This yr I produced our finish of yr assessments for 12 months 8 and 9. Now we have a couple of primary rules that we observe after we create our Key Stage 3 assessments:
- Single Tier Key Stage 3 Assessments. I do know this one is controversial, however I need each scholar within the yr group to take the identical evaluation. I’ve by no means been pleased with prematurely allocating college students to tiers in Key Stage 3. After we’ve accomplished that previously, I’ve discovered that college students find yourself getting ‘caught’ in sure units. So now, though our common end-of-topic exams are tailor-made to every class, our large assessments (twice a yr) are one-size-fits-all. This makes the assessments harder to put in writing, however helps us get a greater sense of relative attainment throughout the entire yr group.
- Testing All Taught Content material. We all know it is irritating for college kids to spend ages studying and revising subjects which can be then not examined. So we attempt to embody questions from each matter taught in the course of the yr. And we’d by no means take a look at on subjects not but taught – that is counterproductive (it damages confidence and tells us nothing). For this reason we do not give full increased tier GCSE papers on the finish of 12 months 10 – I am strongly against it.
- Testing Information, Talent and Reasoning. We wish to take a look at procedural fluency and reasoning abilities, however we do not imagine there is a strict separation between this stuff. Properly-written questions take a look at each, so we attempt to discover as lots of these as we are able to.
- Problem. It is so necessary to incorporate degree of problem. I am unable to stand it when college students end a 60 minute evaluation in 20 minutes after which sit there wanting bored as a result of they discovered it straightforward. There needs to be loads of questions that make them assume. And on condition that the outcomes of those assessments assist us decide the teams we’ll put college students in subsequent yr, we want our assessments to supply us with sufficient info to get these choices proper. If half the yr group get 90%+, it isn’t serving to us determine our strongest mathematicians.
Query Type
I haven’t got time to put in writing most of the questions myself. Fortunately there are many good questions round, and instruments like Dr Frost imply they’re simply accessible. Here is an instance of a query that’s nicely suited to a single tier Key Stage 3 evaluation:
That is from a WJEC Basis paper. What I like about that is that Half a may be very accessible to all college students with a calculator. So the overwhelming majority of scholars can get a mark right here. Half b requires an understanding of inverse operations. A few of our decrease attaining college students discovered that harder than we anticipated them to.
Here is the same one. I tailored this from an previous AQA GCSE query. The vast majority of college students received Half a right. However Half b required a bit extra pondering, and it stunned me that many college students received it flawed, suggesting we have to work on their proportional reasoning.
Questions with a number of elements the place the primary half is very accessible and the elements get more and more tough are good for single tier assessments. Ideally each paper would full of those, then you do not find yourself with the state of affairs the place some college students can solely do the primary 4 questions and may’t entry the remainder of the paper. Here is one other instance of a query that has each accessible and difficult elements:
Maybe this ramps up in problem too rapidly. There may very well be a further half between b and c with average difficultly.
If a paper is filled with questions like this then it is each accessible and difficult. Subsequent yr I wish to embody extra of this. This yr my paper ended up with the traditional format ‘simpler questions in the beginning, more durable questions on the finish’, which does not create a pleasant expertise for the decrease attaining college students.
Within the the rest of this publish I wish to share among the harder questions I included in my 12 months 8 assessments. A few of our excessive attainers mentioned they discovered the mid-year evaluation too straightforward, and I did not desire a repeat of that.
Circles
There’s completely no must speed up onto the formulaic θ/360 πr2 when there’s a lot reasoning to be accomplished in 12 months 8 with semi circles and quarter circles.
To check these reasoning abilities I included this query within the non-calculator evaluation (taken from OCR’s pattern GCSE questions):
And this query within the calculator evaluation (I am unable to bear in mind the supply of this one – I believe it is perhaps Edexcel?):
Even our perfect 12 months 8 mathematicians discovered these questions difficult. In my very shiny Set 2, no scholar received a couple of mark on both query. This means we nonetheless have work to do on growing their reasoning.
Fractions
Though this wasn’t probably the most difficult questions on my 12 months 8 evaluation, I made a decision to provide this query a point out right here as a result of it stunned me. Fractions questions are sometimes so procedural, I wished to incorporate a fractions query that took a bit extra pondering. Though the overwhelming majority of scholars in my class don’t have any bother including, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions, this query was answered very badly. Even halving 5 eighths proved conceptually difficult.
Quantity
There are many ‘excessive tariff’ quantity questions to select from. These are good for a single-tier assessments as a result of most college students ought to be capable of choose up some of the 4 or 5 marks out there even when they cannot full the entire query.
This cylinder query (tailored from AQA) stumped most of my college students. All of them appropriately labored out the amount of water within the Cylinder A, however then discovered the amount of the entire of Cylinder B and divided one quantity by the opposite. This can be a traditional instance of scholars following a formulaic method to answering a query, reasonably than stopping to consider what the query really says.
Interweaving
As a lot as attainable I attempted to search out questions which mixed a couple of matter they’d studied this yr. That is notably straightforward to do for Pythagoras and ratio, which each come up far and wide. For instance, this query mixed ratio and percentages:
Joseph’s flock has 55% extra sheep than goats.
What’s the ratio of goats to sheep within the flock? Depart your ratio in its easiest type.
This was initially an IMC query. Are you able to guess what went flawed? Most college students in my class simplified 45:55 as an alternative of simplifying 100:155 (or equal). They’ve the data they should reply this query appropriately. They only did not assume.
They’d rather more success on this ‘drawback fixing’ type query on the non-calculator paper which additionally concerned ratio and percentages.
Andrew is paid £250 per week.
Every week, he:
– shares his pay along with his sister within the ratio 3 : 2
– saves 12% of his share.
What number of weeks will it take Andrew to avoid wasting £360?
That is an AQA GCSE query from 2014. It was accomplished fairly nicely.
And although we would frolicked on questions identical to this again in December, not a single scholar in my class picked up any marks on this non-calculator query:
This can be a SQA specimen query however I added the requirement to reply with out indices so as to add further problem. It interweaves index legal guidelines, fractions and increasing brackets. All three subjects have been on our 12 months 8 curriculum.
Though we do quite a lot of work on fractional and damaging indices in 12 months 10, we do look briefly at damaging indices in 12 months 8. So the upper attaining college students ought to know that x-1 = 1/x and x0 = 1. They did not get this far although. A number of college students realised that they need to be including the indices, however they appeared to panic on the considered including 1/2 to -3/2. Now I give it some thought, I bear in mind A degree college students discovering this sort of factor tough after we used to show C1 too. Maybe that is one thing to spend extra time on after we do fractions, as an alternative of skipping over fractions with frequent denominators.
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I would like to see among the questions that the majority challenged your Key Stage 3 college students of their assessments this yr, so do tweet me some examples.
I am going to write the same publish quickly about among the questions I used to problem 12 months 9.
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For context, I work at a complete college within the London Borough of Sutton. There are 5 grammar faculties in our borough, which barely reduces our consumption of excessive attainers. We’re proudly non-selective. It is a pretty prosperous space so solely 14% of our college students are pupil premium. We’re fairly ethnically numerous (41% White British in comparison with 66% nationally). Now we have 22 college students with EHCPs. We’re a brand new college with round 200 college students per yr group and we at the moment solely have Years 7 – 10 (we’ll have 12 months 11 subsequent yr). Normally, most of our college students have wonderful attitudes to studying and wish to do nicely. The common rating on our finish of 12 months 8 evaluation was 57% and the very best rating was 95%.
