Assessment IN YEARS 1 TO 6
Assessment for Learning
At Watton at Stone Primary and Nursery School we want all children to make good or better progress and develop positive attitudes to their learning. We believe that ‘Assessment for Learning’ is central to children recognising and achieving their potential, enabling our school vision to become their reality. Assessment for Learning is concerned with both the learner and the teacher being aware of where learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how to get there.
Assessment for Learning practices are used within lessons on a daily basis. Staff ensure that children are clear about the requirements of tasks (often referred to as success criteria) and are provided with some opportunities to assess themselves against these requirements, e.g. through writing a reflection. Objectives of lessons are made explicit and teachers design lessons/sequences of learning to ensure specific outcomes help to meet the objective. Questioning techniques and observations of children engaging in learning activities help teachers assess progress.
Assessing Learning
At Watton, teachers carry out assessments of the children as part of everyday teaching (formative assessment) and at the end of each half term (summative). Both types of assessment help teachers to plan next steps in learning, monitor children’s progress/attainment and provide reports to stakeholders, including parents and carers.
Formative Assessment and Feedback
We recognise that regular feedback is an essential part of planning, assessment and progress. We achieve this through formative approaches such as sharing targets and criteria with pupils, and giving them feedback while they are working towards those targets. The core purpose is to help pupils understand what to improve and how; it enables teachers to address any misconceptions and provide the right level of challenge within current and future lessons. We strongly believe that children benefit from verbal feedback and the opportunity to discuss their learning with their peers and their teacher, and therefore, written marking is replaced by pupil/teacher conferencing. This form of fast feedback also empowers children to identify their own strengths and areas for development and in turn, create independent, self-motivated pupils who have ownership over their learning.
Summative Assessment Years 1 to 6
Summative assessment is used to provide evidence of a pupil’s achievement each half term. Since the government removed ‘level descriptors’ from the National Curriculum in 2014, we use the Herts for Learning assessment criteria to assess our pupils from years 1, 3, 4 and 5. For pupils in years 2 and 6, we use the Teacher Assessment Frameworks produced by the government to assess progress and attainment. This is the most formalised strand of our procedures, primarily because we are required to obtain standardised data about the children at key points throughout the primary phase. We also need to be able not only to know how children are attaining/progressing, but also how we know, i.e. on the basis of solid evidence. Summative assessment allows us to make judgements about children's attainment and progress. It can also be used formatively, that is, to adapt planning and teaching approaches based on what we have found out.
We refer to children’s current level of attainment using the following phrases:
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Developing age-related expectations |
The child is making progress towards age-related expectations but sometimes requires support and guidance. |
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Working in line with age-related expectations |
This is what an average child of that age and stage should have learned, or be able to do. |
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Mastering age-related expectations |
Mastering skills and concepts to deepen their thinking and understanding; applying learning in a range of different situations. Mastering ARE does not mean moving onto the next year group’s learning objectives. |
Nationally Reported Assessment Results
- End of Key Stage assessments (SATs) for Years 2 and 6 during the summer term. Writing will be judged through reported teacher assessment against national frameworks and the reading, grammar spelling & punctuation (GPS) and mathematics tests will be externally marked with a score on a standardised scale, ranging from 80 to 120. A score of 100 is the expected outcome at the end of Year 6, indicating that children are ready for secondary school.
- Children in Year 1 undertake a national phonics screening check in June; some pupils in Year 2 will re-take the check if they did not successfully attain the required standard at the end of Year 1.
- Early Years Foundation Stage assessments are on-going; at the end of reception, teacher assessments are analysed to produce the ‘Good Level of Development’ standard.
- From 2020, Year 4 pupils will take part in the national ‘Multiplication Tables Check.’
Verbal reports, together with a mini-report detailing targets for the child to work towards, will be given at parent/teacher consultation evenings during the autumn and spring term. In July of each year, parents/carers of children in Years 1 to 6 will receive a written report covering all the aspects of a child's learning. We comment on English, Maths and Science in more detail, whilst giving a general indication of attainment/progress in the other subjects.