Handwriting can be like a fingerprint – unique to its owner and an expression of identity. How long does it take us as teachers, at the start of a new academic year, to become able to distinguish the child belonging to that unnamed piece of work? Probably just a couple of weeks - days even - before we can identify the offenders based on their handwriting alone. With handwriting being a piece of us on a page, often for others to see, it’s understandable that some people feel their handwriting is a representation of their self.

Why is handwriting important?

Handwriting is given emphasis in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile and throughout the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 English National Curriculum. It is a requirement in the TAFs at the end of each key stage. Expectations around letter formation precede statements about consistency and quality. By Year 6, children are expected to ‘Write legibly, fluently and with increasing speed’, and to make choices about their handwriting.

Yet, handwriting splits opinion in terms of its purpose in the digital age. While some would suggest that it is not a skill worth pursuing these days, there are times when all of us use our handwriting skills for one purpose or another, be it a beautifully crafted letter, a scrawled to-do list, or planning the content for your upcoming blog about handwriting. Recent research suggests that writing by hand, rather than typing on a device, activates the brain, helping us to both learn and remember more effectively. As the demands of the curriculum increase, having fluent handwriting will allow note taking, expression of increasingly complex ideas, and will support writing stamina too.

Once fluent handwriting is achieved, our cognitive capacity can be freed up to concentrate on the higher-level skills of writing rather than worrying about formation of letters and whether writing is legible. Expending all energies on thinking about the strokes and shapes that represent the sounds needed to write, leaves little room for coming up with something interesting to say. Furthermore, research suggests that practising words in fluent handwriting over-and-over can help to the brain to spell the word using muscle memory. With increased automaticity in spelling too, further cognitive load is freed up. In other words, we can focus on composition – and on achieving the purpose of our writing - when transcription is no longer a chore.

Foundations for handwriting

Children who have had plenty of opportunities to develop gross and fine motor skills through play and exploration in their early years, are more likely to have developed firm foundations for writing. Activities which have supported the children to develop their arm and shoulder strength, core strength and flexibility – such as rolling, climbing and skipping – will also prepare children for using tools such as pencils more confidently. Threading, stirring, doing up buttons, using spray bottles and making models with clay, will all help to further refine their fine motor skills. This variety of motion lays the foundation for the directional movements necessary for letter formation. Additionally, children require the ability to cross their midline – can they paint/draw a long horizontal line across a large piece of paper/on the floor/wall from their left to right or vice versa without swapping hands? Can they use one hand to roll a car along a track from their right to their left? If not, developing the ability to cross their midline will be key: try playing hand clapping games, kicking a ball, rotating the upper body, or creating big art with large circular motions. How about getting out the gymnastics ribbons to trace large shapes and letters in the air?

Some older children will benefit from revisiting gross and fine motor activities to strengthen the muscles and develop the dexterity required for writing. Once ready to put pen to paper, mark making and pre-writing shapes can continue to build children’s fine motor skills and develop hand strength and co-ordination, alongside a rich diet of ‘busy fingers’ style activities. There are many resources available to support with building fine motor skills with the basic shapes required for letter formation, such as this Handwriting Patterns Playbook from the National Handwriting Association.

How do I teach handwriting?

With gross and fine motor skills developed, children will be better prepared for the demands of accurate and consistent letter formation. While it can be tempting to teach handwriting along with phonics as children learn each GPC, teaching children groups of letters based on their formation makes mastering letter formations easier. These groups, often referred to as letter families, are given different names, including ‘push letters’ and ‘pull letters’, ‘curly caterpillar/ladder letters’. Whatever you choose to call them, it makes sense that if a child has mastered formation of the letter ‘l’, working on the letters ‘i’, ‘u’, ‘t’, ‘j’ and ‘y’ will be easier: each starts with a vertical, downwards stroke. The same goes for ‘the c team’: forming ‘c’ correctly will greatly support writing ‘a’, ‘d’, ‘g’, and so on. Each letter formation should be modelled and taught (you might like to use a mnemonic to help remember how it is formed) before being practised by pupils. Encouraging self-assessment can help here too: “I really like the way you have the body of this ‘p’ sitting on the line with the long descender below the line. Which one you do you like? Why?”

The National Handwriting Association sets out great guidance in their ‘Good Practice for Handwriting’ toolkit. This fabulous, free resource explores the 4 ‘P’ Checks: posture, pencil, paper, pressure and the 8 ‘S’ Factors: shape, space, size, sitting, stringing, slant, speed, style required for the process and product of handwriting. Understanding each of the 4 Ps and the 8 Ss of handwriting will allow direct teaching of each aspect, to support children in ‘getting it right’ to begin with. Our handwriting audit (which can be found at the end of this blog) can be used to identify barriers and plan support pupils who find handwriting challenging. Diagnostically assessing pupils, using the 4 Ps and 8 Ss, will allow you to assess these factors of handwriting, to get under the skin of the barriers which children are facing. Set a short writing task for your class and take time to monitor each child – how are they sitting? What is their pencil grip like? Support offered can then be tailored based on your analysis: when we identify the ‘tricky bit’, it is easier to make specific interventions to address and overcome the challenge.

Struggling with handwriting can cause great frustration over time. Some find it embarrassing. Someone brimming with ideas but unable to record them legibly may become disengaged with writing as a whole. While using technology to support these pupils can be beneficial, handwriting cannot simply be ignored with much of our education system still reliant on the handwritten form. In the ‘Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2’ report, the EEF acknowledge that “Extensive practice, supported by effective feedback, is required to develop fluent transcription skills” and recommends that we “Monitor pupils’ handwriting to ensure accurate letter formation habits, providing effective feedback to promote efficient and fluent handwriting.”

Strategies for supporting and improving handwriting in the classroom

Below are some suggested strategies for supporting children with their handwriting, shared by Michelle Nicholson.

1. ‘The Gold Standard’

Work with a child to identify a piece of work they are proud of in terms of handwriting and presentation (not handwriting practice). Photocopy the piece of work and stick it into the cover of the child’s book as a pull-out flap which the child can open up whenever they start a new piece of work. This is their own ‘gold standard’ below which they would not wish to drop. When the child feels that they can consistently match or improve on this standard they may choose a new ‘gold standard’ to replace the original piece of writing and use the new piece as their personal benchmark. This process is repeated through the year and avoids inconsistencies of presentation.

