Assessment without levels- what do the children think?

So much talk about the impact of the new ‘assessment beyond levels’ .  So much confusion over the new expectations and interim assessment guidelines.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the constant stream of news updates/myths/scaremongering. 

What about the children?

In particular, the ones who are going to be taking the SATs in a few short weeks? How do they feel about all of this?

 I decided that to directly ask my class would not be the most useful way to go about this- and it is my job to protect them from all the changes and concentrate on the job in hand- teaching them! Helping them to improve and be the best they can be.

Instead I have talked to some Year 6 children about what they enjoy about being in Year 6, how they feel about the tests and the changes from levels to the new system.

This is a summary of their main points.

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NOTE:  CHILDREN SPOKEN TO WERE HAPPY TO HAVE THEIR VIEWS SHARED AS ARE THEIR PARENTS. THEY ARE FROM A VARIETY OF SCHOOLS AROUND ENGLAND. THIS IS PURELY TO SHARE A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE ON THE CURRENT SITUATION IN SCHOOLS. NONE OF THESE CHILDREN ARE AT THE SCHOOL I TEACH IN .

What is good about being in Year 6?

Trips

Being the oldest

Having more responsibilities

The tests

Getting to spend time at the secondary school to find out what it is like

Reading

Maths

Lessons

The teachers

What isn’t so good about Year 6?

More homework

Worried about secondary school

Having lots of jobs to do

Last year at my school

Harder work

The tests

How do you feel about the changes?

I like the work being harder

I was in a year 5/6 class last year and we are doing more than last year 6 did

Too many spellings

I don’t like all the SPaG work

I used to know what level I was and what I needed to do to get the next one. I had a list of the things I had to work on. Now there aren’t levels (but some of the teachers still use them) I don’t really know how well I am doing. I know how many marks I get, and I try to get more next time, but I don’t know if that will be enough.

It’s annoying because the teachers don’t really know if we are doing well or not.

Well last year my friends knew what level they were and what level they were going to try to get to. This year none of us know what level we are. I know what I can and can’t do well. I’ve got a list of things to do to help me improve, but I don’t know how well I’m doing compared to my friends who have gone up to secondary school.

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So, what has this told me? That levels were used to let children know how they were doing and where they needed to go next, that the children actually quite liked them. 

Has it told me anything I wasn’t expecting? Not really, but it has further highlighted the enormous impact that constant interference from ministers has on our education system. As a teacher, it is my job to teach my class to make progress, to build and develop existing skills, to learn new ones, to become independent thinkers, to question, to be curious, to have a thirst for knowledge and learning, to have the tools they need in order to be ready and resilient when taking on challenges.  (There are of course lots more , but these are the ones that spring most readily to mind). Not forgetting time to have a bit of fun in between all that too !

And that it is unsettling for the children who , despite the very best intentions of their teachers, are anxious about how well they are doing. I’m doing all I can to reassure my class about their progress, where they are , what they can /can’t do, what they need to do to make progress- all the things that teachers have always and will always do. But, it’s tough on this first group of Y6 children in particular. 

So, what is the answer? Say that everyone has met A.R.E (whatever that ends up looking like?)

Saying that no one has?

Thinking of a number and saying that a random % has? 

Exactly- none of these are satisfactory solutions.

 Chucking the whole lot in the bin?

 No!

Honesty and consistency is what is needed. The new A.R.E is NOT (despite what some have said) ‘roughly equivalent to a 4B’. They are more like a level 5.

One clear message needs to be given to ALL schools to clarify this. Teacher assessments are fairly/completely (select preferred option) meaningless with no idea of thresholds and are a guess at best.

I would like to think that things will get better. In the meantime, like every other year 6 teacher I shall carry on helping my class to be the best that they can be and keeping it real.  There is so much more to life than SATs. :-)

Guided reading. An approach that works for me (for now at least!)

Always a topic that promotes animated discussion . Guided reading. How many groups? How often? What do the other groups do? How do you ensure progress? How do you manage it?

We have guided reading sessions daily, 20 minutes. That's a lot of the week when you look at it in its total. So it has to be meaningful to justify that amount of time .

I read an interesting piece this week which you can find  here courtesy of @prawnseye

 There are so many strategies being used out there for guided reading.  I was observed in our recent Ofsted for an entire guided reading session which had good feedback so I hope that you can use some of the ideas.

(My class are a muxed year 4, 5 class. All classes follow a similar format in KS2 )

There are five groups which rotate throughout the week. Children are grouped according to their ability and moved into different groups if appropriate during the year.

Group activities:

1)     Guided reading- with an adult (teacher or TA) using a range of fiction and non fiction texts concentrating on AFs . We have various resources which suggest questions to use for the different AFs. We use some commercial guided reading scheme books alongside sets of books both fiction and non fiction. For example this term I using Michael Morpurgo’s Butterfly Lion with one group and The Hodgeheg (Dick Kng Smith ) with another. Records are kept each session to record responses (AF linked) which is used to assist tracking.

