Recent announcements to the implications of this years NAPLAN test for students planning to sit their HSC in three years have suddenly increased the pressure being felt by families already worried about their child’s future.
Setting a minimum standard of Band 8 for this year’s NAPLAN test may be a goal set too far ahead for many students, many of whom have been working so hard already to improve themselves.
Having spent some time recently with a grown adult with no resilience when times get tough I have a renewed sense of the importance of building resilience in students.
I could write a political post here about slipping standards of schools, the validity of the NAPLAN tests or a multitude of other genuinely important and unresolved topics in Australian schooling. That’s not what will help stressed families worried about their child’s performance in NAPLAN in a few short months and the ramifications this has for a future they have been working so hard to make possible for their child. Specifically the parents of teenagers with learning difficulties for whom Band 8 feels very far away from their child’s Year 7 NAPLAN performance.
What to do
- Keep reading with your child and encouraging them to keep reading. The NAPLAN has so much reading that continuing to build skill and speed in this area will help.
- Comprehension is tested in the NAPLAN but using a multiple choice format – use online tests or buy a book of practice tests to spend a small amount of time modelling how to approach multiple choice questions with your child (read all four answers, cross out anything completely wrong, re-read section of text involved to find the most correct answer).
- Writing is tested using either a persuasive or narrative text. Your child will be practising this at school. If you would like to do more at home focus on starting to write a narrative based on a word or picture prompt – so much time is spent trying to think of the idea. Pinterest has some great writing prompts, fun pictures you can use for your child to “tell” (and maybe write) a story.
- Spelling is the area that is particularly difficult to test without any words being spoken and is something I spent a lot of time working on with my students. When we spell a word in a traditional spelling test the word is read aloud and the child then writes the sounds they hear, incorporating known spelling patterns. When a child is writing they hear the word in their mind because they have deliberately chosen this and then write the sounds and spelling patterns down. The NAPLAN test tests something different. The words are misspelt and not read aloud so the test relies on the child reading the sentence, correctly guesstimating the incorrect word, saying this incorrect word correctly in their mind before trying to write it down – all without being distracted by the incorrect form of the word already written. Whilst ongoing spelling instruction will support a child in being able to approach this task, a child with a learning difficulty has so many hurdles to jump for this section of the paper. To support my students I suggest the following process.
Read the sentence as best as you can
Circle the word you think looks wrong – don’t look at it again
Say this to yourself a few times in your mind
Write the sounds you hear
Think about the spelling patterns you know, do any fit here?
Good try, move on to the next one
It’s not perfect but the words are so incredibly random in the paper that I focus on the strategy for attempting this to reduce anxiety throughout the paper.
NAPLAN practice and preparation isn’t my favourite thing to write about, but I’ve been asked about it so much in the last few weeks I felt compelled.