2. Small steps pathway

Support the child to improving letter by letter. It may feel as if this would take 26 weeks, but it really does have a snowball effect. Identify one or two letters that the child is consistently writing incorrectly either in terms of form, sizing or placement on the line. Model the letter formation explaining what you are looking out for, e.g. ‘the ascender for the h needs to be nice and tall rather than the same size of the n, so that we can tell the difference’. Then, the child practises with teacher and is given feedback. Challenge the child to start each piece of work with a row of these letters. Which ones are they proud of?  Underline or circle them and then complete writing tasks with special attention to letters practised. Review writing and check letter formation of target letters- which need fixing, which ones match the expectation? Continue each week with a new letter, recording the previously addressed letters on a bookmark as a reminder for the child. The following week the child and teacher select another letter formation to work on, which again the child will self-monitor. Hopefully the previous week’s letter in embedded but they can check these from time to time to ensure old habits are not revisited. A book mark in the book could reference letters to check so far e.g. tall letters all have clear ascenders; lower case p sits with its body on the line and descender underneath; Letters c and s are correctly sized depending on whether they are upper or lower case etc. As the weeks go on, the worst letter formation will have been addressed and you may notice that the handwriting looks a lot better in general. Further individual attention on letters may not be needed at all, or could be addressed in groups e.g. ‘ensure descenders don’t loop down into the letters on the line below’.

3. Building stamina

If we’re honest, most of us will struggle to maintain beautiful handwriting over a sustained period of time, whether that be when given written feedback to the thirtieth book in the pile or taking notes for an hour. Children are no different. So this strategy is about building a fluid, neat handwriting over time and knowing when to use ‘publishing handwriting’ and when to use ‘everyday handwriting’. You may notice a mismatch between the script a pupil can produce in a handwriting practice book contrasted to writing a piece of independent narrative. That’s because when time and focus is given to handwriting, we can all give a concerted effort for a set period. Conversely, when we are juggling multiple disciplines within compositional as well as transcriptional skills, something will have to give. And that’s before we’ve even thought about the muscle strain caused by sustained control of handwriting. We need to consider whether we want quality of handwriting or quantity of content: we need to accept that we can’t always have both at first. Gradual stamina building is needed. Can the pupil give you one line of their ‘gold standard (possibly joined) handwriting today before they drop back to a more relaxed script? What about two great lines tomorrow? Can we aim for a short paragraph next week? Could the child choose a short section of a story or written activity that they would like to edit and publish in a polished form? This technique is particularly useful when you have children who can sustain a joined script when writing at speed- they can write in a joined hand for a while then revert to print if they find that easier or quicker until they have developed the skill.

4. Writing at speed

Linking to the above point, do you potentially need to introduce an element of writing at speed into handwriting practice? My own primary education equipped me with an enviable hand of italic script using the angled nib of a fountain pen. On entry to secondary school, I found that this skill was useless beyond writing captions or fancy labels- all the Y7 lessons required me to keep up with the geography teacher’s dictation or copy copious notes from a board. After a few weeks, my neatly joined handwriting descended into a chaotic scrawl. Set out the expectations for a lesson at the beginning e.g. ‘These notes are for you, so make sure you can read them at the end’ vs ‘This poem is going on display so do your best joined script today and take your time with presentation’.

5. A two-pronged approach

If children struggle with handwriting so much that it is a genuine barrier to their learning, take a two-pronged approach. Whilst some activities and lessons are dedicated to developing the skill of communicating in handwritten form, ensure others remove that barrier so the child can concentrate on the task at hand. Can the child use the speech to text function in word to dictate their ideas? Do you have any specific software such as Clicker that will allow them to compose a piece of writing without worrying about their transcription skills? Can you build the child’s typing skills? The final point again looks ahead to secondary and skills for life. In the past I have worked with children with literacy difficulties who have received a diagnosis recognising their learning needs sometimes only months before their GCSEs. Being allowed to type essays during an exam is only helpful if they are familiar with a qwerty keyboard, otherwise the extra time they are allowed is eaten up by painfully slow one-fingered typing.

Why not let us know your favourite strategies for supporting children with their handwriting? We’d love to see their progress so feel free to join our English Subject Leader VLE or share on Twitter @HertsEnglish.

The main purpose of a working wall is to support children in their current learning and enable independence. If the wall is built with the children at the point of teaching, time spent displaying things on the wall outside of teaching time is minimised and what is on there is genuinely relevant. The children have seen the context in which it was put up and therefore are more likely to understand its purpose and be able to use it.

Pause for a moment and consider how you use working walls, washing lines, or other display space used for maths to support pupils’ learning. Do the children use them?

If I’m honest, when working walls first became ‘a thing’, I was guilty of having so much on my ‘to do’ list that displaying things on the wall just didn’t get done as often as it should and what was on there would become more like wallpaper. When I started to explore how I could interact more with the environment while teaching to make it work for me, I began to realise its full potential.

Here are my 4 suggestions to keep it manageable and useful:

(Disclaimer: walls not my own. Thank you to the schools who have kindly given me permission to share.)

1. Include models from current learning

Modelled examples from the previous lesson or earlier in the lesson can be used as a point of reference to support children’s working memory so that they don’t have to hold everything in their heads at once. Flipcharts or sugar paper are great for this.

Making sure the wall is easy to navigate and not too cluttered is important – more is not always better. A clear example from recent modelling can be extremely helpful to children.

This class in Lower Key Stage 2 were working on the structure of formal written subtraction with 3-digit numbers. Manipulatives were being used by the children alongside the teacher modelling on the flipchart. This was then popped up on the working wall for children to refer to throughout the sequence of learning.

As you can see, the teacher has modelled how to record the regrouping pictorially and in words to support children to both visualise and articulate the strategy when working independently.

This teacher has used a bar modelling approach to support children to unpick and understand the structure of a word problem.

This was an example that the class had worked through together.

The initial discussion centered around whether or not they needed to find 5/8 of 30. Children drew their own models to consider this and then a model was selected and drawn by the teacher. The part whole relationship was discussed and annotated and key information was labelled on the model. This was then linked to the calculations required to reach a solution and then added to the developing working wall for children to refer back to when practising independently.

Here, in these examples from Early Years, numbers are being represented in a variety of meaningful ways, either at the children’s height or large enough for them to see. Wall space has been used for two-dimensional display and then shelf tops for three-dimensional things to interact with. When talking about what was on this wall, a child referenced the outside environment, stating that, “When we park our bikes, one of them has a label with six spots on. That one gets parked in the ‘six’ space”.

2. Include key vocabulary

This class were beginning to explore how base-10 equipment could be used to support with understanding decimal place value and magnitude. The children were using the physical equipment and the teacher was recording the key language being used alongside a pictorial representation.

Here, with part of the array hidden, the children considered the question. Following a discussion, the teacher recorded their thinking and included language relating to equal parts and the whole.

A speaking frame to allow children to explain their resulting exploration was then left on the working wall for them to use should they wish.

This short speaking frame, on a Year 2 working wall, was taken from a pre-teaching session where children were securing understanding of 2-digit number place value.

They had been exploring 2-digit numbers using base-10 equipment and had found that 43 could be made up of:

4 tens and 3 ones

3 tens and 13 ones

2 tens and 23 ones

1 ten and 33 ones

0 tens and 43 ones

Bringing it back into the classroom and adding it to the working wall allowed the children who took part in the pre-teach to contribute to the strategy lesson. The teacher was able to connect the rehearsal from the intervention to the new learning in the classroom in a meaningful way.

