Assessment

• We aim for marking to be effective and meaningful whilst not impacting on teacher workload. We think, ‘Who is the marking for?’ and ‘What impact will it have on the child’s learning?’. Therefore, we respond to children’s learning using a marking code

 (which is easy for the children to understand and gives immediate feedback), longer next step challenges, peer marking and feedback, self-assessment, small group marking and feedback and whole class feedback.

We want the children to be involved in their learning journey and progress.

• We have introduced ‘Attitudes to Learning’, which give the children greater involvement in their learning throughout the school. We adopt a ‘Growth Mindset’ approach to all learning and mistakes are not seen as weakness but as a means to learn and improve.

• Teachers check pupils’ understanding systematically through ‘sticky quizzes’ at the start of a lesson and ‘high challenge, low stake’ tests at the end of a unit or focus area.

• Through the use of assessment for learning, the teachers are able to identify misconceptions accurately. These misconceptions are noted on planning documents and teaching is adapted as necessary.

• The planning is organised systematically and acts like building blocks, small steps towards an end goal. At each stage the children’s understanding is checked. Where necessary learning is revisited before moving on.

• Teachers are aware that assessment will not only identify those children who need extra support, but also those who might need to their learning to progress faster or who require an extra challenge.

• Children who require extra support are able to have small group sessions to pre-teach or reinforce learning. These children are identified each lesson and will vary each time.

• The schools marking and feedback policy is evolving and adapting to ensure effective ways to feedback to pupils and robust means to measure pupil progress throughout the year, whilst taking into account the wellbeing of pupils and staff.

• The school has introduced Sticky Quizzes to help ensure that children retain the knowledge that they are learning.

• In order to monitor the children’s progress and put immediate support in place to support children where needed we use ‘Pre-unit Tests’ and ‘End of unit tests’

• Blooms Questioning is used throughout the curriculum.

• NFER tests offer a standardised score which can be used to support teacher assessment. These are completed in the Autumn and Summer term only.