Welcome back to Term 3. As recently communicated, we have been hit extremely hard with illness with a significant number (up to 100) of students and staff absent from school with various illnesses.  We have reminded families that If their child is unwell, consider keeping them away from school to keep the infection rate as low as possible. Thank you for your support with this.

We are also reminding/encouraging students to wash their hands etc regularly.

Staffing Update

Welcome to Karen Dangerfield who is replacing Bernie DeLyster (Long Service Leave) for the first 6 weeks of this term.

Congratulations to Kate O’Driscoll, who has won the Assistant Principal role beginning in 2024 through to the end of 2026. I’m sure you’d all agree that it is a very well-deserved appointment, and we look forward to Kate continuing her fantastic work here at Coro for at least the next few years.

We would also like to welcome Karen Knox, who has been appointed to CVPS from 2024 in an ongoing position as part of the latest HR placement process.

Pathway Project

The Pathway and Access Rectification Project is well underway and on schedule to be completed by the end of this term.

Access around certain areas of the school is limited however, staff, students and community members have adapted really well to this and interruptions have been minimal.

During excavation, two trees were deemed to be unsafe due to their root growth/placement and unfortunately were required to be removed.

The Department for Education’s annual parent survey

The Department for Education coordinates an annual survey to better understand the things we’re doing well, where we can improve, and what’s important to you as a parent. The information we collect from this survey is driving change for the department.

In the week beginning Monday 31 July parents will receive an email or SMS from the Parent Survey Team with a unique link to participate in the survey.

We highly encourage you to complete the survey, which takes less than 10 minutes. 

Your feedback will be used locally in our school improvement planning and more broadly to inform other key initiatives to improve education in South Australia. Your answers will not identify you or your child. Only collated feedback will be provided to our school.

If you did not receive an email or SMS with your unique survey link, contact education.ParentSurvey@sa.gov.au and include our school’s name in your email.

For more information visit the Department for Education website.

NAPLAN

NAPLAN reports were sent home last week. This year there have been changes to the NAPLAN reports to include new Proficiency Standards which commence from this year. NAPLAN reports now show how children are tracking against four achievement levels known as proficiency levels. 

The proficiency levels are:

• Exceeding: the student’s result exceeds expectations at the time of testing. 
• Strong: the student’s result meets challenging but reasonable expectations at the time of testing.
• Developing: the student’s result indicates that they are working towards expectations at the time of testing.
• Needs additional support: the student’s result indicates that they are not achieving the learning outcomes expected at the time of testing. They are likely to need additional support to progress satisfactorily.

Therefore, “If your child is in the Strong or Exceeding category, it means they have demonstrated proficiency and that their literacy or numeracy skills are where they should be at this stage of their schooling. If your child has not yet achieved proficiency, then they will either be in the Developing category or the Needs additional support category.” (ACARA CEO, David de Carvalho)

Below are some of the ways that our teachers provide additional support through quality teaching practice to meet learner’s diverse needs:

• intentional teaching – building on strengths, interests, ideas and needs
• explicit teaching
• gradual release of responsibility
• modelling: I do it
• guided instruction: we do it
  • collaborative learning: you do it together
  • independent learning: you do it alone
  • graduated tasks: easy tasks to hard tasks
• inquiry based learning
• cooperative learning – working with others
• thinking routines – strategies that can be used repeatedly to promote and support thinking
• scaffolding
• providing materials that reflect a variety of cultures, environments and settings such as those experienced by students from non-English-speaking environments.
• stocking the classroom with a range of quality resources to engage learners of different abilities
• providing alternative representations of resources
• visual and technological supports.