Preparing your child for NAPLAN Literacy L Stuut

Tues9th, Wed10th and Thurs11th May, 2017. What is NAPLAN? NAPLAN is the acronym for National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy. These are National tests administered to every student in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9. All students will participate in the tests on Tues9th, Wed10th and Thurs11th May, 2017.

What Literacy knowledge/skills are tested? Reading – comprehension and use of text types. Writing – Students will be required to compose a persuasive or creative text. Language Conventions – use of spelling, grammar and punctuation.

What happens at school? Teachers provide students with learning experiences that develop skills and knowledge in all areas tested in NAPLAN. In addition to our regular classrooms programs, we run two cross curricular programs Write2Bite and Read2BFree.

What happens at school? Literacy is embedded in the programs of every subject. All classroom teachers incorporate literacy in lessons – this often involves explicit teaching of literacy skills relevant to the subject area. Students are given multiple opportunities throughout the day to engage in meaningful and sustained reading and writing tasks.

More of what happens at school. Write2Bite gives students the opportunity to practise their persuasive and narrative writing skills across all subject areas. Read2B Free gives students an opportunity to practise their reading skills with a particular focus on Inferential Reading in all subject areas.

More of what happens at school. The ALL Stars (Active Literacy Learners) Program and the BLITZ Reading Program are both designed to give targeted students the opportunity to develop their literacy skills and confidence. Individual Learning Support as required.

Parents & Teachers in partnership to achieve quality educational outcomes

How can parents help at home? Talk about the test with your child and develop your child’s confidence by encouraging them to try their best and praising them. Emphasize test taking techniques such as : highlighting key sections of the text

How can parents help at home? have a go! Never leaving any question blank: at worst taking a best guess . A blank cannot score a mark but there is a chance of scoring if you write something e.g. a 25% chance on a multiple choice question. answering the easiest questions and marking harder questions to come back to. Allocating time and keeping to this time allocation.

Reading Encourage your child to read widely: this includes online texts. Read to your child and have your child read to you. Before they begin to read ask them to predict what the text will be about taking their cues from simple things such as title/headline and illustrations.

Reading Discuss what your child is reading with him/her (but be careful not to turn the discussion into an interrogation). Encourage your child to highlight key points and ideas as he/she reads.

While reading the text… Ask questions such as... What other words could be used? What does that sentence/phrase mean? Who is talking? (use when there are conversations between characters) Why do you think that is happening/happened? Start questions with who, what, where, when, why, which and how. To develop inferential reading skills use the 3H Approach

3Hs Here Hidden Head

The 3H Reading Strategy The purpose of this strategy is to help children understand how to answer questions relating to a text. Using the 3H’s as a guide you can prompt your child to either; look for information that can be found in one location within the text or search for, and piece together, information from different locations, identify relationships and make inferences think and evaluate what they have they have read, make judgements and generate ideas. In short, this simple strategy points students in the right direction!

HERE – In the Lines Questions look like: What? Who? Where? When? How many/much?

HIDDEN – Between the Lines Questions will require your child to identify the following; What is the purpose of the text? Who is the audience for this? Why is the diagram included? What does it show? How is it linked to the written text? What is the main idea? What does _____ mean? Why did ____ happen? What is the impact of the event/issue/process? What are x’s motives? How does the character feel?

HEAD – Reading Beyond the Lines The reader must find opinions and applications and relate them to their own background knowledge. Some examples are as follows; What is the author’s opinion? What do you as the reader think about this? Why do you think the topic is important? How do you think ideas in the text can be used in a practical way? What do you think will happen if these trends continue?

Some important considerations Degree of difficulty – Here; easiest, Hidden; can be difficult and Head will challenge many children. Hidden questions will very often require your child to guess the meaning of an unfamiliar word. They will have to look for clues in the text Hint!!! Read past the word to get more clues!!! Applied level comprehension (Head questions) relies on your child bringing their background knowledge to the question. Assist them by relating questions to what your child knows or has experienced.

creative or persuasive. Writing The 2016 NAPLAN writing task will be either creative or persuasive. What can you do to support your child? Encourage your child to read and write persuasive and narrative texts. Encourage your child to proofread his/her work before you look at it with them – check, spelling, punctuation and grammar. Listen to your child read what they have written and help them understand where punctuation should be used in the text.

NAPLAN Marking Criteria   6 5 4 3 2 1 Audience Text Structure Ideas Persuasive Devices Vocabulary Cohesion Paragraphing Sentence Structure Punctuation Spelling Persuasive Text

NAPLAN Marking Criteria   6 5 4 3 2 1 Audience Text Structure Ideas Character & Setting Vocabulary Cohesion Paragraphing Sentence Structure Punctuation Spelling Narrative Text

Language Conventions This test includes; grammar, punctuation and spelling. How can you support your child? Do a practice spelling test with your child. Ask your child to write down things for you – shopping list, to do list – check spelling. Encourage your child to write a letter to a relative and help with spelling, punctuation etc. Write lists/passages/instructions that have mistakes and get your child to correct them. Ask your child to look up words in the dictionary for you.

Check out the information on If you’re not sure… Check out the information on Schools A-Z site http://www.schoolatoz.nsw.edu.au