Despite a greater focus on spelling in schools, some children are still at risk of not making the expected standard because of gaps in their spelling knowledge. It seems that some pupils still struggle to retain and apply what has been taught, especially the content of the Y5/6 spelling expectations. Often, these children do not have the firm foundations of the previous year groups’ spelling content on which to build. Additionally, they do not seem to see any analogies between words, or patterns that appear across words, but instead, they view each word as a new and unique entity. Conversely, we can all think of children who just know how to spell a word after first exposure to it - they even seem able to spell words they have never met before. One might question whether these children are visual learners with a phenomenal memory for individual words or whether they have actually got a very efficient scheme for sorting, grouping and storing words in their long term memory. With thousands of words to assimilate and remember, perhaps all children need to be taught the most efficient way to organise their spelling knowledge ready for access ‘on demand’.
In order to support children with this knowledge organisation, it is imperative that spelling lessons are not simply given over to practising sets of words, as is often the case. Instead, time must be prioritised to teach the patterns, conventions and rules so that children can apply this knowledge to new words. Once an original GPC (grapheme phoneme correspondence) has been learned for the 44 sounds in the English language, learners will be shown alternative ways to represent these sounds in spelling. New learning should build on prior learning. For example, children have learnt ‘ee’ for feel but now learn that some words are spelt with ‘ea’ like cream. Attention should be drawn to patterns and analogies so that children can best predict which version to use. For example, ea often follows an r or t or precedes an m e.g. scream, dream, team or tease.
Likewise, connections to existing knowledge should be supported by reminding children of what they already know. For example, if children are secure with the Y1 knowledge that the digraph ‘oy’ is found at the end of syllables such as boy or toy but that the same phoneme is spelt ‘oi’ when in the middle of a syllable like join and boil, they can also spell annoy or destroy as well as embroiled or boiler. If a child can articulate this knowledge, there is a good chance that s/he can apply it to unfamiliar words and have a better chance of spelling them correctly. It is feasible that children who are confident spellers are creating a schema in their minds: new learning is assimilated and stored within the appropriate section. If a child is supported to remember the pattern or convention pertaining to a section, they have fewer facts to remember than if they are trying to remember each word individually. However, frequent recall of that pattern is essential to build this into the long term memory and facilitate recall.
Connection building should not stop with KS1 phonics. At a glance, the Y5/6 spelling list seems to be a random collection of unconnected words. They could be grouped according to theme, or grouped broadly into spelling patterns such as ‘words containing silent letters’, or simply given to children in batches of ten or so words at a time, for them to practise and learn. But can they be linked to prior learning in order to add to a child’s internalised spelling schema?
Let’s take the first word on the list: accommodation. If you give children this word to learn, they may well remember it for a test on Friday. If you teach children a mnemonic for this such as ‘there is room for two c’s and two m’s in accommodation’ then they may well be able to recall the correct spelling of this word when they need it. But how often will they need it? Will the mnemonic be forgotten or muddled by the time the word is next employed? If however, you teach children that a consonant is generally doubled if it appears immediately after a short vowel (such as the short a and first o in accommodation) then a pupil will not only know how to spell this word, but over twenty more that use this convention in the Y5/6 list alone, as well as hundreds of others that they use in their day to day writing.
The ‘doubling after a short vowel’ convention is a handy trick to have up your sleeve. It’s also one that many primary pupils seem oblivious to, as I tend to see lack of doubling (and sometimes doubling where it is not required) as a common spelling issue across key stage 2. The words affected range from two syllable words ending in -y such as happy or in –le such as middle, to adding suffixes for words such as dropped or swimming, all the way through to multi-syllabic words such as disappeared or opportunity. When questioned, many children are unable to articulate the ‘rule’ of doubling and yet this is something that is taught in reception (less, puff, ill) and Y1 (puppy/ jelly vs baby/ lady) and then again in Y2 (where you need to be able to decide whether to double up in jungle or puddle, jumping or skipping). It stands to reason that regular revisiting of this convention would consolidate prior knowledge and give children a much firmer foundation on which to add the Year 5/6 statutory words that follow.
Clearly, to know whether to double a consonant or not is an essential piece of knowledge and that is why these conventions are introduced in KS1. The same must be said of spelling statements pertaining to the various –le endings or the addition of suffixes. However, many spelling schemes seem to ignore (or at best give scant notice to) the very first statement in each national curriculum spelling appendix, which clearly states that children should revise work done in previous years. At the head of the Y3/4 programme of study for example, it advises: Revision of work from years 1 and 2. Pay special attention to the rules for adding suffixes. In general, most schemes focus on age related expectations, assuming prior teaching has been retained for good. However, if you have a child in Y6 who is still spelling hopeful with a double l or families with a y, then the chances are that he or she has forgotten all about the Y2 programme of study from four years ago. Hence my initial point about tracking back to build on prior learning and providing opportunities for spaced recall of that learning. Indeed, for some children, the Y2 programme of study may have eluded them altogether. Many of the suffixes such as –ment, -less or –ness are requirements for children working at the greater depth standard, so there is a good chance that some children may have been working on earlier spelling priorities or trying to secure early phonics at the time, and have never really been taught these conventions.
The 2019 GPS paper has once again had a heavy focus on words from the Y3/4 programme of study, thus reinforcing the idea that prior learning needs to be revisited. However, if children have gaps in spelling knowledge pertaining to the Y2 programme of study, then even tracking back to Y3/4 may not be enough. There are few words that rely solely on one KS2 spelling pattern. For example, although the word thoughtful was included with reference to the Y5/6 spelling words containing the letter string –ough, children will also need to know the Y2 teaching of adding the suffix –ful. Similarly, the mark scheme refers to the Y3/4 suffix knowledge –ous for the word generous but children will also need to know about the soft g (/dʒ/) from Y2. As the Y2 spelling programme of study seems to form the bedrock of spelling in KS2, it is wise to allow time to revisit it as much as possible during the first term of each year. For a full analysis of the 2019 spelling paper, please see the attached document:
To conclude, a systematic shoring up of the foundations of spelling knowledge, aided by strategies to secure retention will help children with gaps in their spelling. The first step is the identification of the gaps to enable tracking back to prior learning. The following ‘track back’ documents from HFL Education are designed to show teachers how the spelling statements link and build, thus aiding planning and differentiation. Click on the respective image for further information:
You have likely stumbled upon or explored Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction. If not, we would recommend reading this superb article which was the first to comprehensively bring these principles to mainstream educators. It will undoubtedly resonate, and many of you will be saying to yourself, as we did, ‘I’m sure I already do plenty of this in my day to day classroom practice.’ It’s reassuring then, to know that these principles of instruction are built upon robust research:
‘research on how the mind acquires and uses information, the instructional procedures that are used by the most successful teachers, and the procedures invented by researchers to help students learn difficult tasks’.
When teaching reading and writing across the primary phase, we will find ourselves calling upon each of these 10 principles at various points within lessons and across sequences of lessons. Spelling does often come to mind though, when considering which aspect of the English curriculum relies more heavily on memory. When creating the ESSENTIALspelling scheme for Y2-Y6, we wanted to create something which explicitly drew upon what we now knew about effective instruction and learning, reflecting the insights of Rosenshine, and others. We wanted to come away from teaching children to memorise lists of words for spelling tests, and move towards teaching children to internalise and understand our spelling system, enabling them to build words from a knowledge of how to do so, rather than attempting to draw from a memorised list.
We wanted children to be able to apply this knowledge into their independent writing. Rosenshine states that, “Education involves helping a novice to develop strong, readily accessible background knowledge. It’s important that background knowledge be readily accessible, and this occurs when knowledge is well-rehearsed and tied to other knowledge.”
Tom Sherrington’s ‘Rosenshine’s Principles in Action’ is an extremely helpful publication, in which he explores each of the principles, providing useful examples. He states that ‘We organise information into schemata. Typically, new information is only stored if we can connect it to knowledge that we already have.’ So children need to access prior learning, not just for its own sake, but with the express intent of building upon that knowledge as a secure foundation.
For spelling instruction to be successful then, this idea must be harnessed; we must remind children of all that they know about a particular convention or phoneme, and build on that knowledge. For instance, when teaching children that the /dʒ/ phoneme is sometimes spelt dge in words like fudge, and dodge, we must first remind them that they already know that j spells /dʒ/ in jam and sometimes /dʒ/ is spelt with a g in words like giant and giraffe. Now we are carefully and deliberately building up a schema in the minds of the children, which will stick. Starting new learning from a point of drawing on existing knowledge also grows self-awareness, self-esteem and independence. ‘I knew more than I realised!’
We will explore how each of Rosenshine’s Principles might be considered and applies when teaching spelling and its place in the widely used spelling sequence of Review, Teach, Practice and Apply, as illustrated in the screenshot of one of our ESSENTIALspelling plans here:
1. Begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning: daily review can strengthen previous learning and can lead to fluent recall
Recall and review of previous learning can take various forms. A short sharp daily activity to memorise common exception words or high-frequency words that are commonly misspelt in our pupils’ books will grow automaticity and fluency with these words, which will eventually free up working memory.
The National Curriculum 2014 spelling programme of study will be familiar to us all, but far too many spelling schemes do not appear to take account of the statement underneath each and every year group heading: Revision of work from … Therefore, schools and teachers dive into the programme of study for their year group without taking stock of what may need to be revised from the previous year groups. There is little point in teaching a child to spell ‘committee’ correctly, when we see ‘untill’ appearing in their independent writing repeatedly. It is important to pick the correct battles with that revision; we would suggest revisiting higher-stakes learning (words which appear most often in the English language and which are so often misspelt).