2)     Reading Journals- each child has a reading journal in which they keep activity sheets. These were produced by a previous LA advisor and tie in to AFs. We also have various “take your pick” activities for non fiction and fiction which the children complete independently. Sometimes this might be an activity linked to a class read. (For example during Ofsted this group were writing a first person account linked to the class story “The Indian in the Cupboard- Lynne Reid Banks. The inspector had asked me later why I had not scaffolded the work as it was fairly challenging and I explained its purpose was to establish their understanding and had been specifically designed to be an independent task. Positive feedback given.) We devote two of the sessions to reading journal time.

3)     Spellings/Handwriting The children use this time to practice their weekly spellings and to complete handwriting exercises. Each child has a folder for this.

4)     Independent reading. This time is for the children to read ANYTHING of their choice or to listen to an audio book (I am slowly building a collection) They don’t have to write anything at all J

Some children who have difficulties with their reading have more time on guided reading , but all children have time to read books of their choosing. It takes a bit of setting up at the start of the year- even though we do it all the way through the school the start of the new academic year is always like starting again from scratch! However, the initial effort is well worth it. Children make very good progress with their reading and the vast majority enjoy reading.

The new curriculum wont necessitate a huge change in the way we carry out our guided reading sessions. 

One of the most useful tips I can pass on is that I always write down the questions/AFs I am going to focus on a week in advance. This makes for far more structured and focused sessions. I also trained up my TAs by working with them to begin with so that they could take groups as well; this frees me up to hear readers or talk to the children during some sessions. Throughout the year groups change so that I will have worked with them all at some point.

Thanks for taking the time to read; I’d love to hear your views/opinions on this.

Some resources and ideas on pinterest here
A "how to " guide for the children here
More views and ideas here

Job sharing in Primary- Making it work.

I have been working as part of a job share now for two and a half years. I’m still finding my feet with it but am writing this in the hope to help others who are thinking about it or starting. At the end of my first full year job sharing I blogged about how it had gone http://mrshalford.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/challenges-of-job.html

I have really enjoyed this year- no irony in that statement at all. Even with a large class (35 at times) with the huge pile of marking, extra parent sessions, reports… There is so much in the press about teachers leaving the profession http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/2013/aug/01/why-are-teachers-leaving-education  Working part time for me has been the most positive step I have taken in my teaching career for some time. 

So, what works well in our class? Key has to be the communication. I have read about some teachers who are lucky to have some time each week when they are both in the class. Budgetary constraints don’t allow that at my school, but we do talk.

And talk.

And some more!

 We keep a book (filled two this year) in which we leave copious notes for each other. We talk on the phone at least twice a week. Oh yes, emails too! And the odd text.  Without that level of communication I can’t see how it could work effectively.  All the children and their parents know how regularly we talk about the class and this has helped us to build strong and positive relationships.  In an ideal world we would have one TA in the class who could be a consistent presence, but there are two of them as well! One works Monday and Friday, the other the middle part of the week.

We are very different in our personalities, in our teaching styles, in our interests. But what we share is our passion for teaching, for helping children to achieve their potential, to build their confidence and self esteem, to enable them to believe in themselves and to be proud of themselves, our class, our school.  We work in a school with a really well put together behaviour policy, that helps too.

When it comes to how we plan and deliver the curriculum that has been a constantly evolving process. Some subjects are split between us which works well. Maths and English (I know the terms are Literacy and Numeracy but I have a pet hate for those and insist on calling them maths and English !) Anyway, for the English this year I taught the majority of the genre work while my partner concentrated on the SPaG. This was commented on favourably by the subject leader during the course of the year through lesson observations and book moderation. We made good use of AFL so that areas that came up in my teaching needing reinforcement could be covered discretely and I would have a “zero tolerance” approach for the focus area each week. With the increased emphasis on SPaG we will definitely be carrying on with this next year. Of course there are also lots of opportunities for writing across the curriculum and we follow the Pie Corbett approach to non fiction writing and include all 6 areas each year so these are split between us.  http://www.talk4writing.com/index.html

Maths has been much more of a challenge. In the first year of job sharing we started by splitting the curriculum so that I did all the number work and my partner did all the shape,space, measure, data. This worked fairly well but my partner felt that she didn’t have enough knowledge of their ability in number.  We then tried to work as one teacher with one of us leaving plans for the other. It was a nice idea but planning for each other was very time consuming. This year we used the unit plans from the strategy and split the five units between us each term so that over the course of the yer we had both taught everything. This worked fairly well but is not the most consistent way for the children who would be doing one area Mon/Tues and another on Weds-Fri.

How are we going to organise it for this year? Not totally sure at the moment. Progress in maths was less than it was for reading and writing which would indicate that we need to look at how we are planning and teaching the subject. There have been some interesting ideas on twitter about planning the maths (http://www.broadbentmaths.com/)   Having asked the twittersphere’s opinions it seems that the number/everything else split is the most popular…

Why am I blogging about this? Partly to share what has worked well, partly to find out how others are making their job shares work well. It’s a constantly evolving process. Being able to communicate well, trust each other, share similar values are all key points. Most classes have at least one teacher with PPA cover so job sharing is more common than one might initially think. Having someone who knows the children as well as you is a real bonus.  

Challenge for next year is to get on top of the maths and be as effective as we possibly  can. Anyone who has any tips to share please do so.