Newsletter – 11 November 2022

Our teachers are currently assessing student learning growth and achievement to inform their Semester Two reports.

Non teachers often wonder what teachers use their time for outside of ‘face to face’ teaching? We spend a great deal of time planning, preparing lessons, doing professional learning and currently, RGLPS teachers are working hard to ensure accurate and consistent judgment of student achievement for their end of year reports. All teachers are attending several ‘moderation’ sessions in cross level teams over the next few weeks; a cross level team is one comprised of teachers from different year levels, including Deaf Facility teachers, specialist teachers and members of leadership.

This week, teachers met to explore writing samples with the aim of reaching consistent agreement around the achievement level that each student sample demonstrates. Moderation combined with close analysis of other writing samples helps each teacher determine the progression point (or grade represented by the dot) on the student report. The purpose of cross moderation is to make sure that we are consistently and accurately judging student work against the Victorian Curriculum Achievement Standards. In other words, what one teacher judges at a certain achievement level is the same as another teacher in the school and this is in alignment with what is outlined by the Standards and Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA).

Student learning achievement is not always clearcut, particularly in writing. Students may be strong at one skill such as developing their writing ideas but be a weaker speller and inconsistent at punctuating their writing. Another child may be a strong speller but play it safe and use basic words, rather than experiment with interesting and engaging nouns, verbs and adjectives. Some students write pages and pages of writing without revisions or editing, making it hard to follow and another student may write much less but write high-quality engaging sentences. Reaching agreement in what constitutes achievement at each progression point can be highly subjective. Moderation tries to ensure we are as consistent and accurate as possible in the assessment of student work against the expectations outlined in the Standards.  This moderation work is also valuable in that it helps teachers deeply understand each child’s writing strengths and areas for growth, as well as more thoroughly understand the Victorian Curriculum.

Next week, teachers will attend moderation sessions to help them make judgements about Mathematics achievement in Number. Please be reassured that when teachers assign progression points for their end of the year reports, a great deal of evidence, analysis and thought has gone into arriving at these professional judgments.

Semester Two Reports will be distributed to parents on Friday 16^th December via Compass.