategies to consider • Spelling – students need to be familiarised with the proofreading format of the NAPLAN tests. Teachers should not overuse practice tasks in this proofreading format as these may provide misleading information and reinforce models of poor spelling. Spelling-in-writing and dictation (STL possiblility) require students to generate and monitor their spelling.

6. Spelling strategies – continued. • Tests the English spelling system – sound of language, the function of words and the meaning links between words as well as their history. • Need to assist students develop: • Phonological knowledge –sounds and letter patterns • Word-function knowledge – affixes used • Meaning knowledge – how words that share same elements of meaning will be pelt the same • Etymological knowledge – how the origin of the word has shaped the spelling pattern • THESE ELEMENTS NEED TO BE ADDRESSED BY ALL TEACHERS USING VOCABULARY SPECIFIC TO YOUR SUBJECT AREA

7. Spelling Item Types • Correct spelling item identified for them • Recognise incorrectly spelt work and then correct Some strategies: Feedback on marking – identify incorrectly spelt student words but do not provide correction – request students to provide corrections. Mark spelling on student work – highlight Suggest students produce written work using spell check to identify incorrect spelling only. Students attempt to self correct as they go.

8. Grammar and Punctuation • Grammar is a shared way of describing how the language works. • Grammar questions explore understanding about: • The way words combine in phrases, clauses and sentences to create meaning • Understanding about the form and function of words. • Analysis of text

9. Grammar and Punctuation • Punctuation is the system of print symbols used to show the boundaries between grammatical and semantic units. At the sentence level : sentence boundaries, grammatical mood of sentence, boundaries of phrases and clauses, direct speech • Word level: proper nouns, possession, omission • NAPLAN tests Standard Australian English – about writing rather than speaking and formal rather than idiomatic language.

10. Strategies for Grammar and Punctuation • Need to teach explicitly the difference between oral and written language and formal and informal idiom. • Reinforce in marking feedback and during STL and other face to face teaching opportunities. • Provide opportunities for students to develop skills for reading contextual sentences

11. Reading • Tasks require students to read and construct meaning from a range of texts. • Require comprehension involving different levels of thinking and focus on different aspects of text. • Strategies – introduce students to range of different stimulus material as part of teaching and assessment. (written, diagramatic, web-based, graphs etc.) • Explicit teaching of text analysis skills.

12. Numeracy • A wide range of numeracy skills are tested. • What are the numeracy demands within you subject area? Graphs, Tabular data, calculations, algebra, spatial relationships • Strategies – explicit teaching of the skills required in the context of your subject area • Literacy skills required to interpret numeracy questions – explicit teaching

13. General Strategies Attempt to do the NAPLAN tests yourself at the Year level you teach. These can be accessed from: http://www.naplan.edu.au/naplan_2009_tests.html Develop a specific list of strategies that support NAPLAN preparation in Literacy and Numeracy that you will introduce into your teaching and assessment (these should be documented in your planning)