In year 3, for example, this revision might begin with the long vowel phonemes from key stage one. As they move into key stage two, children are often still selecting the correct phoneme, but choosing to represent it with the wrong grapheme. For instance, they might spell the word ‘flake’ flaik, or flayk. This is phonetically plausible but not orthographically correct. Using the ‘best bet’ approach can help with this common error. We could tell children that -ay is the best bet for the long at the end of a word, rarely in the middle; the split a_e is often found where the final sound in the word is a k. This is knowledge that they may well have been taught, but not retained. If we acknowledge that it is unreasonable for children to spelling patterns, rules or conventions from previous weeks, terms or years, then the principle of reviewing prior learning becomes an obvious necessity. Once we have embedded this into spelling instruction, we can at once assess children’s understanding and support children to bring spelling knowledge from their short term to long-term memory.
2. Present new material in short steps with student practice after each step: our working memory can only process a few bits of information at once
When introducing a new aspect of spelling, ensure children have a chance to digest key information that will help them build words in that pattern and allow them to try out your teaching points. For example in Y5 or 6, I might explain to children that they will be learning to add the suffix that sounds like ‘shul’ and means ‘relating to’. I might offer some words that end this way such as social, facial, residential and partial, and discuss the vocabulary with the class. Already that is quite a lot of information to process. So perhaps at this stage it might be better to practise linking words to meaning and getting used to reading and recognising these words before moving on. I would probably going on to explain how we might decide whether to spell the suffix as cial or tial. I need to look at the letter that precedes the suffix. What do children notice about the words social, facial, special or artificial? Hopefully, children will spot that these words have a vowel letter followed by the suffix cial. At this point, I might invite children to predict the endings for cru- and offi- and try to spell each word. Now I might add a new nugget of information and tell them that if the root of the word ends with a vowel letter, we normally add –cial and if the root ends with a consonant, we add tial. Alternatively, I might bring in a little of principle three:
3. Ask a large number of questions and check the responses of all students
Here are a couple of questions relating to the above teaching sequence that might check understanding and encourage children to fire up connections in their minds to make the next step:
If the suffix is spelt –cial after a vowel letter, when do you think we might use the spelling –tial?
Can you tell me what the general rule for adding –tial might be?
Teachers are well versed in strategies to ensure all children are participating. A carefully structured question during a spelling sequence will offer valuable opportunities for assessment for learning. In this sequence, questions could include terminology checks such as:
tell your partner what you understand by the terms root word, suffix, vowel and consonant
on your whiteboard, record the word that you think means: ‘relating to the face’ and show me. Now show me the word that means ‘to do with society’.
I will call out a word. Give me a thumbs up if you think it ends –cial and thumbs down if it ends with –tial.
after three, I’d like you all to tell me which type of letter normally comes before the suffix –cial.
can you summarise the two spelling conventions that you have learnt today?
Of course, every rule has words that break it and so convention is perhaps a more forgiving term when it comes to spelling. This sequence is no exception so another question you can ask students is: here are some words that don’t follow this pattern (such as financial), how might we remember this spelling? This kind of open-ended question opens up the floor to allow for children’s learning preferences to support them. Some might prefer to come up with a word mnemonic such as financial = cash and currency. Some might prefer visual prompts including colour blocking the suffix. Others yet might spot that there is a root word in there that also ends in a c- finance- and this is indeed another convention that holds true to other apparent ‘rule breakers’ such as the word commercial.
4. Provide models
This is an often-ignored teaching strategy when it comes to spelling instruction, but when included in the lesson can have a huge impact on children’s independence. Just as we might provide a running commentary as we construct a grammatically correct sentence, or explain our processing as we edit a piece of writing, we can offer children a model to apply to the construction of new words. Take the process of removing the final e from a root word before adding the suffix–ed. Articulating what you are thinking as you remove the e to avoid two es will enlighten the children who have missed the process behind the magical transformation of bake to baking for example. Furthermore, a visual model to accompany the commentary, provides a worked example that the children can emulate as they move to practise their own word building.
This form of cognitive support becomes vital as children attempt more complex spellings. Demonstrating how to break multisyllabic words up in order to spell them syllable by syllable, for example is a game-changer for less confident spellers. Rather than recording the word poisonous in one chunk, show children how you might begin by creating the first syllable pois, recognising that the diagraph oi appears in the middle of syllables, then we can add the next syllable ‘on’ and finally we add the suffix –ous which is regular in spelling. Pois/on/ous. Now model checking each syllable before moving on.
5. Guide student practice
Effective questioning is crucial for assessing student understanding during all stages of teaching, including while children are engaged in independent practice. A gentle hand on the tiller will guide and steer children towards a successful outcome and ensure the practice element of a spelling session is a worthwhile part of the learning sequence. As we stated earlier, breaking out of instruction mode to allow children to rehearse each new step is a valuable way of drip-feeding information in manageable chunks to avoid over-burdening the working memory. It also provides the children with a safe supported space in which to try out new skills and received instant feedback. They say ‘practice makes perfect’ but it can also serve to reinforce misconceptions. Keep in mind this maxim: ‘practice makes permanent’. If a child spells a word or set of words incorrectly during independent practice, they may well cement their errors and find it difficult to undo this mis-learning. Consider those high frequency words that appear throughout a piece of writing. A child whose spelling of ‘thay’ or ‘whith’ is left unchecked over the course of a lesson, a week or even a year, will have a lot of muscle memory to overturn before the correct spelling becomes habitual. Monitoring independent writing is a crucial part of guiding student practice: provide children with systematic feedback and support them to make corrections. When it comes to spelling, intervening can prevent the need for intervention.
6. Check for student understanding
By now, you’ll be seeing how these principles overlap and work harmoniously to ensure strong learning outcomes. We’ve discussed how the review part of a spelling sequence will be invaluable for reigniting past learning, firing up connections and assessing children’s understanding before they build the next layer of learning. Reviewing previous learning doesn’t mean, “Who can remember what we did last week or yesterday,” but is more about establishing what prior knowledge might be useful to today’s learning. Spelling accurately relies on so ensuring each piece of the puzzle fits together and thereby requires regular checking mechanisms along the way. Having established baseline understanding during the review part of a lesson, are the children still with you as you teach each next new step? Have you conferred with them whilst they move off for independent practice? And then as they begin to apply their knowledge and transfer skills, what level of understanding do they have now? Dictation is a useful way of checking whether the children have taken away a principle for spelling many words rather than a memory trick for one word. Going back to the example at the beginning of this blog, perhaps you have taught them that the grapheme dge appears at the end of a syllable and after a single vowel making a short vowel sound. You modelled words like fridge and budge. Can the children now apply that learning to spell bridge and fudge? What about badge or badger? Could children perhaps make up their own short sentences including any of the words they have been learning? The true testament of understanding is whether the pupil can explain what they now know about when to use this spelling pattern: discussion of learning is a fabulous way to check the child’s level of understanding. At this point, any misconceptions can be swiftly addressed and you can make a decision about where to take the learning next.
7. Obtain a high success rate during instruction
Rosenshine suggests that children need to achieve a high success rate during guided and independent practice, in order to have greater success when moving to application in a wider context: about 80% seems to show the correct balance between securing learning and being challenged. Instruction is not about trying to catch children out or providing tricky problem solving material, but instead requires stepping up the difficulty in small increments to ensure mastery of the taught material. If spelling practice does not have a high success rate, children could be reinforcing transcription errors, which they will apply in their independent writing. Furthermore, children who have fully grasped the teaching content will be better able to self-regulate and iron out any errors because they know why they went wrong. If teachers check children’s understanding along the way and adjust their content up or down to keep in line with this, then logically children’s success rate will be high.
8. Provide scaffolds for difficult tasks
Spelling is traditionally a discretely taught subject with a one size fits all approach. If children are deemed to be struggling with age-related spellings then they are often withdrawn from the lesson for an intervention rather than given ways to access the learning. Scaffolding in spelling can take a variety of forms to help the children access the learning:
prompts such as: How could we break this word up into smaller chunks to help us spell it? What is the rule for adding this suffix to a word? Is there a rhyme that helps us to recall this word? What other words do you know that sound like this? What do we need to check when we’ve spelt a word like this?
verbal modelling to help the children think through the process- the ‘expert’ might say: “When I write the plural of jelly I need to remember to take of the y and replace it with the letter i before adding es. Can you try that with the word welly?”
physical scaffolds such as phoneme frames or the use of sound buttons under a word to help map it out, phoneme by phoneme. If the child struggles to transcribe words clearly, magnetic or foam letters can be arranged in the phoneme frame, thus reducing cognitive load needed for the task.
reduce cognitive load by stripping back to one rule at a time. Instead of practising all the different rules for adding the suffix –ly, the child will focus on adding –ly to a word with no change to the root. Reduce cognitive load further by stripping back to root word to accommodate the child’s current level of confidence: add –ly to quick/ slow/ loud/soft rather than to word like natural or silent. If the child needs an even greater scaffold, that repetition with the change of one variable (such as the onset or rime of a single syllable word) can provide the support to get them started. For example: If I write the word spell rain, can you spell train, brain, main, drain, Spain?
scaffolds could involve the ‘expert’ providing the unknown part of the word and allowing the child to building from there. For example, if the roots danger-, poison-, enorm-, jeal- are provided, can the child add the suffix –ous and then record the complete word in each case?
paired practice takes no resourcing and is an effective way to scaffold learning.
As long as we don’t build too high, too fast, scaffolding provides the support a child needs to access the learning. This support can be withdrawn gradually as mastery of each step ensues.
