Supporting Narrative Structure in KS1

We have been talking about how we can get the children who are in our KS1 narrative group for speech and language to apply some of the skills they are learning in the classroom.

A session with the SALSA in year 3 used these narrative symbols to discuss their guided reading book and identify who is in the story, what events have taken place, when they occurred and where they occurred.  We thought this was a great idea and could also be used to support pupils with planning their own narratives if the story mountain is too complex for them.

Feedback Symbols

We've been exploring ways of using symbols to allow younger pupils to access teacher feedback more independently. Here are some of our suggestions so far. The idea is that they are easy to follow for younger pupils - finger spaces, adjectives, capitals and full stops - and that they provide opportunities for pupils of all abilities to access and respond to feedback. Hopefully, they will impact on learning and progress.

I Can't Do It.... Yet!

We thought this is rather nice way of promoting a learning mindset in school. We borrowed this idea from another school.Turning the negative to a positive and promoting resilience through the way we talk to children and getting them to use this language themselves is our challenge.

What Makes a Good Book...?

Keeping up to date with current good children's literature is a challenge but here's a link we thought would be good to share on the announcement of this year's CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals' short list. These  are the UK's oldest and most prestigious children's book awards. Often described by authors and illustrators as 'the one they want to win' - they are the gold standard in children's literature.

The CILIP Carnegie Medal is awarded by children's librarians for an outstanding book for children and young people.
The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal is awarded by children's librarians for an outstanding book in terms of illustration for children and young people.

Google Education - The Way Forward...?

As a school, we have embraced the world of Google Apps for Education. We have, for example, been using the Gmail, Calendar, Drive and Blogger features for some time. One of the key factors for us has been that each of these applications has been totally free of cost. It seems Google are continuing to make improvements to their Educational Apps and this is includes a new 'Classroom' feature which to us seems a very promising step forward. We'll be exploring this in the next few weeks and seeing what benefits it might have to our staff and pupils. 

Am I a multiple of...?

How about trying this 'Mastery' activity in Maths....?

Did you know that if you double the last digit and subtract it from the number left by the remaining digits and if that equals 0 or is divisible by 7 then your starting number is a multiple of 7!  E.g. 672; 67 - 4 = 63 which is divisible by 7 so therefore 672 is a multiple of 7.  Challenge children to establish rules for finding multiples of numbers from 2 to 10.

A number is a multiple of:

2 if the last digit is even (0, 2, 4, 6, 8).

3 if the sum of the digits is divisible by 3.

4 if the last 2 digits are divisible by 4.

5 if the last digit is 0 or 5.

6 if the number is divisible by 2 (i.e. even) AND 3 (i.e. sum of digits is divisible by 3).

7 if you double the last digit and subtract it from the number made by the rest of the remaining digits and it equals 0 or is divisible by 7 e.g. 672; 67 - 4 = 63 which is divisible by 7.

8 if the last 3 digits are divisible by 8

9 if the sum of the digits is divisible by 9

10 if the number ends in a 0.

Reading 'Card' Updated

We have been following up our review of reading at BMPS and creating one of our 'cards'. We use these 'cards' as a guide to what's expected at Bitterne Manor Primary. This particular card highlights the key aspects of how Reading fits into our school curriculum. While we think we are doing lots of things well, we still have some work to do to ensure teaching and learning in Reading matches our high expectations. These areas include how we develop our partnership with parents in supporting their children with their reading at home. This might take the form of a new home school diary or record. We are also still in transition from levels to bands and we feel there is a lot of work still to do to ensure we are giving our children the right opportunities to appreciate a range of books and learn appropriate reading skills right across the school.

Parent Questionnaire Results

We are pleased to share the results from our parent questionnaire shared at last Parents Evening. We had just over 100 responses.

Some comments shared were:

‘My child is happy with being in school…’

‘My son enjoys attending school and is making progress in all areas.’

‘Homework focus could be more Maths based.’

‘Friendly, nurturing environment for kids.’

‘…as parents you want 3 things; your child to be safe, happy and make progress. At Bitterne Manor we have all of these.’

‘…like to receive information about my child’s progress more often, so I can continue some topics at home.’

Thank you to all for responding. Some very useful comments for the school to reflect on. 

'Each Child Capable of Anything'

Our staff meeting this week was based on continuing to develop our ideas on how pupils will be progressing through the new curriculum and what this will look like. We watched a summary of Tim Oates, chair of the expert panel reviewing the new curriculum, speech on assessment below.

