It's that time of the year when teachers are torn... we have the countdown till the summer holidays and the weight of assessments to deal with. Personally, I am pretty sorted with my assessments. We had the SAT's last week in my year group and all mine are completed and marked- go me!! Now I am updating APP which is Assessing Pupil Progress. I'm sorry if this bores you but at the moment it's one of the few things on my mind. Not in a stressful way as I am way ahead for once (I have even started on class reports would you believe?!) but it's a lot of work and concentration.
With APP, the idea is to study 6 children at various abilities throughout the year and use these to support assessments and then almost generalise to the other children at their level. Personally I disagree with the idea of it in the way that it is generalised to all children. After all, aren't we taught that children are all individual and no two are alike? Surely this generalisation isn't going to be 100% successful. On the hand I like the specificness of the assessment grids and they are extremely useful to use when planning lessons which are differentiated for all the different abilities in class.
Click on this link and then look at the pdf file if you fancy seeing wheat an 'average' level 2/3 child in my class should be achieving. I know not many of you will be that interested in this (believe me I sometime get bored of it myself) but if you're a teacher then you may have some interest. We than have to have it A3 size and annotate dates to match work in books/whole class discussion/mental maths tests to the different statements and at this point in the year decide on whether the child is low, secure or high in their level.
After all the SAT's, I am now assessing via this to give evidence to support my teacher assessment which I give the kids for the end of the year. Therefore during the whole school moderation, there should be no holes to pick with my levels which in turn leads to a much calmer end of term for me allowing me to focus on topic assessments, sports day co-ordination, class play, teaching and marking. Not much to do then!! I love it really...most of the time!
Anyway I thought I'd share one of the perks of being a teacher...Queens final on a big screen in my classroom:
Then the flip of the coin... my evening:
Any extremes for your job or any great perk?
I'm glad, I am not the only one working at night :/ I hope you can get the study accomplished quickly as well. I am not sure what to think of it either, I am not fond of studies that "grade" children or humans in general. I mean, after all, who is someone else to judge me or my child? I am sorry you guys have to do that! Like you said, 6 more weeks -- fight on as we trojans say :)
ReplyDeleteAs soon as I read the title of this post I felt your pain! I disagree with APP too for the same reasons as you, although as an NQT I find it really helpful when setting learning objectives for all my groups, so I suppose every cloud has a silver lining. If only I could use it next year... damn FS2!
ReplyDeleteAny tips for how to keep on top of all your paperwork like you have are welcome!
@ Reb- Imagine how happy we will be when we're free...well until we go back to work again haha!!
ReplyDelete@Summer- Yea, I too love it for sorting specific objectives and knowing where the kids need to go to.The only tip I can say when it comes to sat's is mark the same day they do them because once you lose it it's so hard to get back up to date!! I know what it's like, I taught foundation stage one year. Another tip is to make sure each group has a tray so when they do something for their learning journey stick it in their tray. It's easier to sort that way when you do the journeys (keep them in matching groups too).
Thank you for that, I'll make sure I source some spare trays when setting up my classroom! What experience I have had of FS2 involved lots of sorting for learning journeys so I'll definitely try that to make it easier :)
ReplyDelete@Summer- No problem!! I used to spend time updating groups at a time. Plus if you want to type it then set up your border and design in Publisher and just edit into it each time. Any questions just ask :-)
ReplyDelete