A point to note about vocabulary…

Sometimes, trigger words on the working wall can be misleading. For example, left and take away are often shown as trigger words on a display for subtraction but consider how misleading that would be in the following problem:

Sam had 5 sweets left after Bob took 7. How many did Sam have to start with?

Because the problem contains the trigger words above, children could potentially interpret it as a subtraction problem. However, if children carefully consider the full context and structure of the problem, they will be able to identify that the two parts are actually known already (Sam’s 5 sweets and Bob’s 7) and it is the original whole that they need to find. They need to add the two known parts together.

3. Interact with the wall while teaching

We need to teach pupils how to use the contents of our working walls. If we sometimes teach from or at the wall, and point out useful information and prompts, demonstrating how we might use the wall ourselves by reviewing vocabulary and modelled examples, then pupils are more likely to use it as an aid. 

Focusing children’s attention on specific parts of the working wall when relevant, through a ‘what’s the same and what’s different?’ discussion, for example, will enable them to make connections and build on previous learning.

4. Promote deeper thinking

During a sequence of learning about the relationships between perimeter and area, this working wall was used as a way for Year 6 children to develop and refine their thinking.

Each child responded on a sticky note in their own way: some through written explanation; some through examples; some through diagrams and some through generalisations. The teacher was then able to pull out any misconceptions, e.g. around the relationship between a square and a rectangle, to discuss later as a group or class.

Through interacting with the wall, some children developed their thinking further. They looked at examples from their peers, read the justifications and then added to their own thoughts, sometimes even changing their minds and proving their original ideas wrong with newly considered evidence.

It’s often easier to spot errors that others have made, rather than our own. ‘Seek and destroy’ tasks are great for this as they are simple to write and can be based on errors the children have made, or are likely to make, themselves. The more children practise doing this and the more they consider how to generalise and come up with rules, the more naturally they will notice they’ve made an error ‘in the moment’ when problem solving.

I am always interested in how teachers make their working walls work for them. Some have walls covered in clear, wipeable material so that whiteboard pens can be used to draw on them ‘live’ in lessons or fluency sessions. Others have beadstrings strung from side to side and giant tens frames and counters for children to manipulate. The creativeness of teachers and teaching assistants never ceases to amaze me.

For upcoming training, events and projects from the HFL Education Primary Maths Team, visit the HFL Education Hub.

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​ Analysis of the papers can take many angles and I don’t hope to cover them all in this series of blogs; instead, I intend to use an analysis of the reading SATs to allow for insights into our current teaching practices in the hope of developing and sharpening classroom pedagogy.

If I miss anything of particular interest, please do get in touch, and I will try to explore that avenue.

Neglected non-fiction?

Looking back through the post-2016 SATs archives, we now have two test papers where a non-fiction piece was presented in position 2 e.g. the second text in the test paper.

In 2017, the children were presented with ‘Swimming the English Channel’. This text comes from an unknown origin (although the images are attributed to various sources, the text is not attributed to a specific source or author) and comprised of: a biographical piece about the first successful Channel swimmer; a relatively informal ‘question and answer’ piece; a short summary of David William’s charity swimming escapades and a brief information section on the dangers of swimming the channel. In 2019, the second position was occupied by a ‘Fact Sheet: About Bumblebees’ – a piece adapted from an original publication by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust (see reading paper for exact location of source). Within this text, the children were presented with a fairly standard pseudo-persuasive text outlining the role of bumblebees in nature and why the human race depends upon them, as well as information about bumblebees and guidance on how we can help to protect the species.

Although outwardly, the texts look quite different, on closer inspection, they were remarkably similar in many aspects, including: Lexile measure (both scored between 1000-1100L); percentage of 1& 2 clause sentences (72% vs 73%); percentage of 3+ clause sentences (26% vs 27%); longest sentence (both 35 words); words containing 2+ syllables (38% in both texts). There was a minor difference in the average sentence length, with the Bumblebee text clocking up an average of 15 words per sentence, while the swimming text exceeded this with an average of 18 words per sentence. In this respect, we may consider the swimming text to have been a tad trickier.

None of this explains then the 7% drop in national correct response rates between the 2017 and 2019 non-fiction texts (2017 average correct response for the non-fiction text = 74.3%; 2019 average correct response rate for the non-fiction text = 67.3%).

In essence, despite the comparable nature of the texts (with the swimming text perhaps being arguably a little trickier in some aspects), children performed considerably worse on the 2019 non-fiction text, than the 2017 non-fiction text.

Interestingly, this drop was not mirrored in the fiction texts. At a national level, children appeared to improve their reading of fiction between 2017-2019 (the average correct response rate for questions pertaining to the first text in 2017 – Gaby to the Rescue – was 76.3%, while the correct response rate for questions pertaining to the first text in 2019 – The Park – was 81%. This equates to 3.7% increase).

How can this ‘bee’? (excuse the pun!)

Again, the answer is not clear. Indeed, the reasons will be manifold. Perhaps the questions were harder this year? I am yet to explore the test from this aspect. Perhaps the mark scheme was more pedantic (I know there has been some debate regarding this point). It is reasonable to assume that both of these points play a role, however I would argue that there must be more factors at play to yield such a decline in text-specific reading scores than can be attributed to these singular causes.

I would urge teachers to reflect once again on their own practice, after all, this is the only thing that we as teachers have real control over. Certainly, I would urge teachers to consider the balance of fiction/non-fiction reading that they have focused on with their children this year. My regular classroom trips would suggest that, over the last few years, there has been an increasingly disproportionate push towards fiction, rather than non-fiction discussion and analysis in the classroom. You may disagree. In truth, I only tend to have the privilege of joining English lessons. Some may argue that recent years have seen a drive for non-fiction reading to feature more within other curriculum subjects, rather than specifically in English lessons, meaning that through my limited experience, I have gained a skewed impression of the balance.

If, through reflection, you conclude that non-fiction has had very limited time in the limelight this year, then this scenario is perhaps not surprising. In recent years, the waters surrounding best-practice for teaching of non-fiction reading and writing have become muddied, to say the least. The old routines for teaching text types (e.g. instructional writing, reports, recounts, explanations etc) have been questioned, and as a result, some teachers may have felt the need to abandon old practices before they have had a chance to consider the practices and approaches that will take their place. In addition, there is the age-old problem of text availability. Finding good models to support reading and writing of non-fiction pieces has always been a challenge. And now, with the abundance of amazing fiction that is available to tempt us, perhaps we are drawn more towards building our units around fiction texts, than non-fiction texts? Even when there are great texts available (and believe me, the non-fiction market is flourishing) perhaps teachers feel less confident in identifying an appropriately pitched non-fiction piece than they do a fiction text? There may be further reasons…my purpose here is to prompt colleagues into reflecting on this point, and to urge them to consider strengths, challenges and areas for development within their own practice.

