Assessment
Assessment
Assessment is an important way of communicating to parents and children about academic progress and attainment. We feel it is vital to involve children in these conversations in order to empower them, remove the stigma around "underachievement" and to give them ownership over their goals and successes, whatever they may look like.
We teach our children that assessment is a means of measuring how far they've come and every tiny improvement in their own learning journey is worth celebrating.
Terminology
When your child's teacher reports their attainment to you, they will use the following abbreviations and terminology. Please see below for a summary of their meaning.
| WTS | Working towards the expected standard for their year group. |
| EXS | Working within the expected standard for their year group. |
| GDS | Working at a significantly greater depth within the standard for their year group. |
| Below | Children who are not currently accessing their year group’s curriculum are assessed within a previous academic year. This is indicated by a number before their stage (e.g. 2EXS for the expected standard in Year 2) |
Reporting to parents
Children in Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5 will sit formal assessments termly. Year 6 children complete these assessments every half term. Teachers will use their teacher assessment of the child's performance in the classroom alongside their test results to summarise the child's attainment.
The teacher assessment will be reported on the 'Assessment' page of you child's organiser and a text will be sent to notify you when this has happened. If you ever have any questions or concerns, or you would like to know your child's raw scores from the tests, please contact your child's class teacher.
Assessment practices
At Chaucer Junior School, we use informal assessment practices daily to gauge an understanding of how well the children are learning. This can be done in several, low-risk ways during the lesson or whilst books are being marked and it's unlikely that your child will even know it's happening. We do this to identify the best next steps for each individual child, to understand if someone needs some intervention and to inform our daily planning going forward.
We use formal assessments, not only to help understand your child's progress, but also to teach them vital skills they will need for secondary school and life such as time management, critical thinking and resilience. It also contributes towards removing the fear of the unknown - for most children, by the time they complete their SATs in Year 6, testing is a normal practice and the children are not phased by having to complete them. Staff also analyse the results and the most common misconceptions in order to inform their planning for the next term.