Yahoo! We finished Naplan!
This week my year 3's wrote NAPLAN - Aussie EQAO. This is their 1st year writing the test. Every Australian child in year's 3, 5, 7 and 9 write the test on the same three days. The last few weeks have been spent teaching the children strategies for answering questions and reviewing material. As I have only the kids for 10 weeks, I just tried to do the best I could to help them prepare.
This is their baseline (as with EQAO) to measure growth over the coming years. A piece of data to meet the needs of the students over their school careers.
The first day, the children wrote 2 tests: Language Conventions and Writing. What I like is that they tell you which form of writing will be expected. This year, it is persuasive writing(exposition) so we spent a good deal of time practicing this form over the last 6 weeks. Now that it is finished, I can spend the rest of the year on other forms.
Day 2, the children write Reading Comprehension and then on day 3, Numeracy.
I tried to keep the preparations and testing as low pressure for the students as possible and they seemed okay with it. During the week, I planned some fun activities we could do after the test as a reward for hard work.
The first day, we played silly relays and games like "killer wink", "dragon tag", goofy relay races. It had us all giggling and laughing and was a definite release after all that hard concentrating.
On day 2, we had a paper airplane contest in the hall after the test. The kids had to design and create their airplanes at home and then I had prizes for "Farthest Flight", "Most interesting flight" and "Best Design". It was a blast - literally! We ran the races in heats and as the 2nd races were about to begin, sparks started falling fromt he ceiling at the starting line ! There were some people repairing the roof of the hall and their welding sparks were raining on us! Luckily, no one was hurt and after some reorganizing, we were able to finish the races.
The winning planes
On day 3, we created an ice cream sundae bar as a celebration to end NAPLAN. I supplied the ice cream and the kids supplied the toppings. My favourite new flavour was the "Star Dust". It is like pop rocks on ice cream. It was a party in my mouth! As you can see from these pics, we made the best of the NAPLAN week! Now, we just have to get through 1st Communion - next weekend! Then hopefully, it will be clear sailing!
My "bad hair" scooping ice cream
Enough toppings to feed the school!
No comments:
Post a Comment