Even when non-fiction is a feature of the reading repertoire, a further line of enquiry could be to ask how confident teachers are in using appropriate pedagogy to support children in entering the world of non-fiction? As referenced in my last blog, one of the most powerful strategies that we have encountered in recent years to allow pupils to access the meaning of texts is echo reading. Echo reading works when the children are invited to echo back a text that has been read by an expert reader (ie. the teacher), who has modelled the appropriate prosody thus allowing the meaning of the text to be made clear. This reflection brings me back to the questions asked in the previous blog:

• How often to pupils hear the teacher modelling expert prosody when reading aloud a non-fiction piece?
• Do teachers – like many children – reserve their ‘performance reading voice’ for fiction, as opposed to non-fiction texts?

Although these questions won’t provide all the answers, they may well help teachers to start reflecting on their practices so that going forwards, fiction and non-fiction texts find themselves on an equal footing once again.

​ Analysis of the papers can take many angles and I don’t hope to cover them all in this series of blogs; instead, I intend to use an analysis of the reading SATs to allow for insights into our current teaching practices in the hope of developing and sharpening classroom pedagogy.

If I miss anything of particular interest, please do get in touch, and I will try to explore that avenue.

‘And, the award for trickiest question goes to…

Question 10!’

(Correct response rate = 53.9%)

To clarify, this question yielded the lowest national correct response figure out of all the questions relating to text 1 – The Park. In fact, only 4 questions relating to text 2 received a lower correct response percentage. Whatever way we look at it, we can safely say that many children found this one tricky.

According to the mark scheme, this question pertains to testing domain 2h (making comparisons within the text) – this was the only question relating to this testing domain. The challenge of this question relates to the subtlety in the author’s use of dialogue to indicate the characters reactions to the event. There are several clues within the text that would have allowed the children to note Ajay’s indignant response to finding the man hammering a sign onto the park gate: the most obvious is the use of the colloquialism ‘Oi!’ in Ajay’s opening remark. Most children will have been told off at some point or another for using this impolite method of gaining someone’s attention. This is closely followed by the verb ‘yelled’ in the dialogue tag. More subtle, but still accessible to most children, is the impertinent use of the direct question including the personal pronoun, ‘what are you doing?’ In contrast, in the wording surrounding Joe’s dialogue, the author uses the neutral verb ‘asked’ in the dialogue tag. Joe also begins his line of enquiry with a less direct question: ‘What’s going on?’ – omitting the personal pronoun ‘you’ that Ajay used in his question.

As a next step, the children had to work their way through the possible answers deciding what the cumulative information told them about Joe’s emotional response. I would argue that having read the text leading up to this scenario (if indeed they did! – see below for further exploration of this point), the children could have quickly eliminated the last two possibilities (he was neither less interested, nor less worried). I can see how some children would then have got in a muddle and ticked the second box, mistakenly offering a reflection on Ajay’s manner rather than Joe’s, but putting aside this potential confusion, I would have expected more children to have selected the correct response for this question.

This question provides us with an opportunity to reflect on our teaching practices and to consider if we are doing all we can to support children in paying attention to the subtle spells used by authors to craft their writing.

Essentially, this question invites the children to reflect on the author’s skill of character development through dialogue. This skill should not be new to the children. In fact, they should be adept at using this skill themselves in their own writing, as according to the Y6 writing Teacher Assessment Framework a pupil working at the expected standard can:

• integrate dialogue in narratives to convey character and advance the action

(NB. I have added the bold for emphasis)

I would argue that if children have successfully managed to master this skill in their own writing, then they should be able to spot it in a text with ease. We do know however, that the use of effective dialogue in writing can be a potential pitfall for young writers who are attempting to reach EXS (see HfL blog: ‘Write Away’ and other lessons derived from the KS2 writing moderations, plus associated links within the blog). Following the 2018 moderation visits, our Herts moderators noted that beyond issues associated with poor punctuation, some children struggled to make the dialogue within their narrative writing effective – it often failed to give the reader an insight into the character’s feelings or motives. From my experience, I can say that for the most part, the dialogue that I encounter in pupil’s writing more frequently performs the function of ‘advancing the action’ rather than ‘conveying character’. If, on reflection, you conclude that your teaching of writing has focused more on the use of dialogue to advance action rather than convey character, then this might explain why your children struggled to get under the skin of question 10.

In order to rectify this situation, you may need to reflect with care upon the texts that you choose to share with your pupils. It could be argued that there has been a noticeable shift in recent years towards the use of books for class study that prioritise action over character development. I recently stumbled upon a debate on Twitter arguing for and against the use of Kensuke’s Kingdom as a class text. Whereas in the not-too-distant past, this text was a stalwart of the Y6 reading spine, many people involved in the conversation felt that the book was too slow, or boring; some went as far as saying that nothing happened in it. In terms of epic gun battles, car chases and fantastical beasts, the book is somewhat lacking, but many in the same conversation argued that the magic of this book comes not from the fast-paced action, but from the slow and careful revelation of character across the story.

Therefore, by reflecting on our book choices and ensuring that we select texts that have plot and action as their central themes, alongside texts that prioritise character development, we may find that our children recognise the role that dialogue can play in achieving both with greater ease.

Don’t forget the performance!

Readers familiar with Herts for Learning will know of the KS2 Reading Fluency Project. The principle underpinning this project is that we gain a better understanding of the texts that we read if we read them in the way that they are meant to be read. By that, I mean by scooping adjacent words and phrases together to create cohesive chunks of meaning, adding the correct intonation, inserting the correct audible micro pauses and using the correct emphasis, all of which allow the message of the text to become clear to the reader. Pupils who have taken part in the project will be familiar with the term ‘performance read’. This is a term that we ask teachers to use regularly with the children throughout the project so that it begins to signify a type of reading that goes beyond simple functionality, and that moves them away from a monotonous and robotic form of reading that may have become the norm for some children. When a child gives a ‘performance read’, they read the text like they mean it, and as the author intended it to be read – this is achieved through intensive modelling of prosodic reading of a range of challenging texts. Towards the end of the project period, we ask teachers to support their pupils to develop a silent ‘performance read’ voice, which only the child will hear in their head. I would argue that a child who is experienced in the fluency project strategies, and who has been regularly directed by their teacher to do their ‘performance reading’ (even – and perhaps especially -  in the context of the SATs test) then a child should be able to hear that Ajar is indignant and angry, whilst Joe is calmer and more considered.

My assumption is that many children – in the heat of the moment, or due to a lack of prompting by the teacher to read the text aloud in their head using their ‘performance reading voice’ – didn’t utilise this strategy. This is a shame as our project has shown the power of this approach, especially for less confident readers.