9. Require and monitor independent practice
Rosenshine tells us ‘Students need extensive, successful, independent practice in order for skills and knowledge to become automatic’. In our experience, practice is often the aspect of spelling instruction which teachers and parents are often most comfortable with. How to make this meaningful and enjoyable then? We would like teachers, and in turn – parents, to be able to employ strategies beyond list making. When introducing a new convention, or reviewing a taught sound, we would suggest practising little and often, until it feels like overlearning in order for that target knowledge to be automatic. It also needs to be on the back of clear instruction. Children need first to understand how and why the word is built in the way that it is, and which other words fit that same convention, before practising it over and over. In our extensive scheme ESSENTIALspelling, we employ games and activities within the sequence, after the review and teaching aspects, such as bingo, use of the best bet approach, sorting sets of words, creating lists and tables, sentence writing, pattern exploration, and memory games for example. The activity will complement the learning to have the best impact. For instance, common exception words will suit a Kim’s Game type of game, whilst a revision of a long-vowel phoneme and its corresponding graphemes will suit a best-bet approach.
10. Weekly and monthly review to develop well-connected and automatic knowledge
Weekly and / or monthly review is something that we often see associated with spelling instruction. Again, there easy tweaks that can be made to increase not only the enjoyment of spelling testing, but also the efficacy of it. Dictations are known to be helpful in supporting children to see the words that they have been exploring in context, rather than in isolation. Asking children, in pairs, to look through their independent writing for errors and test each other back and forth, a word at a time and supporting each other with corrections can be most helpful to identify and fix common errors. Dropping previously taught words, perhaps common exception words, into dictations over time will support their retention. Pre-testing a spelling rule or convention with a list of words at the start of a sequence will not only provide valuable AfL, but will also allow a post-sequence test to give a clear indication of progress for each individual child. You could score the difference between their pre and post-test, rather than their score out of 10.
ESSENTIALspelling draws on the principles outlined above. Revision of the previous year’s learning takes place at the start of each year, and in each sequence, prior knowledge is accessed and built upon. Differentiation and activities are built in, along with assessment and reflection opportunities.
Every teacher will tell you that teaching time is precious – too often we feel that there is just not enough of it to cover everything that we want our children to know. Therefore, any tricks on how teaching time can be maximised must surely be welcomed; especially when these tricks relate to the massive task that is teaching the spellings on the year 5/6 word lists.
Firstly, let’s remind ourselves of the expectation as outlined in the KS2 writing TAF for EXS:
The pupil can spell correctly most words from the year 5 / year 6 spelling list, and use a dictionary to check the spelling of uncommon or more ambitious vocabulary.
The important word to note here is ‘most’. We do not expect the children to be able to spell all of the words – and indeed, we might find ourselves questioning when they would find it necessary to be able to spell some of the more unusual words on those lists. Still, there are many words on the list that I’m sure we would agree it would be helpful for an upper KS2 pupil to master in order to have the language needed to write for a range of purposes and audiences. For example, it would be amiss to focus on teaching the children the skills of persuasive writing without supporting them to master the spelling of the word ‘persuade’. Likewise, a study of ancient civilisations would seem to be a little wanting if the opportunity to teach the spelling of the word ‘ancient’ were missed. Indeed, a broad and balanced curriculum is an excellent access point for teaching many of the words on the Y5/6 list.
There are other opportunist access points to be aware of; many of the words in the Y5/6 incorporate spelling patterns taught in the main body of the PoS. To offer just one example, the spelling pattern ‘ous’ features in the following words from the list: marvellous and mischievous. Therefore, when you are revisiting this Y3/4 spelling statement in Y5/6, make sure that you throw these words into the mix.
Beyond this, what else can you do to ensure that you are maximising your teaching time in this area? Morphology may provide an answer. A fairly light understanding of morphology can support a year 5/6 teacher to see that there are words within the list that offer more scope for teaching an understanding of spelling than others. It is these words that we need to tease out and exploit. My message here is simple: in order to get more mileage out of your spelling teaching, move away from seeing words in isolation. Instead, see them as doorways into wider word learning.
Let’s take an example:
‘Accommodate’ is a good example of a word that, through close study, will open up opportunities to encounter more words (and master the spelling of them).
The word ‘accommodate’ contains some easily recognisable affixes, namely, the prefixes ‘ac’ and ‘com’, and the suffix, ‘ate’. Strip these away and you are left with the root word ‘mode’ (in the example ‘accommodate’, the ‘e’ is omitted when the vowel suffix is added). As an avid reader and general word-enthusiast, I can think off the top of my head of many words that contain that very same root word. If I weren’t the wordy type, I may still be able to muster up a few examples, or I may turn to a fantastic website to help me: membean (click on ‘root trees’. Here you can type in a root word, or find it in the list, and then bring up a list of words featuring this root word). Most importantly however, I would want to ensure that the word I am focusing on offers enough new words for exploration that are within the children’s potential range and scope for use.
‘Accommodate’ once again comes up trumps because it shares its root with words such as, modesty, modern, immodest, moderation – all of which I can imagine being of some use and interest to year 5/6 writers.
So, after modelling to the children how to strip back the focus word to its root (hopefully the children will be able to spot the affixes with ease – perhaps by referring to the prefix/suffix wall charts that I advocated the use of in a previous blog – Chop, Change, Double), I would draw their attention to the spelling and meaning of the root word (transport/means/manner). I would then record this root word several times in a linear fashion on the board e.g.
mode
mode
mode
mode
Next, I would provide child-appropriate definitions (or clues) for words that share the same root word, trying to emphasis the semantic thread that ties the words together e.g.
Clue:
If you behaved in a manner that wasn’t particularly boastful, or over-confident, you might be described as _____ (modest)
Clue:
If a house were decorated in a very fashionable manner, it might be described as ________ (modern)
When the children offer the correct word, I would model tacking the correct affixes to the root, making amendments e.g. removing the ‘e’/doubling the final consonant when adding vowel suffixes.
When we have completed the list, I would encourage the children to offer their observations. This might involve comments about common suffixes or prefixes; I would urge the children to speculate on the meaning of the root word – can this meaning be threaded across all the words in the list? Can they add any words to the list that share the same root and may share a similar meaning?
If you happen to be using a word that changes the pronunciation of the root word across its various manifestations, then all the better. This can help the children to take an important leap in their understanding of spelling conventions: that words with common meanings often share common spelling patterns (this is an important step in supporting children to make spelling decisions based not only on what words sounds like, but what they mean).
A good example from the list to exemplify this point is the word ‘average’. The root word is ‘ver’, meaning ‘truth’. Other words sharing similar meanings, and using the same root (and that may hold some relevance to our young writers and readers), are ‘verify’ and ‘verdict’. In each case, the root is pronounced differently. A child well-versed in this type of exploration might be able to articulate that despite the different pronunciation, the spelling of the root remains the same, as all the words share the same meaning, which is about getting to the truth of the matter. And so, we stumble upon a revelation of the English spelling system: meaning, and fidelity to the root word, often trumps phonetic compliance when it comes to the agreed spelling of many of our polysyllabic words.
This approach supports with word and spelling acquisition in several ways: firstly, it helps the children to see the underlying building blocks of polysyllabic words (beyond compound words, most polysyllabic words are made up of commonly encountered affixes, all of which are very predictable in their spelling); secondly, it helps to reinforce the skill of applying suffixes (a skill that cannot be practised enough in my experience!); thirdly – and perhaps most importantly – it helps to nurture an inquisitiveness about words and spelling patterns, that will ultimately set them upon a path of spelling enquiry, rather than spelling learning drudgery.
After working in this way to explore several juicy words from the Y5/6 spelling list, you may see that children begin to struggle to see words at face value. Instead, they become drawn to words within the words. My litmus test for this burgeoning inquisitiveness is when you present the children with a fairly innocuous word from the spelling list: secretary, and the children instantly see that there are hidden depths to explore. No longer do they see a list of arbitrary letters, instead they see a ‘secret’, and they want to know more!
Other words from the Y5/6 word list that you might choose to explore:
KS2 Spelling: all spelling statements are equal, but some spelling statements are more equal than others.
With twenty-eight spelling statements to cover across KS2, where should our focus be? In addition to the year group statements, the National Curriculum (2014) clearly states that previous learning must also be revised at the beginning of each programme of study. How can we cover it all? Do we give the previously taught statements enough of our time? Furthermore, one might think that all the year group statements should be given an equal weighting. However, after careful analysis of both the SPAG papers (sample to 2018); the WTS, EXS and GDS exemplification materials for writing, and consideration of children’s independent writing, we have begun to think otherwise.
The SOS spelling team have mapped out which statements need a high, medium and low focus in Y3/4, Y5/6 and across KS2 depending on the frequency of their use in the above analysis, and day to day usage in the English language. Click on the links below for a shortcut to documents outlining priority areas for children working at age-related expectations in spelling at each phase of KS2. Spelling priority area documents are downloadable below for Y3/4, Y5/6 and the whole of KS2:
Do we encourage young children to draw pictures when engaging with the CPA approach? Are these pictures important?
I am a great believer in the importance of using Bruner’s Concrete, Pictorial, Abstract approach to support the conceptual development of mathematics with pupils of all ages.
With our younger pupils, it is also important that the children get time to explore and play with a wide range of resources.
But do we give young children enough time, space and encouragement to develop the pictorial aspect of CPA and is this necessary?
My short answers are no and yes.
No, I don’t feel we encourage or appreciate the importance of pictures in mathematics and yes, this is necessary.
Like all areas of development, children’s mark making is an essential skill that we must learn because mark making can be refined and developed into writing and drawing, both of which are a way of recording our explorations, thoughts, and interpretations about the world around us.
The new statutory Early Years framework for mathematics doesn’t explicitly mention mark making or recording. It does however state that:
“By providing frequent and varied opportunities to build and apply this understanding, children will develop a secure base of knowledge and vocabulary from which mastery of mathematics is built.”
