Student assessment resources and teaching strategies

Provides information on the transition to NAPLAN Online for NSW schools.

What’s changing?

The national assessment program literacy and numeracy (NAPLAN) tests will change from paper to online assessment by 2020. The move to NAPLAN Online will bring new benefits for students and teachers.

Benefits

Significant planning, research and trialling has been ongoing since 2012 to support the move to NAPLAN Online. Online testing creates new opportunities that are not possible with paper tests.

• NAPLAN Online will provide better assessment, more precise results and faster turnaround of information.
• Most students find online assessment more engaging.
• NAPLAN Online will use tailored testing, which gives students questions better suited to their ability, resulting in more detailed individual assessment.
• Online assessment will reduce the time it takes to mark and provide feedback to schools and teachers.
• The precision and improved timing of the results will help teachers streamline their teaching more specifically to student needs.
• Once all schools complete NAPLAN online, student results will be returned to parents and carers within weeks of the NAPLAN test, as opposed to months.

For further information about NAPLAN Online benefits, visit the ACARA website.

Every child enters school with their own set of experiences, skills and abilities. These skills form a foundation for future learning and students need to develop these skills to be able to communicate complex ideas, think critically and engage with the world.

The Best Start Kindergarten Assessment provides teachers with the opportunity to sit with a child one on one, focusing on what that child can do. This provides the teacher with another rich source of information on how to best support that child’s next steps

Best Start Kindergarten Assessment (BSKA) allows schools to enter student information via an online NSW Department of Education tool, referred to as PLAN2. The BSKA items are mapped to the Literacy and Numeracy Progressions.

Students start secondary school with different skills and abilities in literacy and numeracy. It is important that Year 7 teachers have access to information about their new students, to plan their teaching accordingly.

What is Best Start Year 7?

Best Start Year 7 is a literacy and numeracy assessment package for schools to use in the first five weeks of Year 7. It is designed to:

• provide teachers with consistent and up-to-date information about new students’ skills and abilities in literacy and numeracy
• identify students at risk of falling behind
• help inform targeted teaching and intervention strategies.

Online diagnostic science assessments for students in Years 6, 8 and 10. The program provides online end-of-stage assessments for the science key learning area.

Three assessments packages are available and are offered to all NSW Catholic schools on an opt-in fee for service basis.:

• VALID Science & Technology for Year 6
• VALID Science for Year 8
• VALID Science for Year 10

Schools with students in Years 6/8/10 can participate by registering their full cohort. Teachers of the registered schools will participate in 5 hours of NESA registered professional learning and then mark the extended response tasks for their school.

Register your school for VALID

Registration in the VALID program provides:

• high quality syllabus-based assessment frameworks that describe levels of achievement against standards to inform school-based assessment practices
• online multimedia assessment tools that provide diagnostic data and time efficient reports to inform planning, programming and assessment across learning stages
• cohort level affective domain data from interest and engagement survey questions within each assessment
• five hours of NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) registered training that reinforces staff capability in making consistent judgements against syllabus standards
• systems and processes to monitor student achievement of syllabus outcomes and content across stages
• external student assessment data that can be used in combination with school-based assessments to inform whole school planning processes.

The NSW Literacy and Numeracy Strategy commits to deliver new literacy and numeracy learning progressions to schools as a tool to assist with monitoring the progress of students in their Literacy and Numeracy development.

What are the learning progressions?

The learning progressions are a teaching and learning resource. They describe common pathways of literacy and numeracy development from Kindergarten to Year 10. The learning progressions map to the NSW syllabuses and the Australian curriculum in English and maths, demonstrating the development needed to meet stage outcomes. They can be used to assist teachers to determine what students know already, and what they need to learn next. Unlike the NSW syllabuses, the learning progressions are not mandatory.

Literacy

Resources to use in conjunction with the results of NAPLAN to identify areas of development in reading, writing and language conventions.

The aim of English in Years K–10 is to enable students to understand and use language effectively, appreciate, reflect on and enjoy the English language and to make meaning in ways that are imaginative, creative, interpretive, critical and powerful.

NAPLAN tests help identify students’ literacy skills and trends within schools, grades and cohorts. Students are assessed using common national tests in Reading, Writing and Language Conventions (spelling, grammar and punctuation). Teachers use NAPLAN results as part of a suite of assessment opportunities to build up a summary of student achievement aiding in identification of students who may require greater challenges or additional support.

The resources contained in the web-links/ hyperlinks and apps are to be used after evaluation by the teacher. The resources in Scout (NAPLAN analytics package produced by DoE and available to all NSW schools) are research based and reflect current directions such as:

• the quality teaching model
• the modelled, guided and independent teaching cycle
• the NSW English syllabus for the Australian curriculum K–10: outcomes and objectives

The Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) is a national population-based measure of how children in Australia have developed by the time they start their first year of full-time school. All schools with kindergarten students participate in the census. NSW Catholic schools with kindergarten students participate in Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) every 3 years.

Teachers complete an on-line questionnaire based on observations of the children in their class. The AEDC involves the collection of data across five developmental domains:

• Physical Health and Wellbeing
• Social Competence
• Emotional Maturity
• Language and Cognitive Skills (school-based)
• Communication Skills and General Knowledge