Non-fiction needs fluency too

I would go on to argue that even fewer children would have brought their ‘performance reading voice’ to the table when tackling the non-fiction text that followed ‘The Park’ extract. Recently, we have been studying video footage of project pupils reading both fiction and non-fiction pieces and we can see that children are more likely to use their ‘performance read voice’ when tackling fiction, rather than when tackling non-fiction. Seeing as the Bumblebee text held the second position within the test paper, it was always going to be more challenging; combine this with the fact that many children may not have thought to use the skill of performance reading to help them gain a clear understanding of this text, we can see why some children may have found it a challenge.

Going forwards, teachers may choose to reflect on the priority they place on non-fiction reading in their classrooms. Specifically, how often to pupils hear the teacher modelling expert prosody when reading aloud a non-fiction piece? Do teachers – like many children – reserve their ‘performance reading voice’ for fiction, as opposed to non-fiction texts? These questions are worth exploring if your pupils appeared to struggle with text 2.

Embrace Disorder!

The English Reading Test Framework document provides the following statement under the ‘Breadth and Emphasis’ section, p.11:

The questions are placed in order of difficulty, where possible, while maintaining chronology with the text.

This tells us that we can expect the questions to align to the texts in a sequential manner, with each question requiring information from progressive sections of the text. I know that some teachers have translated this statement into test guidance for their pupils, suggesting that they mark a line after they have found information that answers a question, assuming that they will not have to read back before that line to answer any subsequent questions.

In reality though, the tests do not adhere strictly to this guidance. To exemplify this point, we can turn to the questions pertaining to the second text in the 2019 test, ‘Fact Sheet: About Bumblebees’. The set consisted of 14 questions. These were indeed sequential until the final 4 questions (from question 24 onwards). Each of these final questions required the pupil to take a jaunt back through the text, sometimes going as far back as paragraph 1. Seeing as question 23 asked children to focus on the sub-section entitled ‘Energy drink for bees’, if the children had been geared up to expect a strict adherence to the sequential questioning guidance, then many would have been left trying to tease out answers to the last 4 questions from the small sub-section entitled ‘Act now’ – an impossible task!

The answer to this predicament is to ensure that pupils recognise the importance of reading the whole text, and most importantly, getting a feel for the structure and key themes/messages of the entire piece before embarking on the questions. Furthermore, if they are taught to summarise as they read – perhaps circling some key words, or providing a make-shift sub-heading in the absence of any provided by the author – then you would hope that they would have a pretty solid overview of the piece before beginning to track down answers to specific questions. This overview would hopefully trigger directional pointers to the child when faced with a question that appears to not stick to the chronological rule.

I hope that this blog provides enough to get teachers thinking about some of the ways in which they might interpret the findings of this year’s reading SATs paper outcomes, and how their findings might be translated into effective classroom pedagogy.

For more insights into the effectiveness of the HFL Reading Fluency Project,

“It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it,” to quote from Bananarama (obviously my main reason for writing this blog).  I would suggest that there is a nugget of truth to the words of the song.  In education, at least, I know that sometimes the rush to new initiatives and continual improvement can lead to more emphasis on what is being done and rather less on how it is being done.  I have every sympathy with schools, who often seem pulled from pillar to post with constantly changing agendas. Organisations like the EEF have done a great job in drawing attention to a range of different educational interventions and this can leave schools feeling that they need to find the next thing.  Despite constantly saying that there is no silver bullet out there, I know that many wonder whether it is just that they have not found it …yet.  Combine this with limited time and resources and a pressure to yield quick results and I think schools are in danger of spending less time on what I think would actually make the difference.  I think the balance needs to shift – less time spent on constantly looking for something new to do and more on considering what is needed in the context of each school and how to ensure that this is planned and managed effectively so that it is done well. 

“Putting Evidence to Work - A School’s Guide to Implementation” (EEF, February 2018) may have slipped under the radar for some schools, but I would heartily recommend reading it and suggest that this is the one EEF guidance report that underpins all others.  In this blog, I reflect on my experience working with schools and on the EEF report to highlight some of the key factors that schools might consider as they write and execute their school development and action plans.

Don’t try to do too much

Schools are continually improving systems but bound by finite time and resource.  One of the biggest limiting factors to successful implementation can be lack of capacity to truly commit.  It is ever more important to define exactly what school priorities are and to keep these manageable or there will be the chance of schools doing everything and achieving nothing. 

Be precise about what you are aiming to achieve

What is the problem that you are trying to solve?  Time spent on really understanding the answer to this question is time well spent.  Be careful not to fall into the trap of picking an intervention off the shelf because it is there.  Does it solve the problem you actually have?  In fact as a school, you may already have tried to solve this problem before, so consider what you learnt from any previous experience.  Is this about tweaking what you already have or is there a need for wholesale change?  Consider the options and school needs and reflect on the evidence of what others have done effectively in similar contexts.  What could you do to solve your problem? 

Plan for success

One of my favourite sentences in the whole EEF guidance is, “Treat implementation as a process, not an event.”[1] How often do we plan a one off training session or a discrete monitoring activity? Yet we know that the coordinated development of an idea with support provided over a period of time will have increased chance of impact and is more likely to be sustained.  Successful implementation will be based on considering your specific school context and planning the process carefully.

Is your school ready for this?  Is there a shared understanding of what you are trying to achieve?  Do you have the capacity and resource to allow this to be successful?

What exactly will the intervention or change in practice look like?  How will things change?

What is necessary to make this happen?  When will non-negotiables be needed and when will it be necessary for leadership to be looser?  

What support will be needed at different stages towards implementing this?  What external support and internal capacity will be drawn on at different points?

What are you expecting to see at the various stage of implementation?  What are the expected outcomes? 

In planning the stages carefully, consider all levels of the organisation and their needs.  As the EEF guidance identifies, “Typically, the application of a single strategy alone will be insufficient to successfully support the implementation of a new approach.”[2]  It is therefore imperative to identify specific needs at different organisational levels and carefully plan to meet these in an appropriate sequence and so that different strategies reinforce each other.   In addition to planning for staff needs, ensure that structural changes are made so that changes in practice can happen.

As an example, I can think of one school, whose focus was developing pupils’ use of accurate mathematical language.  They carefully planned buy in to the vision and upfront teacher training, ensured that they had the classroom resources to support their changes, made time for the initiative, had even set up a programme of peer discussion and development during the initial stages and had planned in time for review and evaluation.  However, the school had forgotten to consider support staff needs.  Some teaching assistants misunderstood sessions designed to focus on accurate mathematical talk and unwittingly diverted attention from the use of language towards completing and recording calculations.  By forgetting to plan for support staff understanding and development, the initiative was jeopardised.   

