Teachers advice - SATS KS1

[debs40]

Hi

I remember reading a thread a while back about teaching assessments and SATS. I got the feeling that my son's school were over-reliant on tests for guidance about a child's ability rather than using them as one part of the assessment.

I remember someone posting about offering a child the second harder paper if they did well in the first and teachers being a bit critical of that.

This has just happened to my son. His teacher said he did so well in the first she is going to try him on the second. He seems happy to be getting the praise as he has an ASD and has done really well to keep up with the pace this year. But does this suggest an over-reliance on testing?

It may be a 'task' paper which needs to be completed by the Y2 children who's work is looked at for moderation.

Not sure what you mean, doubleexpresso - you wouldn't include extra assessments for those children.

There are 2/3 tasks that children whose work is being moderated have to complete here. Teachers take the evidence from these tasks along as a starting point for discussion at the group moderation.

How strange. Thought the whole point was for them to see some typical examples of children's work to show how teacher assessment is carried out as a whole. Not sure how this can be achieved by giving selected children 'special' tasks, ifyswim?

Our moderation meeting was awful. Some know-it-alls insisting that a piece of writing was 2c despite cursive writing, good punctuation, similes, adjectives (huge dragon as red as fire...) Twas ridiculous - and they won the argument (despite 2 of us shrieking 2b) by rigorous highlighting of the APP.

It wasn't my submitted piece of work, thank god - otherwise I would have been even more p off, but it has really put into question all our writing assessment, particularly as the 'secure L3' on the framework site is so uninspiring, and even lacks accurate punctuation. This is allegedly 5 sublevels above the one we moderated at 2c at our meeting.

Anyone else had this problem?

Feenie is spot on with her knowledge and advice IMHO (I am a Headteacher). Sad to hear about rigid ablity groups and schools who test inapprpriately...

Thank you - you couldn't pop over to Education and reiterate that to a Y2 teacher who thinks her LEA have told her she no longer has to use tests in Y2 and that they are no longer statutory, could you?

Not sure I'd make it all the way there - some wine has been consumed what with it being Friday night and all.

True - it's definitely wine o'clock.

Thanks for the posts. I was told my DS's teacher this morning (she was trying to praise him which was nice) that she took him and a few others off into another class yesterday to sit the other SATS paper. She had told him he was doing it because he was very good at maths. She was quite open about it. There's no way this is an additional moderation task etc. It was the top table numeracy group - and DS.

We recently had an EP observation which talked about DS' levels and them possibly being 'corrected' by SATS???

The ability groups are very static in the class. The children were taken off the ORT reading scheme for SATS and we were told they would be put back on after assessments. In the meantime they could read what they want.

DS's reading really took off when he didn't have to bother with the ORT books. What did they do when the children went back on the scheme? Picked them all up from where they left off a month ago.

I'm cureently ignoring the reading scheme - it's rubbish, kids are choosing their own books at the library and from home, having more fun and developing better opinions on what they like and don't like - I document these books in the reading diary....I've told the teacher that this is what I'm doing as my dd is not interested in the scheme and the most important thing after all, was that she read with enthusiasm and enjoyment - home time is our time and they will not force us to endure crap literature.

I think that is the right approach actually and I did mention that to the teachers. They immediately put him up a level and gave him different books! He likes the one he has at the moment but I think I will let him choose after that.