I would argue that varied opportunities need to include opportunities for children to record their thoughts and reasoning through mark making. In both the Birth to 5 Matters and Development Matters they make explicit reference to mark making:
experiment with their own symbols and marks as well as numerals.
(Development Matters, page 89)
discuss the different ways children might record quantities (for example, scores in games), such as tallies, dots and using numeral cards.
(Development Matters, page 94)
explores using a range of their own marks and signs to which they ascribe mathematical meanings.
value and support children to use own graphics when problem solving
(Birth to 5 Matters Range 5, page 99)
begins to explore and work out mathematical problems, using signs and strategies of their own choice, including (when appropriate) standard numerals, tallies and “+” or “-“
talk to children about the marks and signs they use to represent and communicate their thinking. As appropriate, model and discuss informal and standard ways (e.g. using arrows, plus and minus signs).
(Birth to 5 Matters Range 6, page 102)
I feel this is a positive move as the focus on the numeral does seem to have decreased, especially in the Birth to 5 Matters document. I am not saying that the numerals aren’t important; they are, but they are a highly abstract representation of value, and it is the values they represent that we need young children to master. Linking illustrations of the values eventually to the numerals, will help to ensure that children know the ‘three-ness’ of three, for example.
Statements from Range 6 that encourage mark making that exposes mathematical thinking, I am especially pleased to see. It is the talk that accompanies the marks children make that can give a true insight into their mathematical thinking and depth of understanding. As Worthington and Carruthers (2003, pg 83) say:
“When adults really listen and observe the marks children make, they will see beyond the scribbles and understand the child’s intended meaning.”
We need to provide opportunities and encouragement to enable mark making in a way that is open to the child and ensure it is given the reverence it deserves.
Let’s look at some examples of children’s drawing of two:
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Before completing these pictures, the children had been exploring ‘two’ – observing pairs of objects in their environment and subitising two. All the children have presented two (the digit was written by the teacher) and all demonstrated a good understanding.
Initially, from the pictures, you could argue that the drawings in Fig. 1 don’t clearly show two but from the conversation with the child, they explained their collections. The two ‘faces’ in the top right are their mum and dad; dad has a beard – the additional marks. The other two faces were the child and their brother.
The picture underneath the family (that initially looks like five circles) is actually the side view of their favourite car. The child explained that they knew cars had four wheels but when viewed from the side, you only saw two – half of the wheels; that’s why it was a side view of the car.
The child who completed the collections in Fig. 2 was very methodical and even though some of the pairs of objects look very similar, they explained each set.
Finally, in Fig. 3, this child’s drawing is probably the most realistic but again, it is the conversation we had that demonstrated to me that this child’s understanding of two was deeper than the others because they demonstrated that you could have units of two that could be repeated – this is the start of understanding multiplication – but it was the most basic of their drawings that demonstrated this understanding.
When I asked the child to explain the ‘two’ in the XOXO part of their drawing, they told me that it was a pattern and there were two bits in the pattern (XO) that were then repeated. They went on to explain they had done that with the flowers as well; two flowers in each of the two vases.
From looking at the pictures, without talking to the children, I would have probably said that the child who draw the pictures in Fig. 3 knew the most about two, and the child who draw the pictures in Fig. 1 knew the least. This might be true but from the conversations with the children, the child who drew the side view of the car not only demonstrated their understanding of the value two but also indicated that they understood half.
For me, this example highlights several points:
opportunities to have less structured and pictorial recording occasions are important
when children are recording, take the time to talk to them about what they are representing
don’t be influenced by the level of development of the mark making
Less structured recording opportunities
Many recorded maths opportunities rely heavily on worksheets; blank paper is available, but work done on this is rarely kept or valued. From questionnaires completed as part of the research carried out by Worthington and Carruthers (2003), only 16% of teachers referred to children making their own mathematical marks and recordings in maths lessons and in child-initiated play, and in another article by Worthington and Carruthers (2005), they say:
“without opportunities to explore their own mathematical thinking in their own ways and through their own choices of visual representation, children are prevented from developing their own understanding of the written symbols of mathematics.” (pg 5)
So how do we ensure opportunities for pupils to create their own marks and jottings and incorporate the practical resources and ensure that pupil’s maths books are presentable and that they help show the children’s progression through the learning?
Let’s consider the use of concrete resources to support maths learning.
I would never suggest not using a range of practical resources, but we have to ensure that pupils don’t become over-reliant on them or use them purely procedurally and therefore don’t make the link between the actions they carry out with the resources and the abstract calculations they are completing.
Clements and Sarama (2014) say that children must be moved along the learning trajectory and if they are reliant on manipulatives to do arithmetic in grade 2, they will continue to be reliant in grade 4 (page 319).
In the summary of Chapter 3 of the EEF guidance report: Improving mathematics in early years and key stage 1 about manipulatives and representations to develop understanding, it recommends:
That children understand the links between the manipulatives and the mathematical ideas they represent
I am seeing more and more children knowing what the resources represent, for example a base-10 rod is a ten, but they don’t know how it can be used and manipulated to support calculation.
There is a clear rationale for using particular resources to teach a specific concept
Pupils and teachers aren’t always clear about how or why a resource is helpful to support learning a concept and the use of resources become part of a process and don’t help to develop conceptual understanding.
Encourage children to represent problems their own way
This links back to what we have been talking about. Often, pupil’s books that I see do have mathematical representations in and some pupils I speak to can explain the model (i.e. the process of creating it) but they don’t necessarily understand what it is representing.
I encourage teachers to provide opportunities for pupils to represent their thinking in their own ways, ensuring that those marks / drawings / representations are given the same gravitas as all other recordings. I would also encourage them to be permanent. What I mean by this is not on a white board or a scrap piece of paper. If they have permanence, they have importance.
I appreciate that doing this is difficult, both in the early years and in KS1. There is a fine balance between keeping everything and handling recordings in a way that are manageable and purposeful, especially as expectations increase for recording working within KS1.
I sadly don’t have a definitive answer about how to do this (Siobhan King has some great suggestions in her blog, Year 1 can’t record, can they?) but I do believe that records of pupils’ mathematical activities need to illustrate learning or thinking, and often what is recorded doesn’t always show that and what does show this, the jottings and marks, are not kept and seen as unimportant.
I know as an upper KS2 teacher, the battles I had with pupils to get them to show their working and if they did do working, it was always on a white board or rubbed out. They didn’t see their jottings as important; if anything, they saw them as a failing because they weren’t always ‘proper’ maths in their eyes. Perhaps if we were to encourage and celebrate mathematical mark making more when children are younger, they would be more confident and prouder of their less-formal recordings when they are older.
Developing understanding of pupils’ mark making
In the example described above, I have already highlighted the difference a conversation with the child can make to the adult’s understanding of the child’s mathematical thinking.
How can we understand pupil’s mark making better?
My first love is art, not mathematics, and I had the privilege of doing a joint degree in Primary Education and Art at Exeter University which included modules on art education and children’s drawing development. In my lecturers’ Linda Green and Robin Mitchell’s book (1997) – that I dug out of the loft – they summarise research into drawing development and describe stages of drawing as follows:
scribbling stage (age 2 to 4 years) – random marks that can represent events and movements
pre-schematic stage (ages 4 to 7 years) – emergence of repeated shapes which stand for something
schematic stage (7 to 9 years) – schemas that describe form are developed
Gang Stage (9 to 12 years) – drawing realism
At a similar time that children’s drawing development was being explained, Hughes (1986) was researching how 3–7-year-olds recorded quantities and the operations of addition and subtraction. He noticed that despite being taught numerals and operational symbols and equations when given a problem, children didn’t use these, and he classified the children’s responses under four headings:
idiosyncratic – responses didn’t seem related to the number of objects present
pictographic – representations related to the appearance of what was in front of them as well as the numerosity
iconic – representations showing 1:1 correspondence with the number of objects, unrelated to the appearance of the objects.
symbolic – using conventional symbols to represent each quantity.
Looking back at the drawings in Fig. 1, 2 and 3, the children are at different stages in their drawing development.
The child who drew Fig. 1 is entering the pre-schematic stage; the repeated shapes represent things with some recognisable features. The child who drew Fig. 2 is within the pre-schematic stage and the child who drew Fig. 3 is in the schematic stage. Using Hughe’s classifications, Fig. 1 and Fig. 3 would be classed as pictorial and arguably some of the marks within Fig. 2 would be classed as iconic – the pairs of dots that look similar represented different objects.
Let’s look at another example of a child’s recorded thinking and consider both the stages of drawing development and Hughe’s classifications.
Fig. 4
First, the stages of drawing…
This picture (Fig. 4) is clearly of flowers and conkers – repeated shapes have been used to create the images, so this child is moving from the pre-schematic stage to the schematic stage.
Now Hughe’s classifications…
It is pictographic – the child has drawn a picture of the flowers and conkers; they haven’t drawn symbols or images that represent the real objects. In addition to the pictures, I can also see some numerals; there is clearly 0 and 1 together and there are 10 conkers – this is an attempt to show the amount of conkers with numerals. There is another mark that could represent the number of flowers. So, this child is beginning to use symbolic marks as well.
Fig. 5
And finally, Fig. 5…
For this task, the children were asked to draw the instructions to programme a route for a Bee-bot to follow; arrows have been used to symbolise the instructions. This child has possibly taken cues for the symbols from the Bee-bot but the symbols they have used give clear guidance for the reader to follow. It would be symbolic using Hughe’s classification but thinking about drawing development, it is a simple drawing and arguably isn’t a picture. However, what it is communicating is clear.
Does the quality and accuracy of a child’s mark making correlate to their mathematical knowledge and understanding?
To be honest, looking at pictures using the drawing development stages and looking at them using Hughe’s classifications, you are looking at them through two completely different lenses. When looking at children’s drawings, how realistic the drawings are should not influence our expectations of the thinking behind what the marks are representing – we mustn’t have conscious or unconscious bias.