Make sure you take your team with you

It is essential that all staff understand the vision for what is trying to be achieved and this permeates across all areas of school life.  When considering how to develop parental engagement within one school, I remember that across all meetings with different groups: SLT, governors, teaching staff, support staff, external visitors, parent groups… there became a familiar addition “What about parents?  Where do they fit into this?”   Through pulling together what was known about the school challenge and what was needed from a range of stakeholders, the problem became focused and the vision became a share one. 

Although school leaders will be key players in ensuring that the implementation is aligned with the school’s mission, shared widely with the team and remains a priority, other members of staff will be key in success.  Can you make use of school opinion leaders through assigning them new initiative and use these to model to and support others?  What matters is how the new changes become a lived reality within school and this will be everyone’s responsibility. 

A culture of openness to evaluate honestly and a feeling of trust to try out things and make mistakes is crucial.  This kind of culture takes time to build and when starting out it is key to know who your blockers and your champions are.  Champions can be used to build capacity and drive and blockers should be ignored at your peril.  Blockers can tell you much about where staff feel vulnerable and understanding this can enable issues to be tackled. 

Be practical

There is much evidence that high-quality up-front training for teachers is beneficial in enabling successful implementation[3] [4].  It is crucial to ensure that all key individuals receive this training, which should support understanding of the theory and rationale for new approaches and introduce necessary skills, knowledge and strategies.  It is also key to ensure that senior leaders are fully aware of the training received if they do not attend it and can support staff to answer any logistical questions that they may have as an outcome.  At a recent INSET I delivered, it was enormously important that senior leaders including the Headteacher were all present as this meant that they could hear staff anxieties and be able to address these and clarify expectations.

In addition to the initial training that will have allowed staff to reflect on how their practice will change, there needs to be time to address practicalities and changes in behaviour that might be needed.  For example, after an initial INSET training, I worked with teachers to provide some practical follow up support.  Key questions such as: “How will it change my planning process?  How do I actually access the resources?  Can I translate images onto my Smartboard?”  These are all significant questions in allowing teachers to implement their new approach effectively.  Once initial questions have been answered, follow up coaching will almost inevitably be needed to provide follow-on modelling, feedback and support.  

Review progress rigorously

Be clear about what you are expecting to see at different stages of implementation.  In schools, time is always at a premium so ensure that time is scheduled in to monitor and reflect on progress and to refine changes over time. 

What will be the early indicators? 

How will you know that the changes are having an effective outcome over time?

What will it look like when the changes are embedded?

Remember that progress in not linear.  There will be bumps along the road and how these are actively looked for and responded to will mark out how well changes can become embedded.  Depending on the stage of implementation, there may be a need to ensure fidelity to the initial approach and there may be a need to consider adaptations to ensure that change becomes part of daily practice. 

Sustain and celebrate

Once you have got to the point that staff are routinely using the new approach or intervention, it is key that this is sustained over time.  This is also a crucial time to reflect on what has worked and why.  Reflection at this point will support better understanding of the implementation process, which may well be able to be applied to other developments.  Celebrating successes can motivate and also allow wider understanding and application of the change.  As the EEF guidance identifies however, don’t leave this phase of implementation until you get to it - plan for it from the outset.

Learn lessons

I would suggest that even if an educational initiative is found not to work, after time spent developing implementation, this will enable the next decisions made by the school to be even more robust.  If leaders have planned well for implementation, they will be more aware of the reasons that unsuccessful initiatives did not succeed and can be more precise and focused in establishing what is needed next.  Self-evaluation before, during and after implementation will be key.

If we are going to give new educational ideas the chance to work and maximise impact, we need to give some quality time to implementation and ensuring that this is carefully planned for and managed.  After all, “Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how great an educational idea or intervention is in principle; what matters is how it manifests itself in the day-to-day work of people in schools.”[5]

References

[1] Putting Evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation (2018) Education Endowment Foundation, p3

[2] Putting Evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation (2018) Education Endowment Foundation, p10

[3] Putting Evidence to work: A school’s guide to implementation (2018) Education Endowment Foundation, p22

[4] Cordingley, P. et al (2015)  Developing Great Teaching:  Lessons from the international reviews into effective professional development.  London:  Teacher Development Trust

[5] Kenned, M. (2016) How does professional development improve learning?  Review of Educational Re

Please note, this blog was first published in January 2022. Some information relating to KS4 was updated in April 2022. For an updated blog about the KS2 progress calculation methodology 2022, see here (September 2022). 

As schools start to prepare for a full return to statutory assessment as we knew it pre-Covid, a frequently asked question (amongst both primary and secondary colleagues) is ‘How will the progress measures be calculated this year?’

At Key Stage 4, the current cohort of Year 11 students will be the first whose Progress 8 scores will be based on prior attainment measures calculated from the ‘new’ (post-levels) Key Stage 2 data. (Last year’s Year 11 would have been the first such cohort, but progress measures were not calculated last year.)

And at Key Stage 2, the current Year 6 is the first of the cohorts whose Key Stage 1 assessments were made using the ‘Teacher Assessment Framework’ (rather than the previous system of National Curriculum levels) to sit KS2 tests. (The summer 2020 Year 6 cohort would have been the first, but SATs did not take place in that year, or indeed last summer.)

Therefore, at both of these Key Stages, the progress model will necessarily be different to that used in previous years. But how much do we know about the new models that will be used? 

Whilst we can make some assumptions and educated guesses about how the DfE might calculate progress, the truth is that nobody can say for certain. And the reason is that the DfE’s statisticians are going to want to see the actual data (i.e. the results of 2022 assessments) in front of them, so that they can explore which methodological approach has the greatest correlation, before making a final decision. Generally speaking, progress methodology is established in this way – find the approach that gives the best correlation between the input measures and the output measures – and build from there.

Let’s explore each Key Stage.

Key Stage 4: ‘Progress 8’

In previous years, establishing students’ prior attainment involved taking their raw scores in KS2 tests and converting these into a ‘fine level’, e.g. 4.75 would indicate a student whose test score was exactly three quarters of the way along the range of marks allocated to Level 4.

However, since 2016, the system for reporting KS2 SATs results has involved converting the raw test scores into a continuous scale of ‘scaled scores’. These scaled scores are not as precise as fine levels were – each score represents a range of raw test marks rather than just a single mark (e.g. in the 2016 KS2 maths test, a scaled score of 101 was allocated to the mark range 65-69 out of 110). The raw scores for individual pupils can be downloaded from the DfE’s (soon to be decommissioned/replaced) key to success website.

Update (April 2022) – at KS4, the DfE have confirmed that, for the calculation of a pupil’s prior attainment, they plan to use the average of their scaled score in KS2 reading and scaled score in KS2 maths. However, the precise nature of the Progress 8 model, such as how the pupils are split into different prior attainment groups, will be released in the autumn.

