iServi News | 3 November 2017 | Term 4, Week 4
As part of personalising learning for every student at our College we need to identify both our students areas of strength and areas of growth. We use a variety of tools to do this, anecdotal discussions with parents and other teachers, observation and a variety of testing. Earlier this year our students in Years 7, 8 and 9 were involved in achievement testing that has been developed by the Australian Council for Education Research (ACER). This testing is used in both primary and secondary schools across Australia.
The results, from this initial testing, were analysed by our teachers and informed their teaching programmes as they identified what they needed to do to ensure that your son/daughter’s learning was optimised in their classrooms. We are now ready to test again to track your son/daughter’s growth since the beginning of the year. These results will inform us about what we have taught well, what we need to improve on and will also identify the skills your son/daughter has mastered or needs further support with in 2018. The results will guide our teaching and learning programming for next year.
These tests, the PATM (Maths) and PATR (Reading Comprehension) will occur in normal Maths and English lesson times in Week 5 or 6 and take approximately 45 minutes. Your son/daughter’s teacher will let him/her know when he/she will be doing the test. We do not want our students worrying about these tests as they are diagnostic tools that ensure that we are optimising and personalising learning for our students – providing opportunities to excel when required and also to meet their individual learning needs.
Our students who are on Individual Education Plans (IEPs) will not be sitting the tests.
Those students on our Blue Card Additional Working Time system will be given 55 minutes (the whole period) to complete the test.
All students have been emailed their personal login details. Please contact Mrs Nibali via melissa.nibali@servite.wa.edu.au or by phone on 9444 6333 with any queries.
Thank you for your support.
Mrs Melissa Nibali
Head of Learning Enrichment
