year 3 maths

[givemeavodka]

Hi my son just told me had to do a test in maths, he said he got 28 right and 18 wrong ( he thinks). He says it was a special booklet of some sort , he had to do it yesterday.
Any ideas anyone what this is about? thanks

[fanoftheinvisibleman]

Sounds like SATS papers. Our school has just done them (ds is year 3). They aren't statutory, they just fo them for their own purposes I think.

[YoullNeedATray]

Optional SAT-style papers are used in many schools. It gets children used to the format. It's also useful evidence to justify levels in record tracking and to identify areas that they have forgotten about since they were taught.

I never give my pupils their detailed marks though!

[juniper44]

I used to work in a school who would use QCA papers every 10 weeks as their assessment method.

Was it one of these?

[fanoftheinvisibleman]

Ours were YoullNeedATray. Parents haven't been but kids came running out discussing their grades ds knew who'd got best grade and what is was.

To be honest I don't know why school go through the farce of naming all sets and ability groups after non specific things when the kids so obviously know which is which anyway!

[fanoftheinvisibleman]

(from what ds says they are told which is top btw) Homework sheets make it clear anyway as always say xxxx table and xxxxx table include xxxxx and asks for more of them.

[peppermintsticks]

fanoftheinvisibleman

It's because Badger group or Circle group is more interesting than Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 etc.

It's not supposed to be a code to trick children.

OP, it's probably just an old QCA paper, nothing exciting.

[FlumpieWumpie]

Is he at private school? They do test just before every half term. It is to get the children used to the more important tests they'll be doing in the future (Year 4 onwards). Results not that important at this stage, getting used to test conditions is. Otherwise no idea unless SATS... but isn't that generally end of Year 2?

[givemeavodka]

Thanks everyone for all your replies.
My ds is in a state school and I was just curious about the test I don't have any further info to go on I guess it might of been a SAT paper but I wasn't aware that they give this in year 3 I thought it was just year 2 and Year 6.. Would the children be expected to do really well in this test considering it is only February?? I am guess it is a level 3 paper. thanks

[fanoftheinvisibleman]

I presume it is just for purposes of monitoring. But ds did theirs mid january, his maths score was the only one he could remember but it was up one level from the yr 2 SATS. I think they say,2 sub levels a year? Either way, he is doing ok and the levels seem ok for yr 3 so I'm not worrying about it.

Thanks peppermintsticks I always presumed that it was so the children didn't know what level everyone else was at.

[rollonthesummer]

Optional SATS papers are used by many schools at the end of y3/4/5 but this could have been anything. Our maths scheme comes with Half- termly assessment tests which can be used to give levels-it could be that.

[juniper44]

I name my groups weird names so they don't know the order. They frequently ask me why I don't rank them like other teachers do, and I have loads of parents ask me about differentiation. I think that's a win, personally. My groups are very differentiated and the work is very personalised, but I make a big song and dance about everyone having strengths, and it seems to work. They seem to believe there's no hierarchy, which I'm glad of.

[YoullNeedATray]

I used to name my maths groups after mathematicians. Then I moved schools and had to do the same boring circles/triangles/squares/etc thing as the other classes.

I too make a big thing of us all having different strengths, especially in maths. We're doing time at the moment and I'm differentiating 8 ways officially, with plenty of sub-differentiation within that. The 'normal' maths groups are totally changed. The workload is phenomenal... but I know EXACTLY who needs help with knowing which hand is which, who's fine at 'past' but can't yet do 'to', who gets their hours in a twist, who's ready to try 24 hour clocks and who's getting questions about durations of flights across time zones (!).

[juniper44]

You'll Please give me 5 mathematicians and I will happily swap my method! I am guilty of triangles, circles, trapeziums etc.

[YoullNeedATray]

I usually chose from Newton, Turing, Hawking, Babbage, Pythagoras and Fibonacci. I ought to have used Lovelace, Herschel and Nightingale for some gender balance! First homework is to find out about 'your' mathematician.

A lesson constructing a Fibonacci series, then creating the spirals, is great fun :-)

[PastSellByDate]

Hi givemeavodka

Our school has been instructed to improve tracking of pupil progress and one means of doing this is to run 'optional SATs' just before each half-term, which are marked over half-term and reviewed with HT/ Senior Management Group.

I suspect your school is operating much the same.

For Y3 he's probably taking the SAT for Y6 (levels 3 - 5) - which you can see for free on-line - just type in free KS2 SATs papers on your search engine.

You can just ask the teacher about the test and how your child performed. Our school is actually getting better at giving parents a general indication of performance against NC Levels - although they don't give specific test info - but do explain the tests 'feed into' overall assessment.

What we're meant to do when NC Levels are dropped -as apparently the government think it best to leave it to individual schools to devise a marking scheme - who knows?

[jamtoast12]

Our sat a test yesterday but it wasn't just maths, it was a huge booklet containing maths, literacy, R?G, science etc and all year 3 sat it! Any ideas?

[ShoeWhore]

Our school assesses Maths, Reading and Writing in juniors using tests once a term too. We get told their NC levels at parents evenings.