NB the recent guidance does confirm how pupils will be split into the 3 broad prior attainment categories of ‘High’, ‘Middle’ and ‘Low’, although it should be noted that these broad categories do not form the basis of how Progress 8 is calculated. They are merely about slicing the cohort into 3 broad groups for data analysis purposes. The guidance confirms that the Low PA group will be pupils whose average scaled score is below 100, and High PA group will be those whose average scaled score is 110 or higher. (The Middle PA group are those in between – scores from 100 upwards but less than 110.)  This does represent a significant change to the distribution of students compared to the 2019 model (based on ‘fine levels’) – as shown in this table:

National Distribution of KS4 Students into Low, Middle and High Prior Attainment groups

Data source: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/key-stage-4-performance-revised/2020-21

For children who did not take the KS2 tests because they were working at too low a standard, teacher assessments will be used and converted into nominal scores. The pre-key stage standard system used back in 2016 and 2017, which has since changed, used categories PKG (79 points), PKE (76 points), PKF (73 points) and BLW (70 points).   Back in 2016, teacher assessments were submitted for all children, including those working within the standard of the tests, so again it’s possible that these could be used in calculating prior attainment for any children who were absent from tests. (WTS=91 points, EXS=103 points, GDS=113 points.)

NB whatever approach is decided upon for calculating prior attainment measures for this cohort, the chances are the approach is going to have to change a further few times over the next few years, as the DfE made several adjustments to KS2 assessment over the years 2016-2019: inclusion of P-level scores, changes to the Pre-Key Stage Standards, removal of the requirement to submit a teacher assessment in reading and maths for children working at the standard of the test etc.

The above is all about how prior attainment (the ‘input measure’) is calculated. As for the calculation of the ‘output measure’ (i.e. results in KS4 exams), the latest guidance confirms that this will follow virtually the same approach as the last time Progress 8 was calculated (2019). One key difference is that results from early entries (taken in 2019 or 2020) will not be included in the Attainment 8 or Progress 8 scores.

And, as is always the case in Progress 8 measures, the ‘expected value’ of the output – the P8 score of zero – will be based on the national average Attainment 8 score for students with the same prior attainment score in that year. The progress measure is always norm-referenced in this way – it demonstrates whether the students in that school made more or less progress than the average amount of progress in that particular year, but does not seek to make comparisons with progress made in other years.

Key Stage 2 Progress Scores

The first thing to say is that, although the DfE has said that KS2 data will not be published in the public domain for Summer 2022 results, they will “still produce the normal suite of KS2 accountability measures at school level and share these securely with primary schools, academy trusts, local authorities and Ofsted for school improvement purposes and to help identify schools most in need of support”. In other words, the data will be reported in Analyse School Performance and the IDSR. The phrase ‘normal suite of KS2 accountability measures’ implies that progress scores will be calculated.

Summer 2020 would have been when we found out what the new progress model would look like, as this was the cohort that completed KS1 in 2016, the first ‘non-levels’ cohort. But of course SATs didn’t happen in 2020 - nor did they happen in 2021 – so we are still guessing about how this model might work.

What we can say with certainty though is that the DfE only have teacher assessment data to go on at KS1. Although Year 2 teachers are required to administer KS1 tests, the scores from these are not collected.

So, as in the previous model, it seems reasonable to assume that point scores will be assigned to teacher assessment categories. It is also quite conceivable that the approach will once more be to combine pupils’ teacher assessments in reading, writing and maths to produce one prior attainment measure, which is used as the basis for calculating progress in each KS2 subject area. And the way those three measures are combined might, once again, be a weighted average, giving maths equal weight to the two elements of English. But, it must be emphasised, this is mere supposition at this point.

However the prior attainment measure is arrived at, the calculation of KS2 progress scores will be (as always) based upon determining the national average outcomes in KS2 SATs for each and every prior attainment score. Children’s progress scores are then the difference between their scaled score outcome and the national average scaled score outcome for children with the same prior attainment.

As with Progress 8 at KS4, it is a norm-referenced system. There must, by definition, be some schools that end up with positive progress scores and some with negative. It is all about showing how well your students progressed compared to everybody else.

One of the DfE’s aims is to be able to use 2022 results to explore the impact that Covid has had on educational standards. It is only through attainment measures that this can be established, not through progress scores. The progress scores will always, by nature of how they are produced, reveal a set of data across schools that forms a ‘Normal distribution’. There will be broadly the same number of schools with progress described as ‘average’, ‘above average’ and ‘below average’ as in any other year.  This image shows what the range of KS2 progress scores looked like in 2019:

Can we use prior attainment data to set targets for this summer?

Given that we a) do not know how prior attainment will be calculated, and b) have no idea at all how these prior attainment scores will correlate to key stage outcomes this summer, I would say it is impossible for schools to, in-house, attempt to work out targets for individual students (and futile to try).

There are, however, tools available which could give us pretty good indications of what learners might need to achieve if a school is to end up with positive value added. The Fischer Family Trust, for example, which has access to the national dataset and has many years of experience working with the statistical models employed by the DfE, are able to produce estimates of what outcomes might be expected of learners if they make progress in line with the national average, or at the 20th or 5th percentiles.  They can do this by accurately calculating each student’s position within the national rankings at the previous key stage, and then matching this to an assumed distribution of scores at the next key stage.

How robust these estimates will turn out to be this year remains to be seen, but over time as more national data is accumulated, one would expect the model to become more and more reliable.

In the meantime, it’s worth remembering this: from the learner’s point of view, attainment is all that matters. Whether it be a qualification, as is the case in Key Stages 4 and 5, or an indication of where you are at in your learning journey at a key point of transition, as is the case with KS2, attainment is key. Students never find out what their progress scores were. Those are only used for school accountability.

The main message, therefore, has to be to focus on securing the necessary learning between now and the statutory assessment window. If we can give learners the best possible chances of attaining well, despite whatever learning gaps may have opened up over the last 20 months, then the progress scores will take care of themselves.

​Analysis of the papers can take many angles and I don’t hope to cover them all in this series of blogs; instead, I intend to use analysis of the reading SATs to allow for insights into our current teaching practices in the hope of further developing and sharpening classroom pedagogy.

If I miss anything of particular interest, please do get in touch, and I will try to explore that avenue.

No change

The pass mark of 28 remained the same as in 2018. In real terms, this means that children need only have had a good stab at texts 1 and 2 to gain the marks necessary to meet the Expected Standard (EXS). Full marks on the questions relating to text 1, plus just over half marks on questions relating to text 2 would have reached the magic number.

With this in mind, securing high scores on these two texts becomes paramount for those pupils who you know are quite capable of reaching the EXS, if not quite ready to achieve GDS. It might be argued that encouraging these readers to focus more time and attention on the earlier texts – making sure that they give themselves enough time to read them well and answer questions with care – is preferable to challenging them to rush through the paper in order to get to the end. Lost marks due to rushed reading and careless mistakes on texts 1 and 2 may be a challenge to recoup through hard-won marks gained later on in the paper.