We were helped by an article called 'The Ripple Effect' which suggested the following 3 stages to structure learning: 

· New Learning - beginning to grasp new concepts, skills and knowledge
· Consolidation- carefully scaffolding tasks to allow practising and working within these areas
· Appliction – independence and choice leading to mastery so pupils are secure

Following a discussion around some samples of work the teachers had brought with them, we decided upon our next steps to think about:

· Developing sequences of learning to structure deeper learning. Does this happen in a lesson or across a series of lessons? A week? A term?

· Planning opportunities for the steps. We need to use the stages to help us support learning - is it a new learning lesson? How often is it completely new learning?

· Task design. What do activities look like for the stages? Would you see all three stages in the same lesson? Would different groups be at different stages?

Mastering the New Curriculum

We have been having a lot of discussion recently about how we plan and assess in the new curriculum as we move from levels to bands. One of our big discussions has been around the concept of 'mastery'. Our key idea is that children will no longer master the new curriculum simply by covering it but we need to provide a structure for deeper learning by moving them through stages. These stages need to be carefully planned to provide children with appropriate activities and opportunities to move through the stages of learning at the right pace.

Assessment Updates

We have been reviewing our assessment procedures and updated our website here with information on the new curriculum bands and steps. We are constantly reviewing the way we assess pupils and how we share and report this information. This is very much a work in progress!

Our website link is here.

DfE Announcement: Improving Primary School Assessment...

Message from the DfE:

A new teacher-led commission will be set up to help primary schools as they move away from the ‘vague and imprecise’ system of levels for assessment - School Reform Minister Nick Gibb announced today.

The minister said that assessment using levels - where pupils are grouped into broad bands from 1 to 8 - was misleading to parents and failed to ensure children acquired a good grasp of the basics.

As part of its plan for education, the Department for Education first announced that primary schools would be moving away from using level descriptors in 2013. Since then the department has been working with schools to support them as they develop their own assessment systems.

School Reform Minister Nick Gibb said:

Ensuring pupil assessment provides an accurate picture of a pupil’s attainment and progress without placing a bureaucratic burden on teachers is a key part of the government’s plan for education.

Levels have been a distracting, over-generalised label, giving misleading signals about the genuine attainment of pupils.

Crucially, they failed to give parents clarity over how their children were performing and also resulted in a lack of trust between primary and secondary schools - clogging up the education system with undependable data on pupil attainment.

The commission announced today will help schools develop their own, more accurate assessment systems that truly show how a child is performing in the classroom.

Level descriptors were only ever intended to be used to sum up a pupil’s attainment and progress at the end of 2 key stages (age 7 and 11 at primary school), however some schools had started to use them as a form of ongoing assessment.

The government wants to reduce central prescription and believes teachers should have the freedom to develop formative assessment systems that best fit the needs of their pupils. This approach will bring England in line with the top-performing countries and regions in the world, including Singapore and Hong Kong.

There are already examples of good practice where schools have developed their own systems which do not rely on levels, such as Westminster Academy in London, one of the winners of the Assessment Innovation Fund, and Wroxham Primary School in Potter’s Bar.

At Westminster Academy, teachers have broken down the curriculum into 15 topics which are each independently assessed via an in-class quiz, homework and an end-of-term exam. A score is produced for each topic and then used to provide an average score. Teachers then use topic scores to provide support where needed.

To help schools as they undertake these important changes and develop their own assessment schemes, the Department for Education is establishing a commission on assessment without levels.

This commission will continue the evidence-based approach to assessment that the government has already put in place, and will support primary and secondary schools with the transition to assessment without levels, identifying and sharing good practice in assessment. The commission will be chaired by John McIntosh, a member of the National Curriculum Review Advisory Committee and former headmaster of the London Oratory School.

In his speech, the minister also said the models for measuring progress led to a narrow focus on getting pupils over boundaries - at level 4, at age 11, and at grade C or above at GCSE.

In his speech, School Reform Minister Nick Gibb said:

The education system lost sight of the need for a genuine conversation between parents and schools to help parents support their children - on this part of reading or that part of maths - rather than focusing on a blanket judgment.

In short, levels were just too vague and imprecise. They were misleading as to what pupils knew and could do. The use of levels was pushing pupils on to new material - in the name of ‘pace’ - when they had not adequately understood vital content, and had serious gaps in their knowledge.

We had a system swimming in defective data on attainment and failed to see that our legal commitment to giving all children access to all of the national curriculum had been compromised.

The government announced the use of level descriptors would end in 2013. The new national curriculum was introduced in September 2014. National curriculum test sample materials for the tests of the new national curriculum will be made available to schools in June 2015.