Just because the drawing is more developed, doesn’t necessarily mean the mathematical thinking and reasoning is more developed.
If we think about Hughe’s classification, if the marks are classified as symbolic, you could argue that the mathematical thinking and understanding is more complex because the person using the symbols to express values or operations knows and understands this complex shorthand.
We have numerals and symbols like 9, +, ÷, < to represent values, operations, and comparisons because it is quicker and easier. A large part of maths learning is about becoming efficient and working out the best way to solve a problem or calculate an equation. Lots of the teaching of maths is helping children to understand and use this shorthand but we must give children time and space to make the connections between the real objects / problems, and how they can be represented.
I would argue that a critical part of this complex cognitive process should include giving children the time and space to develop their own ways of representing the real objects / problem. It will most likely be inefficient, time consuming and possibly unclear but as I mentioned previously, Worthington and Carruthers (2005, page 5) say;
“Without opportunities to explore their own mathematical thinking in their own ways and through their own choices of visual representation, children are prevented from developing their own understanding of the written symbols of mathematics.”
Once children have had an opportunity to explore with their own visual representation, it is our job to help them develop those thoughts and representations to become more efficient and this will involve using numerals and symbols. However, we must make time and space for these opportunities and not over-scaffold children’s mathematical thinking with worksheets or prescribed representations, or else maths will become what ‘painting by numbers’ is to art. It might create a lovely picture but can be completed without thought or understanding and isn’t retained or remembered.
Let’s celebrate and make opportunity for children to represent their mathematical thinking as creatively and purposefully – for the child – as possible. Taking the time to talk about what their pictures represent to them and using that information to help us understand the child’s thinking, is so that we can move their learning on successfully. This will enable them to make that difficult progression through the concrete, celebrating the pictorial, to the abstract with meaning and understanding.
I hope you agree with me that the pictures are important.
References:
Clements, D and Sarama, J (2014) Learning and teaching early math: the learning trajectories approach, Routledge
Davenall, J., Dowker, A., Williams, H. J., Gripton, C., and Gifford, S. (2021) Developing mathematical graphic in the early years
DfE (revised July 2021) Development Matters
DfE (updated Sept 2021) Early years foundation stage statutory framework
(Updated Autumn 2024, to link to Sept 2024 version of Ofsted EIF and Handbook)
This blog summarises some of the key points I made in my recent talk given at the Herts for Learning Curriculum Symposium, which focused on the role of assessment across the curriculum, with particular reference to the new Education Inspection Framework (EIF) and School Inspection Handbook. Not that I think we should ever do things just because we think they are what Ofsted wants us to do: I truly believe and have always advocated that educationalists should act in the way that they believe to be right and in the best interests of the children. But, when that also happens to coincide with what Ofsted are saying, it’s a win-win. And this new Education Inspection Framework represents some real shifts (for the better) in Ofsted’s approach to assessment.
There are a number of key paragraphs in the School Inspection Handbook that relate to assessment practice. I shall explore a few that I think are particularly significant.
Firstly, regarding the implementation of the curriculum, paragraph 243 indicates a number of key areas on which inspectors will focus. The two bullet points that specifically refer to assessment state that inspectors will focus on the extent to which teachers:
"... check pupils' understanding systematically, and identify misunderstandings and adapt teaching as necessary to correct these
use assessment to check pupils’ understanding to inform teaching"
(School Inspection Handbook, paragraph 243)
In relation to the school’s use of assessment, the Handbook states:
"When used effectively, assessment helps pupils to embed knowledge and use it fluently, and assists teachers in producing clear next steps for pupils."
School Inspection Handbook, paragraph 387)
NB this paragraph then goes on to warn that:
"However, assessment is too often carried out in a way that creates unnecessary burdens for staff and pupils. It is therefore important that leaders and teachers understand its limitations and avoid misuse and overuse."
Looking at these points, we can see a clear emphasis on what is going on in the classroom - i.e. in the moment, informal assessment. So we need to ask ourselves the questions, how well are teachers using formative assessment techniques to:
find out what children already know so that they can build on this?
unpick children’s misconceptions?
check learning within (as well as at the end of) lessons?
provide effective feedback to move learning forwards?
In addition to these points about classroom assessment, the Handbook discusses (in the section 'Talking about the curriculum with leaders') how inspectors will want leaders to set out the scope of what they intend pupils to learn, including how the subject content has been mapped out across the year groups and the extent to which clear end points have been established. (Paragraph 259)
So we also need to ask the question, how do teachers (and subject leaders):
evaluate whether children are where they should be in their learning journey through the school curriculum?
In answering that last question, though, we need to take note of the messages around data collection and analysis not creating excessive workload. It’s not that practices such as tracking pupil attainment over time need necessarily disappear altogether, but such practices must be proportionate and purposeful. More on this later in this blog. But for now let’s keep the focus on the formative.
The first four of the above questions are all about formative assessment, whilst the fifth is slightly different in that it focuses on evaluation in a more summative sense. (Evaluation can of course also be used formatively, e.g. if it leads to curriculum development, but often summative assessment is a means to an end). For me, that ratio of 4:1, formative to summative, is a good guide to how we should be investing our assessment energy: overwhelmingly focusing on the formative, as that is where the greatest benefits to learning will lie.
There is plenty of evidence that formative assessment, or ‘assessment for learning’ (AfL) if you prefer, can have powerful impact on learning, when its core principles are at the heart of teachers’ practice. Formative assessment is fundamental to becoming a ‘responsive teacher’ – one who skilfully uses questioning techniques to find out what every child in the class thinks, knows and understands, and what the misconceptions and gaps are – and then, crucially, respondsto this information: addressing those misconceptions in the moment, adapting the lesson plan as necessary.
Here’s a reminder of the ten principles for formative assessment that were set out by the Assessment Reform Group in 2002.
But AfL can sometimes be misinterpreted when it comes to classroom practice or school policy, and can end up being distilled into a set of strategies or rules that might be somewhat divorced from the core principles. Our ‘Focus on Formative’ work with schools is aimed at supporting teachers to develop a meaningful understanding of the purpose of formative assessment strategies, so that they can embed these into their practice in a truly impactful way.
There are many strands to this. For now, though, I will just mention one area: feedback.
Effective feedback, whether it be written or verbal, should move the learning forwards. For me, the following quotation is still a fundamental guide to the purpose of feedback:
"Comments should identify what has been done well and what still needs improvement, and should give guidance on how to make that improvement…to be effective, feedback should cause thinking to take place."
Working inside the black box, Black et al (2002)
School marking/feedback policies may dictate that teachers use particular colours of highlighter pens, or give ‘three stars and a wish’, or refer to polishing pens or indeed state that the school has moved away from giving pupils written feedback altogether in favour of verbal comments or a conferencing approach.
However I would argue that all of those things are peripheral. The most important thing to consider is the impact of the feedback: to refer again to the above quotation, has that feedback caused thinking to take place?
Regardless of how the feedback is given, what matters is the content of the feedback and the timing (i.e. focused on the intended purpose of the learning, and the more immediate the better). And it’s important to note that feedback might need to look different for different learners. Let’s not worry ourselves about consistency in terms of what things look like. School policy can, and should, dictate consistency in terms of the principles to which all staff are expected to adhere, but should allow the flexibility for teachers to use their professional knowledge of the child and give the feedback that is going to be of greatest benefit to that individual at that point in time. Feedback to a novice learner may very well look quite different to that which is given to a learner with a more advanced understanding of a particular concept. For some learners, a coaching approach might be hugely beneficial, although a learner already needs to have a pretty good grasp of where they are in their learning and where they want to get to for a coaching approach to be effective. This blog, written by my colleague Sophie MacNeill, provides further thoughts on effective feedback.
To return to my earlier questions, effective techniques to gauge children’s understanding of subject content prior to teaching a unit of work, during the teaching and at the end are also very important. Knowledge organisers, concept cartoons, mind maps, true/false quizzes etc can all be useful tools to use as starting points for class discussion which can illuminate for the teacher the areas of the subject where the knowledge is already secure, areas where misconceptions lie, and areas where the knowledge is lacking. Such techniques are particularly useful when there is a spiral curriculum in place. For example, children will have learnt about the topic of ‘animals including humans’ during Key Stage 1, and will likely revisit this topic at various points in Key Stage 2. It will be important for teachers to ascertain what has been remembered from the previous teaching when planning the next unit. One cannot rely on a simple record of what was taught in the previous year as a guarantee that those concepts made it into the long-term memories of all the children. During the Curriculum Symposium, we heard from both Mary Myatt and Clare Sealy about the importance of understanding schemata - the conceptual frameworks we internally construct as we learn - and the importance of challenging misconceptions that may exist within these schemata. Good classroom assessment techniques play a vital role here.
