Early Years Foundation Stage; Reception Baseline Assessment 

This is an age-appropriate assessment of early mathematics and literacy, communication and language. It is carried out by the class teacher within the first six weeks of a pupil starting Reception. The assessment has two components, each consisting of practical tasks using physical resources and online questioning. The Reception Baseline Assessment will be used by the government to create school-level progress measures for primary schools, which will show the progress pupils make from Reception until the end of Key Stage 2 (Year 6).   

As well as the Reception Baseline Assessment, the class teacher will carry out her own Baseline assessment of each pupil, using practical activities and observation to understand each child’s needs as they start school. 

Year 1 Phonics Screening Check 

Phonics Screening is typically completed in June when pupils are in Year 1. We tend to complete a practice check before Easter in Year 1 and share that result with each child’s parents/carers, highlighting any sounds they need to practice at home.  

The Phonics Screening Check contains 40 words divided into two sections of 20 words. Both sections contain a mixture of real words and pseudo-words. Each child completes the check individually with their teacher. 

Reading 

Children are continually assessed on their reading ability and are issued books linked to the sounds they are confident in reading. This also links to Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS), which is our whole school phonics scheme. Once the children have learnt all the sounds, completed the phonics scheme and have shown fluency in their reading, they will be bench marked and will be issued books suited to the child's ability, based on the teacher's judgement. 

When the class teacher decides that a child is fluent and fully comprehending their reading, they will then be assessed to ascertain whether they can move onto the next level. 

Assessment process: A set text will be used; the adult will record how the child reads this text aloud. Errors and self-corrections are marked and then the success at decoding is scored.  Key questions are used to see how far the child has understood the text and whether the child can use inference to think around the text to answer more open-ended questions.  The scoring system guides us whether the child is ready for the next level or not and this is communicated home.  If the child does indeed move on, guidance is given as to what to look for at this new level. 

Formative Assessment 

Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of methods that teachers use (e.g questioning, observing how well they approach/complete a task, marking completed learning). To assess how well a child has understood a concept or can perform a skill; it is sometimes referred to as ‘assessment for learning’ because it helps us plan the next steps for the child.  

In each year group, we capture summative assessment of learning at Baseline, when the child starts in the year group, Check Point 2 at Christmas, Check Point 4 at Easter and Check Point 6 in July; this tells us what the child has learnt at each milestone.  We use a Management Information System to capture, track and analyse our data.  Teachers benchmark their decisions with other teachers within school.

Each term we participate in moderation meetings with schools across our Trust.  

After every checkpoint, we hold Pupil Progress Meetings. This is to highlight those pupils who are making accelerated progress, as well as those who are making slower progress, who need additional support.  We outline what interventions we need to continue or put in place, setting short-term targets for the group to achieve, which we then track. 

Parents’ Consultation Evenings 

These are held over two evenings in the Autumn and Spring Terms. The aim is to meet with the parents/carers of each child in the school, so that we can talk about how they behave for learning, what progress they are making and what their ‘next steps’ are.  In the summer term, the end-of-year report summarises this information, along with our assessment judgements using the end-of-year expectations.