Another Year 7 target query -science

[christywhisty]

DS's target for the unit 7I Energy Resources is level 7.67

Does this sound right? How would it have been calculated?

Level 7.67?

yes level 7.67 that is how it was written on the sheet, although it only says how to achieve levels up to 6.
He got a level 4.83 for a some work in music, last week and he has been getting marks like 5b for english. But this marking only started since half term. Prior to that it was based on quality and effort ie A1,A2,B1, B2 etc

II think there should be a special thread for us newish year 7 parents, with one of the lovely helpful teachers who post on here coming on once a day to gently pat us on the head and guide us through the maze and reassure us that it will be all right at the end.

I thought 7 was a year 9 target - or year 8 if they are particularly bright?

Do you know what teaching scheme your DS is doing for Science? (ie, name of the text book)

7.67 seems rather odd to me. But as it's 7 + 2/3, maybe it means 7a (top third of level 7 band?)

One problem is the sub levels are graded with letters - 5a 5b 5c and so on, but lots of school management software plus excel etc. can't cope manipulate the statistics with letters as well. So in our school departments allocate a raw score to each sub-level, so the computer can check whether students are on-target and so on.

But these raw scores are converted back to sub levels with a, b, and c in reports.

Thanks for the answers. Have spoken to another teacher this morning, not the same school but same county and he thought that they were based on SATs plus CATs score. DS got 77/80 for his science sats and although I don't know his cats I know they were high. Teacher explained the problem with this is method is the levels are often unattainable and when it comes to GCSES children who get As and A*s can be made to look like they are underperforming. DS confirms it was done on excel

Book they are using is Biology for Life.

How very odd! I'm glad you got an explanation

Hmmm - Biology for Life is a GCSE book, not Year 7 general science.

definitely Biology for life, showed ds on amazon and he confirmed it.

Some of his work sheets are Heinemann scheme

and the target sheet say "Deal It Up" unit 7I

We use the Heinemann scheme, and each unit just goes up to Level 6 in year 7.

We do exploring science. theoretically there is some level 7 stuff in each of the years, through to y9. Each of the topics has differentiated work .

I was looking at the Heinemann 7I test (I'm doing this myself this week ), and it goes from 2-5 and 3-6. I did a Y9 test last week and it went all the way up to level 8.

It may be that 7I only goes up to 6 because it is the first Physics topic on the scheme.

I think if the school is giving higher levels than the scheme, they must be using additional assessment tasks, eg Badger tasks.

Gosh, I am so glad to be in an independent school and not to have to do all this. I know where my kids are because I speak to them about their work, not by having them fill out endless rounds of paperwork.