SATs - What Is All The Fuss About?

I have been thinking about writing this post for a while. Year 6 SATs are a massive deal for primary school - the results are used as one way of judging the effectiveness of a school by people such as OFSTED. It seems that a lot of schools are also making them a big deal for children too. This has led to worrying stories about Year 6 children getting stressed and anxious about them. As I am sure anybody would agree, that isn't good.

Where does this stress come from? Is it something that is filtered down from the teachers because they are feeling the pressure. They know the impact a 'bad' set of results could have on their own performance management (if that is one of their targets). They also know that the results matter for the school. It could affect what category OFSTED put the school in and all the ramifications that come with that.

Is it pressure from the media? There's usually a few stories about SATs on the television news or in the papers.

Is it pressure from parents because they want their child to do well because they have been given the impression by someone or something that it will affect the life chances of their child?

Is it pressure created by the school due to all the pre and post SATs events such as booster classes and after SATs parties and trips? What about the other year groups that work just as hard but don't get a trip/party? Does a Year 6 child really work harder in SATs week than in a normal teaching week?

Imagine a child that was feeling the pressure from ALL of these places. That is a lot for a child who is eleven to handle.

What about if we didn't tell them? What if we just gave them the tests on the day and didn't mention any kind of significance. I like what @shinpad1 (Sinead) said on Twitter about how they call them puzzle books with their children. No big deal. Just do them and move on. If the children receive high quality teaching throughout KS2 then there should be no need for booster classes. I realise this may be an ideal world but are we going about things the wrong way?

I'm not advocating a particular stance but I do worry about the pressure that SATs puts on our children and whether we can alleviate it by going about things in a different way.

Thanks for reading and I'd be very interested in your thoughts.

The Power Of Pre-teaching

Differentiation can be a thorny subject amongst teachers, SLT and inspectors. There is not enough of it, it's not really matched to the abilities of the pupils, we shouldn't be doing any at all. This post is not about a rationale for differentiation, more about a technique that I have found useful to support the less able.

By pre-teaching I mean teaching a one or a groups of children the concept to be taught in an upcoming lesson before they encounter it in said lesson. This may be done just before the lesson, say during assembly time or it may be done the day before. This will depend on the concept and the children who are involved.

Essentially, the idea is that it gives children who are not as confident with the subject matter a bit of a headstart when the lesson happens for the rest of the class. It is different from flipped learning in that the concept is taught before the lesson rather than the children being exposed to the concept through a video or other resource that they access themselves.

I have seen it work wonders for children's confidence. Only last week, a Year 5 pupil who struggles with an aspect of grammar was taught the concept half an hour before the lesson started in a small group situation with the class teacher. When this child was faced with the work in the lesson itself, he literally and mentally rolled his sleeves up and powered on with it.

Obviously, pre-teaching can't be done all the time but it does offer another way of helping those children who may find it difficult to master certain concepts. If nothing else, it should give them the confidence to approach the lesson feeling that they have a chance to succeed.

Top Ten Tips For Being A Playground Hero(ine)

Playground duties are probably not high on a teacher's favourite things to do list. Well, they are certainly not high on mine. Maybe it's just me. However, they are a useful opportunity to observe the social skills of children in your school. If you are lucky, you may see all ten of the following top tips happening. If you don't see any or only a few, start searching TES for job adverts. Or instead, think about how you could help the children in your school display more of them. I believe that if these seemingly simple things are happening in a playground near you, your school is likely to be a happy place.

1. If you see someone wandering around on their own, go and ask them to join in a game you are playing.

2. Wait patiently for your turn to use any climbing equipment.

3. If you are hit by a flying object, give the person who made it fly chance to apologise.

4. If someone is hurt, help them to get help.

5. Take part in group games but be clear about the rules before you do.

6. Speak to everyone you come across kindly.

7. If someone bumps into you, give them chance to apologise.

8. If you cause an object to fly and it hits somebody, apologise.

9. If you bump into somebody, apologise.

10. Share the space you are in so everyone can play their games.

Getting Ready For September

Edu-Twitter and teacher Facebook groups are awash with photos from teachers' classrooms that have been prepared for the new academic year. While I admire their dedication, I do worry about when they switch off. Having said this, I have seen several very useful ideas on Twitter and far be it from me to tell anyone how to spend their summer.  I am barely coming out of the end of term fog that descended on  me as I crawled to the end of the summer term. I also realise the irony of wondering about when teachers switch off while writing a blog post about teaching.

For what it's worth, I wanted to share how I intend to prepare for the new year in September in case it may be of use to anyone else.