Does word count matter?

To answer this question, it is worth exploring how this year’s test compares with past papers.

According to Tim Roach’s (Twitter handle @MrTRoach) analysis of word count, we are right to feel that this year’s test was a weighty beast.

As his word count analysis shows, the 2019 test comprised of the most words ever presented in a KS2 reading test paper.

Can this increase in word count account for the drop in attainment at EXS at national level from 2018 to 2019 (a decrease of 3 percentage points)? And, does this national dip signify a real decline in reading standards?

In response to my first question: I would argue ‘yes’.

In response to my second question: I would argue ‘no’.

If we stick with the notion that pupils who we expect to reach the EXS need only make good ground on texts 1 & 2 in order to meet the necessary pass mark, in 2018, children had to do substantially less reading than in 2019.

To help exemplify this point, I have taken the liberty of amending Tim’s analysis grid, adding in the total word count for texts 1 & 2 only.

Now we see, with burning clarity, the reading demand made by the length of texts 1 & 2 in 2019 compared to 2018. In 2018, children had to read far fewer words (491 fewer to be precise) in order to be in with a chance of gaining enough marks to meet the EXS, than in 2019. In reality, this means that if you consider an average fluent reader – and we assume that they read a text at 150WPM (obviously this is a contentious figure and can fluctuate depending on task, context and child) – then, in 2018, a child would have had the luxury of over 3 minutes longer to spend on answering questions. This may not seem all that significant, however, any teacher will tell you that when it comes to the reading test, every second counts. Moreover, when we factor into the equation the visual impact that fewer words would have had on the confidence and enthusiasm of a reluctant or less test-savvy child, then we begin to see that the 2018 paper may have presented a more accessible challenge to most pupils. This in itself may go some way towards explaining the 3% point drop in national attainment at EXS from 2018 to 2019 – essentially, we are beginning to see that the children had to work much harder in 2019 to reach the EXS than in 2018.

So, if looking at data for EXS for the 2018 and 2019 tests doesn’t offer a fair comparison, where can we look to see if the children are getting better, or worse, at reading?

To support with this, we can turn our attention to the word count for the first two texts in the 2017 reading paper. We note from the grid above that in 2017, pupils aiming for EXS would have had to read a similar amount of words as in the 2019 test (with a difference of only 56 words). If we attribute challenge to word count alone (I am sure we wouldn’t but in fact, my analysis shows that the texts 1&2 from 2017 and 2019 were comparable in many other ways beyond word count – this will become apparent across this series of blogs), then we would anticipate a similar level of attainment at EXS for both these cohorts. Indeed, the national level data shows that 72% of pupils met the EXS in 2017 compared to 73% in 2019 – showing a small but notable 1% increase during this time.

We could therefore be bold and argue that, according to this data, children have actually improved their reading ability during this time period. If we take into account the fact that the pass mark has increased by 2 marks during this period, we may feel even bolder in our claim.

Pass mark madness!

Bearing in mind that the 2017 and 2019 tests presented a very similar level of challenge, you would expect the pass marks to have been the same. Unfortunately, they weren’t.

Imagine if the pass mark for 2019 had remained as it was in 2017 e.g. 26 rather than 28. If this had been the case, I believe we would be celebrating a rather healthy rise in standards, rather than lamenting a dip from 2018. With this in mind, a would urge schools to reflect on their data in the following  ways:

• Calculate the data for pupils reaching the EXS in 2019 if the pass mark had been set at 26 marks.
• Compare this figure with attainment at the EXS from 2017.

If this comparison looks favourable, I would argue that whatever you are doing to improve reading is working.

To clarify, I would argue that the 2017 test is more comparable to the 2019 test than it is to the 2018 test: in 2018, children had to read considerably less in order to have covered the information needed to answer the questions relating to texts 1 and 2, thus giving them a better chance of reaching the EXS. With this in mind, it might be fairer to look at the comparable data from 2017 to 2019 when making judgements about reading decline or improvement. When comparing these two tests, we note that there was an increase in national reading attainment at the EXS by 1%, despite children having to reach a higher pass mark. This means that despite the challenge of the test remaining high, and despite a higher pass mark, more pupils than ever met the grade this year.

Let me therefore be amongst the first to say Bravo to all the teachers out there. Let’s be sure that we are all armed with this information when we are told repeatedly – as no doubt we will be – that reading standards are declining.

I hope that this blog provides enough to get teachers thinking about some of the ways in which they might interpret the findings of this year’s reading SATs paper outcomes, and how their findings might be translated into effective classroom pedagogy.

In this short blog, Penny Slater points to some texts that may prove useful in the last few weeks leading up to this year’s SATS.

Let’s cut to the chase…It’s early summer term. You are a Y6 teacher. You have a couple of weeks left before the 2017 Reading SATs paper. What you are probably looking for are some great texts that will give your pupils a final push to prepare for the challenge ahead? Oh…and you probably need those texts to be free and easily accessible. If so, read on….

You may be aware of BBC2’s writing competition ‘500 Words’ as a great way of inspiring young writers, but have you ever considered it as a source of material to inspire young readers? Having been running now for several years, there are hundreds of fabulous short, engaging, brilliantly written texts just waiting to be read (or in this case, plundered for suitable material to prepare children for the KS2 reading test).

I worked with the fabulous Subject Leader and Y6 teacher, Nicola Potter – reading SL at Little Green Junior School, Croxley Green –  and together we searched through the best of the best of the texts available on the site. We finally hit upon 5 texts that we felt had scope to both interest the Y6 children, and provide them with a reading challenge that was comparable in nature to the KS2 reading paper that they are just about to sit.

In order to judge comparability with the texts used in the KS2 reading paper, we ran each text through the Lexile Analysing. We have provided the Lexile rating along with the title.

Cold as Ice by Annabel Burdess

670L: comparable to How to Hide a Lion (KS1 DFE exemplification ARE)

2052 by Ophelia Spracklen

760L: comparable to Space Tourism (KS2 sample reading paper – lowest challenge)

A Stellar Job by Elizabeth Quigley

910L: comparable to The Last Leopard (KS2 reading paper 2016 – middle challenge)

Crime Doesn’t Pay…but…by Tom Foreman

900L: comparable to The Last Leopard (KS2 reading paper 2016 – middle challenge)

Fake Book by Anna Harries

1030L: comparable with The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (KS2 DFE Exemplification ARE)

The Y6 teacher now intends to use these texts alongside the Question Stems alternating between the teacher asking some of these questions, and the children creating some of their own based on the texts read.

Either way, the hope is that these texts will provide a little last minute practice for your children, alongside some inspirational reading material (and all without costing you your time…or sanity)!

Finally, from all of us at HFL English team to all of you out there who will be supporting the Y6 children over the next few weeks to shine, we wish you the best of luck.