During teaching, the idea of the ‘hinge-point question’, explained by Dylan Wiliam in brief video clips on Vimeo and YouTube, is a hugely powerful strategy to enable teachers to make evidence-based decisions about the direction of the lesson. This absolutely strikes a chord with that Ofsted bullet point I quoted earlier:
"Teachers use assessment to check pupils’ understanding in order to inform teaching"
Amongst the various competing demands on teachers’ time, I feel that time spent devising really good hinge-point questions to use in lessons is particularly worthwhile. As Dylan Wiliam explains, the trick to devising a good multiple choice hinge question is that it considers the possible misconceptions that different learners may have. The wrong answers should be those typically given when common misconceptions are held, and it should be extremely unlikely that someone would arrive at the right answer but for the wrong reason. For further professional development in the concept of the hinge question, a read of ‘Embedded Formative Assessment’ by Dylan Wiliam is recommended. This blog cannot hope to cover an exhaustive range of formative assessment strategies, but what I hope I have achieved with these few examples is to illustrate the importance of teachers continually developing and upskilling their classroom techniques - not just because of Ofsted but fundamentally because it will improve teaching and learning across the school. In terms of end-of-unit assessment - the means by which teachers seek to determine how well the students have learned the material - thought needs to be given to:
the particular areas of knowledge, skills and concepts that we wish to assess
the range of approaches that we might use as vehicles for the children to demonstrate their learning
the extent to which the approach to assessment genuinely explores that knowledge has gone into children's long-term memory, not simply regurgitated on a surface level soon after the point of teaching
On the first of those points, this is where the curriculum mapping is essential. Across your school, is there a clear map in place that shows in which year groups you expect children to learn key concepts? Are there particular milestones, in terms of skill progression or areas of knowledge? Which key skills do you expect children in Year 4 to develop in art? What are the expectations of a Year 1 child in geography? These things will vary from school to school. Tim Oates encourages us to teach fewer things in greater depth, and each school will make different choices about what to prioritise in its curriculum. The curriculum choices you make will determine the key milestones on which your summative assessment should focus. They will probably also determine the choices you make about what data to collect.
In terms of the range of approaches, the only limit is your imagination. Whether you ask your children to produce a dramatic presentation, a cartoon, a poem, a website, a poster, a podcast, an assembly, a piece of writing or even a good old-fashioned test (or whether the children make their own choice from any of the above) - one thing we do need to ensure is that we are maintaining the integrity of the subject. Cross-curricular work can be wonderful, but we need to be clear about the focus of our assessment. If we ask our children to write, for example, a diary entry or letter from the perspective of a particular historical character, are we assessing it from a literacy perspective, or looking for accurate historical knowledge, or both?
Before I finish this blog, I would like to briefly return to the topic of summative assessment and the extent to which subject leaders in schools need data to be able to demonstrate the progress pupils are making across the school.
Paragraph 389 of the School Inspection Handbook indicates that inspectors will consider whether data collections are “proportionate, represent an efficient use of school resources, and are sustainable for staff”. Crucially, any data collection should serve a purpose - it should inform clear actions, for example indicating areas of the curriculum that require greater teaching focus, or professional development, or groups of pupils that need further support etc. I would encourage school leaders to think about their current data collection practice and carry out a quick cost/benefit analysis. Consider how much teacher time and energy goes into each data collection, and consider what benefits they bring. Do the benefits justify the costs? Paragraph 388 states that "assessment should support the teaching of the curriculum, but not substantially increase teachers’ workloads". The 'Making Data Work' report recommends a maximum of three ‘data drops’ per year.
It is particularly important to note paragraph 250 of the Handbook at this point, which I quote in full below:
"Inspectors will not look at non-statutory internal progress and attainment data on inspections of schools. That does not mean that schools cannot use data if they consider it appropriate. Inspectors will, however, put more focus on the curriculum and less on schools’ generation, analysis and interpretation of data. Teachers have told us that they believe this will help us play our part in reducing unnecessary workload. Inspectors will be interested in the conclusions drawn and actions taken from any internal assessment information, but they will not examine or verify that information first hand. Inspectors will use published national performance data as a starting point on inspection, where it is available."
The significance of the above should not be underestimated. It opens the door for true data honesty. We no longer need to worry about external eyes looking at our internal data and basing judgements upon it, so the ongoing assessments that teachers are making can genuinely reflect how securely children are learning key concepts, without any pressure to, shall we say, over-optimistically massage the figures. In fact the opposite should be true - we need teachers to be brutally honest in their assessments, because the fundamental point of the assessment is to provide an accurate picture to school leaders which they can use as the basis for decisions. If boys’ standards in maths in Year 4 are slipping a bit, or girls’ progress in reading across the school is not as strong as one would hope, then leaders need to know about this so they can consider what actions may be required - resourcing, training, targeted support etc. To reiterate a key phrase from paragraph 250, ‘Inspectors will be interested in the conclusions drawn and actions taken from any internal assessment information, but they will not examine or verify that information first hand’.
Matthew Purves, formerly Ofsted’s Deputy Director for Schools, talks about the rationale for inspectors not looking at internal data in this short clip.
This blog has only scratched the surface. There is much more for us to consider in terms of how we refocus our thinking on assessment. Its place is to support and inform our teaching of the curriculum, not to drive it. Our curriculum should not be determined by what’s going to come up on a test. The curriculum must come first and should be the master. Assessment should be the servant.
References
Assessment Reform Group (2002) Assessment for Learning: 10 principles
Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall & Wiliam (2002) Working inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom
Why is reading stories with children so important?
Storytelling is a fundamental element of being human, with childhood storytelling being the most prolific form, as it has been for generations. Stories were shared verbally long before the invention of the printing press after which the accessibility to written stories for all elements of society became the norm.
It is well understood that reading to children is vitally important, supporting the acquisition of language alongside social and emotional development.
So I thought I’d take some time to look a little more deeply into exactly why, scientifically, this is so.
Goldilocks and The Three Bears
My research into this took me to a blog from National Public Radio (NPR), written by Anya Kamenetz, an educational correspondent for the NPR and author of several educational books. She refers to a study that was presented to the Paediatric Academic Society in Canada in 2018. This research concerned the ‘Goldilocks Effect’ - such an apt name for research into reading with children in the Early Years. This research was led by Dr John Hutton. He describes differing types of storytelling as being rather like the porridge that Goldilocks stumbled across in the home of The Three Bears. The delivery of storytelling might be too hot for some, too cold for others but also, if we take care, might be ‘just right’ for many! This is described in more depth following Dr Hutton’s work at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital where some children aged four years were observed in an MRI scanner whilst being engaged in various styles of story sharing. This allowed their brain activity to be closely observed during the story sessions. The story sharing sessions included an audio-only version of a story, an illustrated storybook with audio and a cartoon version of a story. For those children engaged in an audio-only story, this appeared to be ‘too cold’, the language networks in their brains were active but there were definitely fewer brain connections being made overall. These children seemed to be ‘straining’ to understand the story. For those children who had animation only stories, there was much activity in the visual/audio perception centres of the brain but little was happening between other areas. The research team deduced that whilst the children’s understanding of language was helping them to keep up with the story that was being told, the animated pictures did the donkey work for the child, children’s ‘comprehension of the story’ was at its worst during this activity.
However, the illustrated book with an audio accompaniment being given simultaneously had the porridge that was ‘just right’! The children were paying attention to the words within a framework of understanding supported by the illustration. The most important factor of this ‘porridge’ is that the connections between all parts of the brain were heightened to include ‘visual perception, language, imagery and default mode’. For children who are aged 3-5 years, the last two areas generally mature at a later stage so these would not be developed at all by animation alone. Now, you may be wondering what the ‘default mode network’ (DMN) of the brain is? So was I! So I did some more research that I found to be very interesting indeed! Scientific evidence is still being gathered to support the DMN theory but this is becoming more robust as time goes on. It is an element of the brain that is most active when the brain is at rest and deactivates when the brain is involved in a task. Sections of the brain included in the DMN are areas that are involved with internal thought, memory, recognising thoughts and feelings in others, and the ‘posterior cingulate’ which is involved in the integration of internal thoughts. Scientists seem to have concluded that the DMN is used to enable us to daydream and retrieve memories. So you can see how this would impact on (and be impacted by) storytelling, using the imagination and making connections with personal experience to name but a few.
So as you can understand from this research, reading aloud to our children from an illustrated storybook is giving them the gift of exercising their brain and so much more is happening than we can actually see. Of course, this research was all undertaken within the confines of an MRI scanner, which most certainly excludes the additional emotional impact of warmth and physical closeness during the sharing of a story book.
But it might not be as simple as ‘just reading’
Something else that was not taken into account directly through the research was the dialogic elements of reading. This is not a word I’ve come across very regularly throughout my own teaching career but something I’ve heard mentioned more frequently in recent times. Dialogic reading, with our youngest children supports their understanding and expansion of aural language, as the adult helps the child to become a storyteller. It is very much about the adult reading with the child rather than to them. The adult takes the role of the listener, the questioner, the audience for the child. The ‘Reading Rockets’ website, tells us about the PEER sequence when sharing stories with children dialogically. The acronym stands for Prompting the child to talk about the book, Evaluating the response of the child, Expanding – reply by rewording and adding information and then Repeating the prompt to ensure the child has understood. An example of this could be when reading the aforementioned Goldilocks and the Three Bears…
Prompt from Adult: What’s this? (pointing to the Daddy bear’s chair)
Child: Chair
Adult: Yes, (Evaluating) it’s a big chair that belongs to Daddy Bear (Expanding). Can you say ‘Big Chair for Daddy Bear?’ (Repeats)
It is not recommended that that this happens on the very first reading of a book, but can take place on subsequent readings. The child must have the opportunity to just ‘drink in’ and absorb the story, simply enjoy the storytelling for its own worth, when first introduced to a book. Dialogic reading supports children in so many different ways, through developing skills in Communication and Language and oral language in particular. Children become more engaged with story books through these high quality interactions, adults are able to check a child’s understanding and discover where further support might be needed.
The key is to find really good story books where the illustrations are rich and closely follow the text. All the better if they are about something that interests the child or is a firm favourite that is chosen often.
Making reading fun!
