Tests and processing time

[frizzcat]

I'm aware that in national test SEN children get extra time on tests. Are there any protocols in class tests does anyone know?
Ds does spelling tests fine - but at the moment his class are doing mental maths tests, whereby the teacher calls the question and they have 5secs to do the answer. This is no where near enough processing time for ds - I'm going into the SENCO next week and raising this. Just wondering if any of you have come up against this?

My ds in year 6 has processing speed SPLD in 4th percentile and working memory 12 percentile. I got independent EP assessment done as school EP did not check processing even though I asked for it and only picked up WM deficit, which I also asked her to check. I was told by EP it is cruel to put someone with these issues through mental maths tests which play to their weaknesses. We were too late to get extra time in SAT's, he would qualify in GCSE's it seems. My EP says now we must ask that at Secondary that he gets 25% extra time in all tests leading up to statutory exams. In practice I doubt it will always happen.

Cheers Super - definitely feel this is knocking his confidence. Ds is 8yrs and in yr3. I'm shocked they are expected to answer so quickly, I remember the aural element of my Maths GCSE, when we had 30secs between each question! And yet at 8yrs they are expected to answer somthing in 5secs. I'm going to have a chat with the Senco, I already have an EP visit on my lists of demands requests.

Frizzcat, I was supporting a DC with ASD in Y6 last year and for their SATs they were allowed 25% extra time, which had to be agreed in advance by quite a few months. This covered all the papers bar the mental maths which still had to be done via the CD.

For the first 5 (easiest) questions the question is repeated twice and five more seconds is added before they move onto the next question. So the total time is slightly longer, but tricky if processing speed is a problem. The next 5 (?) questions are repeated twice and 10 seconds is added, the remaining 10 (?) questions 15 seconds is added.

The questions get progressively harder, but roughly the first 5 are level 3 questions, then level 4 then level 5.

I'm not sure of the logic of not allowing extra time for these but I would bet it's because it would be really difficult to consistently administer. I guess they could produce a CD with the 25% extra time built in, but that would be too easy! TBF, 25% extra would only increase the 5 seconds to 6.25 seconds. Most of the working out time is during the second repeat of the question, which wouldn't be extended.

Cheers Ellen - loving your name tweak btw

I'm going to take it up with the senco - he can do mental maths, he just bewildered by the tape business. May as well get the school to put this practice in now

They must differentiate this for DC who are deaf. Good luck with the SENCo.

Had this issue with DS1 when he was in Y4.
I was told that the mental maths that was given was given verbally by the teacher, so not on a CD. All work is assessed in different ways, some DCs find certain testing methods easier/harder than others, but that ways are found to assess each child that suits them.
so I would use the self-esteem angle and how it is knocking confidence. Either they find a way of adding additional time for him alone (or along with any others that need extra processing time) or that he is not expected to be tested in this way, but tested in a way that the teacher can accurately assess his ability without doing further damage to his confidence.