Assessment

At Smawthorne Henry Moore Academy, we believe that assessment is a natural part of teaching and learning.  We use assessment to inform us about children’s learning and believe that the monitoring and evaluation of pupil progress is vital in raising standards and ensuring all pupils fulfil their potential.

Assessment is an integral part of our planning, evaluating, recording and reporting cycle.  It identifies what the child knows and can do and provides information to guide future teaching and learning in response to a child’s individual and/or group needs.

Assessment at Smawthorne Henry Moore can involve any of the following activities:

  • observation of children making choices and initiating own learning in response to previous teaching;
  • observations including photographic evidence;
  • learning walls;
  • pupil discussion;
  • questioning;
  • marking and responding to children’s work;
  • peer assessment;
  • formal tasks and tests set by the teacher;
  • diagnostic tests;
  • baseline assessments;
  • standardised tests (End of Key Stage SATs);
  • moderation of children’s work;
  • interviewing children;
  • work sampling and scrutiny;
  • target cards.

For more information about assessment at Smawthorne Henry Moore, please click on the Assessment Policy below. 

 

Assessment policy

 

Children are encouraged to self assess throughout the lesson and are encouraged to use their planners to inform staff how they are feeling about each task. Staff use this AFL (Assessment for Learning) to identify which children require additional support or small group interventions to address errors, gaps in knowledge and/or misconceptions.

 

Assessment Against Curriculum Objectives:

Please find below our National Curriculum Objective statements for each year group, used as an assessment tool across school.

Year One

Year Four

Year Two

Year Five

Early Years - Development Matters curriculum guidance

Year Three

Year Six

 

Statutory Assessments and SATs Information

 

All state primary pupils in England are tested at the end of Key Stage 2 (year 6) through Statutory tests (SATs). Children in year 6 take their tests on set dates in May. Results are then submitted to the local authority and parents are informed by the end of the summer term, usually on receiving their child's end of year report. The tests the children undertake are Reading, Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling (GPS) and Mathematics. The children's writing judgements are based upon  teacher assessment of work produced in class.

From September 2023, Key Stage 1 SATs will no longer be statutory but will become optional and schools can choose whether to administer these tests to year 2 pupils.  

 

Below is the link for the school and college performance measures website:

https://www.gov.uk/school-performance-tables

 

 

Early Years Assessments

The first statutory assessment takes place in our Preschool through a Two Year Progress Check. When a child is aged between two and three, practitioners must review their progress, and provide parents and/or carers with a short written summary of their child’s development in the prime areas (Physical development, Personal, social and emotional development and Communication and language development.). This progress check must identify the child’s strengths, and any areas where the child’s progress is less than expected and is always shared with the parents.

Children are also assessed on entry to Reception through use of a Statutory Baseline assessment. Each child engages in age appropriate tasks to identify whether they are working at the typical level of development within Literacy and Mathematics. Please see the attached leaflet for further infromation on the Baseline assessment.

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check

Every year in June, the Year One pupils take the National Phonics Screening check. The check consists of 20 real words and 20 pseudo-words that a pupil reads aloud to the teacher. Psuedo words, or 'alien-words', are words that that are phonically decodable but are not actual words with an associated meaning e.g. brip, snorb, twooch

Pseudo words are included in the check specifically to assess whether children can decode a word using phonics skills and not their memory. Although the check is not treated as a formal test, the children are expected to reach a benchmark level and assessments are submitted to the local authority. If a child does not reach the agreed pass mark, they must retake the test at the end of Year 2. These pupils receive extra phonics support throughout Year 2 to ensure they have the skills needed to competently read and write. Parents are informed of their child's results at the end of the year.

Click here to view our 'Phonics' page.

 

 

 

Year 4 Multiplication Tables Check

From the 2019/20 academic year onwards, schools have been required to administer an online multiplication tables check (MTC) to all Year 4 pupils. The National Curriculum specifies that pupils should be taught to recall the multiplication tables up to and including 12 × 12 by the end of Year 4.

The purpose of the MTC is to determine whether pupils can recall their times tables fluently, which is essential for future success in mathematics. It will help schools to identify pupils who have not yet mastered their times tables, so that additional support can be provided. Pupils will complete the MTC during a three week window in June.

Don't forget to access TT Rockstars to help your child practise their timetables: https://www.ttrockstars.com 

You can also access the following website which uses a similar format to the one children will encounter when completing the statutory check: https://www.timestables.co.uk/multiplication-tables-check/