Foundation Subject Assessment here at Harting CE Primary School
At Harting we have developed a meaningful and thorough assessment process to assess both the children’s acquisition and application of knowledge and skills in foundation subjects.
Plans for assessment begin at the planning stage of all foundation curriculum subjects. All subjects have a clear progression document for both knowledge and skills. In planning for a topic, teachers use these documents to develop knowledge organisers which ensure that the children are being taught content and skills in line with the national curriculum and the curriculum sequence which we have designed at Harting. These documents outline both the knowledge the children are expected to acquire through effective teaching and learning as well as the skills they will be developing across each learning journey. These documents include the following information:
- Knowledge within the subject area that children are expected to be secure in
- Skills that the children will be developing through the carefully planned sequence of learning across each of the learning journeys.
- Key vocabulary the children are expected to use, understand and apply in their own work.
- History and Geography organisers also contain ‘Top Take Aways’ which indicate the key information that the children are expected to be secure in by the end of the unit of work. We plan for this approach to be cascaded to other subjects on a rolling programme of implementation.
Knowledge organisers are sent home with children at the start of each learning journey and are available on the school website. We aim for these to be used in supporting parents assisting their children in acquiring knowledge at home. With the knowledge being supported at home as well as in school, we focus on children applying this new understanding through application of specific skills which are taught in school.
Throughout each learning journey teachers use ongoing assessment for learning to track how well the children are developing both the skills and knowledge that are being taught. This is through assessment of work, conversations with children, observations as well as evaluation of how well children are applying skills across each learning journey. If at any point staff identify a child is finding particular aspects of a learning journey challenging, dynamic interventions will be put in place to support them.
Assessing skills and knowledge:
When recording formal assessment judgements across a learning journey, teachers use two documents. One to assess knowledge and one for skills.
When assessing skills and knowledge staff indicate if a child has met (green), exceeding (blue), working towards(Yellow), working below (red) the expected standard against each skill or aspect of knowledge taught. Where a child has met the expectation, no further comment is necessary. However, where a child is exceeding , working towards or working below, staff add objective specific comments which provides further context and child specific information around what aspect of learning they have found more challenge or are exceeding within. The rationale behind this is with the aim of enabling any staff member to identify where a child needs greater support, or adaptions to ensure a breadth of understanding. This will then enable staff to plan opportunities to develop these skills through appropriate adaptations/interventions and in future learning journeys.
This method of assessing skills and knowledge has been applied to History, Geography, Science and PSHE/RSHE. We are now cascading this approach to all other relevant curriculum areas using a staggered and sustainable approach to implementation.