Routines
I spend some time in the summer holidays thinking about what routines I need to put in place with my new class at the start of the year. These don't vary much but I think it is important to reflect on them and tweak them as it is such an important thing to get right. In the first few days of September, I will try to get these firmly established as it saves so much time later.

Organisation
This is something that I think about a lot. I have tried various systems for organising resources and seating. I have tried rows, groups, pencil pots, having nothing on the tables at all. Which method I have used has often depended on the class I am getting rather than just using the same system every year. I try to aim for minimum movement and minimum distractions in order to maximise lesson time. This year, I am going to try having plastic zip wallets for each child with all the resources they may need. I'm also going to make bound booklets of resources for children to help themselves with their writing. Both of these ideas were ideas I saw on Twitter.

Displays
My displays will be minimal to start with. I will add to them as we do the work in class. I am not a fan of word walls. Often the words are too small for the children to read anyway unless they go up to them which goes against my minimum movement ethos. Secondly, if they are single words out of context, they are pretty useless anyway. I have seen word walls with lots of conjunctions on them that are of little use as an aid for the children as it doesn't have them in context. If a child wants to use 'because' from the wall and you have to explain how it is used then it defeats the object of it being an independent resource. All of this is why I prefer the bound booklets of resources as the children have them to hand and they can read them. You can also differentiate them if necessary.

Books
I am going to spend time reading both children's books that I want to use in class and one or two 'teacher' books. It is my choice to do this and I enjoy doing it.

Apart from a short meeting with my year group partner at some point, that is all the preparation I intend to do for September. I would like to start the year re-charged and ready to go. We all prepare in different ways, do what works for you.

How To Create A Reading Culture In Your Classroom

When I was a young(er) teacher, I found the teaching of reading quite difficult. I was trained when the National Literacy Strategy was first introduced. Everybody was using the carousel and big books. I never felt completely happy that I was getting it right. Some children read at home, some didn't. Significant groups of children that passed through my hands never seemed that bothered about reading, they saw it as just another lesson.

Having reflected over the years and tried to refine my approach to the teaching of reading, I have come to realise that for it to be really successful, it is a good idea to try to create a reading culture in your classroom. A culture where children are excited by books, where children know about books, where children are eager to discuss what they read including playing around with vocabulary they find in books. This blog post is my way of explaining how I have gone about creating a reading culture in my classroom.

1. Moved from a carousel approach to whole class reading. 
I know this can be a contentious issue but I just find whole class reading works better for me. This has been heavily influenced by reading 'Reading Reconsidered' by Doug Lemov. In my teaching of whole class reading, I have used techniques from this book successfully. While there are some fantastic novel studies on www.literacyshedplus.com, this can create a resourcing issues as even enough books for half the class is costly. I agree with Ashley Booth (a children's literature expert) that extracts can often be the way to go, downloaded from places like www.lovereading4kids.com (which is unfortunately disappearing at the end of July) as this means every child can follow the text as it is read. The film VIPERS on literacyshedplus.com would also help with this issue as would any film-based reading. Anyway, I am not going to preach the case for whole class reading here. Just to say that it seems to work well for me and the children I teach.

2. Early Finish reading.
On each group table in my classroom is a basket of books that the children have chosen from the classroom library. It is there so the children can easily reach for their book if they have a spare 5 minutes after finishing a piece of work or at the start of the day/after lunch or any other time when they are not being directed to do something else. This is a book they have chosen because they like it. I don't control their choice other than to try to keep my classroom library stocked with good quality books. To go with this, they have a plastic wallet where they record the books they have read with a simple star rating review system and space for a short comment if they want to. This has to be kept an eye on initially to stop those children who flick through a few pages and then change the book. However, once the expectations are established, this doesn't tend to happen.

3. Reading to the children
I read to my class every day. I can't over state the impact that this has had. Children tell me it is their favourite time of the day (even better than playtime - ok, maybe not). When I read the first Stitch Head book by Guy Bass, the children loved it so much, many of them went to their parents and demanded that they purchase the entire series. It has also led to children sharing books with each other and in some cases, donating books to the class library. It is a great way to discuss vocabulary that comes up and sneakily hit other comprehension objectives.

4. Home Reading Chart
Like many classes when they reach Year 4, the amount of reading done at home varied a lot with my class. I had a chart on my wall where the children were given a star if they read a book at home. It didn't have to be one from the reading books they take home from school as long as their parents signed to say it had been read. There were no fancy certificates, I just use as a way of the children being able to see hoe much they are reading and to celebrate those that are reading lots.

5. Extreme Reading
This is where the children send in photos of themselves reading in unusual places. It is a bit of fun but I use it as a way of encouraging the children to be thinking about reading and books as much as possible and for them to appreciate that reading is an enjoyable activity.


I know none of this is ground-breaking but it has all contributed to making a class of fairly reluctant readers into a class that, in the majority, are enthusiastic about reading and have made excellent progress in their reading.

3-0 Down With Five Minutes To Go

On Saturday, I attended the second annual Primary Rocks Live event at Medlock Primary School in Britain's greatest city. Actually, I am privileged enough to be part of the organising team. As a result, my experience started on Friday afternoon. This involved a few hours setting up 200+ chairs, shifting thousands of musical instruments and being told what to do by the legendary Sophie Merrill. The event itself from us in the organising team felt like a roaring success. This may seem arrogant but I attribute that success in the most part to the people that came to learn, to speak and to network. Us organisers merely provided the platform.

For many reasons that I won't bore you with, teaching has become a very challenging job to be in at the moment. In the past, it was challenging but in more positive ways. If teaching were a football match, sometimes it can feel that you are playing for the team that is 3-0 down with only five minutes to go and desperately trying to find a way to claw yourself back to a respectable draw.

So, at 9.30am on Saturday 19th March, we were 3-0 with five minutes to go. Then Gaz Needle stepped up and delivered his battle-cry. This definitely rallied the players and we were all suddenly up for the fight.

Next, was Paul Dix who smashed one into the top corner with his wonderful presentation about how to aim for adult consistency when tackling behaviour. 3-1 Things were looking up, there was a chance we could do it!

Up stepped the first round of speakers in their workshops. The corridors emptied at lightning speed as people dashed to make it to their first choice of workshop. All the rooms were crammed full of eager people soaking up the ideas. 3-2

In the afternoon, after a hearty lunch (yes, I used my access to the kitchen to snaffle an extra muffin), the workshops began again. Jungles were built. Ofsted's National Director arrived and was led to his room by a barely comprehensible me, trying to make small-talk. Gaz Had sent me with him as his tech support. Yet it was he who found the button to turn the Smart board on! I  rapidly retreated, mumbling something about there being muffins and ice-cream downstairs. Another great round of workshops rounded off with a brilliant keynote by Michael Tidd about marking and feedback. 3-3

After Rob Smith had closed the day, there was a rapid clear-up session (much quicker than putting it all out on Friday) due to all the people that stayed and helped. Then we headed for the pub. This was where we started to network, New friendships were made. Old ones re-ignited. Positivity was everywhere. Like an extra-time header at the far post. 3-4, game won. The spark was back. Thanks to everyone that came, see you next year.

Beyond The Crib Sheet - An Idea For Low Stakes Assessment

I was thinking about the panel discussion from Primary Rocks Live 2016. The dreaded KS2 SATs was mentioned. Jon Brunskill suggested that we should have SATs every year. Jon is someone whose opinion I respect enormously and I found myself agreeing with this idea. It got me thinking about how this could be drilled down to low stakes assessment on a regular basis in the classroom. Recently, I saw a post on Twitter about a marking crib sheet. Unfortunately, I can't remember the name of the teacher who initially shared it but I thought it was a great idea. I thought, why not do a combination of the two. A quick system for assessing while marking that would act as a form of low stakes assessment which in turn would inform teaching and learning for the following week.

Anyway, I am not suggesting I am inventing anything original. In fact, I am using great ideas from other people (such as the afore mentioned teacher). This has led me to come up with simple assessment grids for English and Maths (see links below). I intend to use them weekly as a way of gathering data quickly following some form of assessment activity carried out by the children. In English, this might take the form of a long write/short write based on some form of stimulus and include elements of SPAG that you have been working on as part of the success criteria. For maths, I would ask the children to complete a weekly skills check in whatever form suits. This will include work covered that week and previous weeks.

When I collect the books in, I will then complete the English Weekly Assessment and the Maths Weekly Assessment. This will enable me to adjust my plans for the following week if necessary.


English Weekly Assessment Grid

Maths Weekly Assessment Grid

The 'Extra Mile' children mentioned in the grids would be the children who have exceeded/gone into greater depth or whatever you want to call it.

The 'Star Models' would be examples of vocabulary, sentences that you would like to share with the class in the following week.

Please bear in mind that this is my first attempt at this so it may need adjusting. However, I am going to give it a try next half-term. By all means feel free to use the grids in your classrooms.