In these times of social distancing and school closure, we have to find ways in which we can create opportunities to engage our children in high quality story sessions. Sharing stories online would model high quality reading of books to the adults who are caring for the children, disseminating good practice that will hopefully reach far beyond the current situation we have all found ourselves in. It’s so important that we keep children interested in books, keep them wanting to engage with reading whilst they aren’t having their daily dose or two (or three or four!) of story times with their friends in school. We can provide this online and also help parents to understand the importance of sharing story books, explaining the importance of sharing real books and not limiting the book-sharing to animated or other online book formats.
provide an online story session through your school’s website or another electronic communication system that you have available.
encourage adults to sit with the children whilst you read the story, helping them to answer questions and extending language
set up a process to enable the children to choose the book for the next day as practitioners often do for self-registration. This might retain a sense of normality in our socially distant lives
let the parents know in advance which books you will be sharing on which days. Parents can then read them beforehand with their children. The children will delight in knowing the story, anticipating what is coming next, the comfort of the familiarity and finding new things to look at or talk about.
invite parents to make puppets for the characters, props and environments to support the storytelling in the children’s own homes
choose some books that might support PSED, in particular emotional wellbeing – see some suggestions below
Some great examples are The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas published by Templar Publishing, The Huge bag of Worries by Virginia Ironside published by Hachette Children’s Group and How do you Feel by Anthony Browne published by Candlewick.
What comes to mind when you think of family? Asking children this question could throw up all sorts, including amusing anecdotes and plenty of sentimentality. No doubt, in a classroom full of children, there will be a broad range of reflections on families, which bring to light similarities, as well as differences. A sensitive exploration of these variations will allow you to embrace diversity and champion tolerance and respect within your classroom.
On the 15th May each year, International Day of Families is celebrated around the world. It’s a great opportunity to explore and celebrate the importance of family, in all its wonderful and diverse forms. As is so often the case, children’s literature offers up plenty of beautiful books to support rich class discussion. These books make a great starting point for deeper conversations. As Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop stated, books can act as “Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors”, as children make sense of themselves, their experience, and the world around them. In this blog, the Primary English team share a few beautiful books about families, and ideas of how you could use them in the classroom.
Book and author: Dragon Loves Penguin by Debi Gliori
Recommended by: Kirsten Snook
Recommended age group: Primary
Reason for recommendation: Adoption; looking different from the rest of the family; anti-bullying
Suggested activity: Write a school report on the character of Penguin – which of Penguin’s qualities are becoming strong? How does their teacher know?
Book and author: Julian at the Wedding by Jessica Love
Recommended by: Kathy Roe
Recommended age group: EYFS and KS1
Reason for recommendation: Beautifully illustrated, with very little text. A celebration of love, belonging and acceptance. A story set at a wedding of two brides.
Suggested activity: Innovate text for the wordless pages, including thought and speech bubbles for the characters.
Book and author: Love Makes a Family by Sophie Beer
Recommended by: Amanda Webb
Recommended age group: EYFS and KS1
Reason for recommendation: A book which highlights the one thing that makes a family a family, and that is love. Diverse representation of loving families written in a repetitive form.
Suggested activity: Who is in your family? Create a collage of our families. What does your family do together? Create a class poem following the repetitive form of the book ‘Love is...’.
Book and author: Pirate Mums by Jodie Lancet-Grant and Lydia Corry
Recommended by: Michelle Nicholson
Recommended age group: KS1
Reason for recommendation: This is a fabulous story to share with KS1 on World Family Day (or even International Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is on September 19th this year). Many of us will have wished, at times, that our parents weren’t so embarrassing, or our families were more like other people’s. Billy’s mums are pirates, and he doesn’t want them to come on the school trip. But the other children don’t seem to mind their unconventionality and slowly Billy begins to embrace the quirks of pirate life.
Suggested activity: Write about a special skill or unusual hobby that someone in their family has and how it makes them feel proud. Compose ‘thank you’ letters to Billy’s mums for saving them on the school trip. Or, they could just sit back and enjoy this cleverly written, empathetic story while you ‘do the voices’…
Book and author: In Every House on Every Street by Jess Hitchman and Lili La Baleine
Recommended by: Kayleigh Valentini
Recommended age group: Primary/KS1
Reason for recommendation: Written in rhyme, this is a warm celebration of homes and the diverse families that make them.
Suggested activity: Explore the intricate illustrations of the different families in each house. (Gatefold) Can you see any families like yours? Behind every door, there is a different story to tell. Add a page to the book by writing a rhyming poem about what happens in a special room in your house. What does home mean to you?
Book and author: Where the Forest Meets the Sea by Jeannie Baker
Recommended by: Alison Dawkins
Recommended age group: Primary
Reason for recommendation: A child’s growing independence is explored within the security of a day out with his dad. Stunning illustrations created from collages of natural materials.
Suggested activity: Discuss and/or write about ‘days out’ with family. What do children do? What do adults do? Use collected, natural materials to make background collages.
Book and author: The Missing Piece by Jordan Stephens and Beth Suzanna Recommended by: Juliet McCullion Recommended age group: Primary Reason for recommendation: An exploration of community, family and friendship. Suggested activity: Explore the different family homes that Sunny visits and the descriptions of what they look and smell like. Discuss own homes and what makes them special. Design a page that explains what their family house would look, feel and smell like if Sunny visited.
Book and author: Picture Perfect by Serena Patel and Louise Forshaw
Recommended by: Ellen Counter
Recommended age group: KS2
Reason for recommendation: Diverse representation of family life (British Gujarati). Focus on themes of love and belonging, all families being different.
Suggested activity: Compile a class compendium of family home languages – how many languages do family members speak? What are your favourite home-cooked meals? (p.44) Gather stories from parents/ grandparents (p. 46) and create class book of family stories/ biographies.
Book and author: Silence Is Not An Option: You Can Impact The World For Change by Stuart Lawrence
Recommended by: Theresa Clements
Reason for recommendation: An excellent read for upper KS2 teachers to share with their pupils.
Suggested Activity: Read Chapter 1 – ‘You Are Your Own Superhero’. Within Chapter 1, on page 29, we find a sub-headed section - ‘The Superhero of Your Family’. Here is the opening paragraph:
‘The things that your family say and do have an effect on you. These effects can be both positive and negative but everything you experience is a lesson. Some of you may have a family that expects only the highest of achievements from you and you feel incredibly pressured. Some of you may have a family that is not so pressured and you sort of feel there isn’t any expectation at all’
Explore the term ‘expectation’ with the children. Provide an example of some expectations that you have of them. Can they add to this list? Can the children articulate their ideas of expectations that they have of you and/or others? Are there other people who have expectations of them? This should provide enough context for the children to discuss any family expectations they have or experience if they desire. Further discuss why having expectations of themselves is important. Provide some examples for the children to contribute towards. Create a celebratory display.
Book and author: The Light in Everything* by Katya Balen, cover illustration by Sydney Smith
Recommended by: Juliet McCullion
Recommended age group: UKS2
Reason for recommendation: A sensitive and searing exploration of blended family life, told from the perspective of two children. *There are themes of loss and abuse in this book.
Suggested activity: Discuss the theme of hope, and how Tom and Zofia make a very important wish for their family, using the origami cranes. Ask children to write a wish for their family on a piece of paper, before folding it into an origami crane of their own following the instructions in the back of the book.
Book and author: My Granny is a Queen by Madeleine Cook and Rebecca Ashdown
Recommended by: Rickella Griffiths
Recommended age group: KS1/Primary
Reason for recommendation: A beautiful, heart-warming book celebrating grandmothers across the world.
Suggested activity: Explore the wonderful illustrations and delightful descriptions. Discuss the similarities and differences. Compose individual descriptions of grandmothers and create a class book to celebrate the special queen in the family.
Book and author: Grandad’s Camper by Harry Woodgate
Recommended by: Jane Andrews
Recommended age group: KS1
Enjoy exploring everything that makes our families different and the same this International Day of Families. We would love to see the work and/or displays that are produced. Do tag us in any photographs on Twitter @HertsEnglish.
I am very much aware of my own privilege when I think back to my earliest memories of being outside in the garden and growing up in Derbyshire. From shelling fresh peas on the back step, summers spent collecting wild elderflowers and standing on a chair in the kitchen to help my grandma make her elderflower wine in huge glass demi-john bottles, collecting lavender and rose petals to make my own ‘perfume’, and feeding garden birds through the winter with seeds and dried fruits mushed up into leftover fat from the kitchen, I loved how being outside made me feel, and even in the colder months I was always to be found outside, in my anorak, digging around in the soil with a stick.
One of my earliest school recollections of learning about the natural world was the class ‘nature table’. I remember bringing in an abandoned birds’ nest to display and talk about, and I also, rather embarrassingly, remember my teacher explaining carefully and sensitively to me, aged seven, why she’d prefer it if I did not pick wildflowers for her on my way to school. We would go outside and spend time watching and naming birds, trees, and flowers. Through being outside in all weathers I quickly learned about the changing seasons and how these influenced the garden calendar. I was aware of which vegetables and fruits were harvested in which season and why. I thank my early teachers and family for this natural education, and I have tried (not always successfully) to replicate it for my own children.
Why gardening?
Even now, several decades later, tending to my own small London back garden is where I feel happy, less anxious, and more able to relax, the sense of satisfaction of having aching limbs and dirty fingernails from a day spent weeding, planting, and pruning is like no other. I am not claiming to be a good gardener, far from it, but I like and appreciate creating a colourful, attractive space which attracts bees and butterflies. I gain satisfaction from picking figs, tomatoes, chilli peppers and herbs that I have had some hand in growing. Gardening, I have realised, slows you down. It is something that you can do when you’re feeling angry, sad, or anxious. Every action you perform in the garden is almost like some pronouncement that something good will follow on, an act of huge trust in the future, and I like that.
During the 28 years I have spent working with young children, many of whom have often had no access to a garden, or even a balcony, it has always been vitally important to me to try and offer gardening experiences that spark an initial flame of interest in growing and caring for plants, understanding where we get our food from and hopefully start a lifelong interest in looking after and caring for our natural world. I have never doubted for a minute, the positive effect of being outside as part of normal daily practice, has on our children’s mental health and their ability to self-regulate. Children find joy in the smallest things and anyone who has ever witnessed a child discover a family of woodlice under a log, observe rain drops on an intricate spider’s web or taste their first cherry tomato that they grew from seed will understand how ‘real’ and ‘in the moment’ these experiences are. Such experiences cannot be replicated with a book or a film but must be nurtured and enabled by us, as practitioners.
Gardening is often very much about delayed gratification and the practising of patience. This is in stark contrast to the fast-moving, digital world our youngest children now occupy, and practising these skills will serve them well as they go out into the world. Of course, there are many other skills children will practise in the EYFS garden; scientific cognitive skills such as observation, prediction, and comparison to name but a few. Physical, perceptual, and motor skills will be developed by manipulating tools to dig, pour, plant, and weed, as well as sensory awareness skills developing through the exploration of different scents and textures.
Many of us will have seen the joy and high levels of engagement that children demonstrate during their weekly or fortnightly ‘Forest school’ sessions if this is part of their curriculum offer. I’ve also noticed the rich language opportunities that such sessions provide and the ambitious vocabulary that is taught and contextualised during this time. The daily tending of plants and observing wildlife in the garden has very much the same impact. I have seen children, including those with English as an additional language or with speech and language expressive delay, quickly learn a range of new nouns for plants, insects, birds, trees, fruits, and vegetables. They are able to pose questions and seek answers from adults who may skilfully encourage them to find the answer through further exploration or by referencing nonfiction texts. Opportunities to enhance the early reading offer are also in abundance in the garden; seed packets and signs for different plants, spotter sheets in the tarpaulin covered ‘bird hide’ with the binoculars, authentic environmental print burnt into tree slices to label the raised beds, the bug hotel, and the vegetable plot for example.
Points for consideration
Not everything goes smoothly and to plan all the time, and I always think that is part of the beauty of working in the EYFS, I remember children being upset when their runner beans were eaten by caterpillars and their spring bulbs dug up by a tenacious squirrel. All these opportunities provide starting points for further discussion and of course opportunities for children to problem solve and think critically. Below are some of the things I have learnt along the way about my experiences of sharing my love of gardening with our youngest children:
don’t over plan or impose your own interests too much! I have made the mistake of assuming that children will love an activity I have planned, but often children will have better ideas or will follow a line of inquiry I had not even considered
following on from the previous point, consider carefully the learning opportunities that may or may not be offered by activities that you set up for children. Sticks and acorns brought in by the teacher for example, would be no replacement for children going out to explore whole trees in all their glory
hand over ownership of the investigation station, curiosity cube or good old fashioned nature table to the children more. Provide them with clear pots and trays to display items that are of interest to them and cards for their captions and labels to be scribed or written by them
maximise the use of the whole school site and local area. Some schools and settings’ outdoor areas might lend themselves to a garden area being developed more than others but there might be a hidden corner somewhere else on site that would be ideal
involve families; explain what you want to provide for children and why. In the past I have been able to recruit regular, green-fingered volunteers to work on setting up the environment or support children in the garden. I’ve also had donations of seeds, bulbs, cuttings, and plant pots from lovely families who really appreciate what we have been trying to do and wanted to help
work with local businesses. I’m always amazed by what I’ve managed to get for free from generous community partners. It’s always worth a friendly phone call, social media request or email to local supermarkets and garden centres. I have received a huge bag of bark chippings, compost, end of season plants and old sleepers to create raised beds this way
National Gardening week 2023
National Gardening week 2023 is held between 1st and 7th of May this year. It is an event planned to celebrate and raise awareness of the difference that gardens and gardening can make to the lives of everyone in the UK. It hopes to ‘inspire more people, particularly the next generation of gardeners, to experience the joy of growing and creating beautiful green spaces.’
If you are in the early stages of developing a gardening offer for your children, this weeklong celebration seems like the perfect time to launch your project and drum up some support and excitement in your team and with your families. More information about this event can be found on the RHS website (Royal Horticultural Society).
I hope this blog has perhaps inspired you to develop your gardening offer further and I wish you all a joyous spring and summer in the garden with your children.
Schools are always busy places to be, but the summer term can sometimes feel like a runaway train! Statutory assessments for multiple year groups, completing the curriculum, sports day, trips, handover…the list goes on! With all this and more going on, it can feel like the hard-won progress towards subject leadership priorities to date can start to go off the rails. This was a key topic in the latest webinar in our ‘Leading Primary Maths’ series and in this blog, I will outline five things to consider to keep you on track this term.
1. Review curriculum coverage to maximise the summer term
With a packed maths curriculum programme of study in every year group, pacing the curriculum to balance coverage and security of learning can be a challenge. Keeping an eye on how each class is progressing through your chosen curriculum structure is something we recommend keeping a check on throughout the year. Annotating a long-term plan is one way for class teachers and maths leaders to keep an eye on curriculum progression in a manageable way:
Red: insecure for many pupils in the class
Amber: insecure learning for some pupils in the class
Green: secure for most pupils in the class
But what if time is running out and there are 10 teaching weeks left but 12, 14 or even 16 weeks of content left? Should the teacher rush through to ensure everything has been ticked off but perhaps not secured? Should the teacher to carry on and just stop when mid-July comes with several weeks of content untouched?
Working with teachers recently, the most workable solution we are finding is to prioritise the remaining content and to liaise with SLT and the next teacher to support handover for the new academic year.
To begin with, we considered, ‘What must be prioritised, taught in full and not rushed?’
When working with a year 5 teacher, we identified this was the percentages units. Fractions had been a challenge for many pupils and as percentages is a fundamental part of the year 5 curriculum, we felt it shouldn’t be rushed. It was agreed that this would become a key priority for the summer term.
Next, we considered, ‘What aspects could be condensed and moved to daily fluency?’ For this year 5 class, we identified content such as Roman numerals and reading timetables.
The key actions for subject leaders are:
to find out whether there are year groups with pace / coverage issues, given the remaining teaching time in the summer term
to support teachers to maximise remaining time by identifying high-value learning and using the knowledge of the class to guide decision making
to ensure curriculum decisions are agreed and communicated to relevant teachers and leaders.
2. Keep a supportive check on year 5
With the end of Key Stage 2 assessments on the horizon, the focus in UKS2 is often on year 6 at this time of year. But what about year 5? Once SATs has passed, many teachers comment about the dynamics in UKS2 shifting. A key challenge for year 5 teachers is maintaining business as usual in terms of their maths curriculum diet.
Some year 5 teachers report that in the summer term, feeling the pressure of pupils being ‘year 6 ready’ can sometimes increase and they feel unsure how to balance the curriculum in terms of coverage vs security of learning. For those with mixed age classes for year 5 and 6, there is an extra challenge of balancing the end of primary experience for year 6, whilst balancing the completion of a packed maths curriculum programme for year 5.
Year 5 teachers, especially those in one form entry schools, can often value having 10-15min together to look at their plan for the term and to talk through any concerns now rather than voicing them in July.
3. The drip, drip, drip feeding of your key priorities
You’ve spent two terms or more driving your key priorities for maths. You can see progress is being made, the intended outcomes are starting to show, there are signs of it becoming embedded…and then the summer term hits!
With such a busy time ahead this term, big chunks of time to dedicate to developing your priorities may be lacking. But there are a few ways of stop your focus areas slipping off the agenda.
Whole staff or phase meetings may not be available, but could you borrow 10 minutes to update staff, share successes or take feedback on a specific initiative? Simple discussion points, shared in advance of the meeting, such as ‘Can you share one small thing in the last week which has worked well in your fluency session?’ or ‘What is the one thing that is the barrier for getting in your three fluency sessions a week?’ will not only support staff but allow you to maintain a subject overview in the things that matter.
Subject leaders alone can’t keep tabs on what is happening in every maths classroom all the time. This point in the year could be a really key time to refresh the minds of SLT and other allies (e.g., ECT mentors, phase/year group leaders) about the key aspects you’re targeting. They can then keep an eye on progress, share successes and identify where further support could be targeted. Any small steps you can make now to keep your key priority a focus will pay off in September when you are planning the year ahead.
4. Look for progress, not perfection
With two-thirds of the academic year behind us, it is always tempting to look at our action plans and home in on what hasn’t been secured and what is left to do. Whilst whole school, fully embedded impact may not have been secured yet, there will be specific strengths and improvements to look for.
For example, fluency sessions may not be fully in place for all classes in the exact format you are aiming for yet, but you may have seen evidence of daily counting becoming a feature in all classes.
The summer term is an ideal time to capture examples of great maths in your school whilst the walls, books and corridors are full of two terms of good practice to share. This could be simple as a photo of a working wall or a pupil’s use of jottings or an explanation. At the start of the autumn term when you are inducting new staff or ECTs, it can be hard to show what ‘good’ looks like when the walls and books are a lot emptier.
Capture great examples before they disappear:
5. Finally, if in doubt…. check the guidance!
With statutory assessments for the end of EYFS, KS1 and KS2 plus Year 1 phonics and the Year 4 multiplication check, keeping up with the finer details of the (quite literally) hundreds of pages of guidance documents is a huge task. At such a busy time, you may be ambushed in the lunch queue or at the bathroom sinks with a question about arrangements, rules or regulations. We would always advise ensuring all staff involved in any stage of the assessments have access to the relevant documents and have the opportunity to clarify any queries. It’s certainly not a very exciting part of the job but making sure everyone is clear makes for a more relaxed atmosphere for pupils and staff alike.
We can support you to support your school
Our team of HFL primary maths advisers are passionate about supporting subject leaders and members of SLT to support their staff and provide the best maths education for their pupils.
Here are just some of the ways we can support you:
