Written by: Mark Levesley on Thursday 2008-12-04
It was always going to be interesting to see how the SATs papers would change in response to the demands of the new Programme of Study and the Framework for Science. Indeed, when we first started developing Exploring Science: How Science Works we pondered the question of how exam-style papers could properly test the range of skills that the new curriculum required pupils to acquire in Key Stage 3.
During the development process, whilst we considered SATs being scrapped as a serious option, we had not anticipated that their demise would be replaced with nothing more than the vaguest notion of how teachers were expected to assess pupils! We will not have the final form of the Assessing Pupils Progress directive until February 2009. However, the Exploring Science team are currently hard at work on a response to APP, which will allow you to fully integrate it with Exploring Science. Until then, you can rest assured that Exploring Science: How Science Works will provide for all your assessment needs.
At the outset of designing Exploring Science: How Science Works we discussed how the assessment of pupils could become more rigorous yet flexible, particularly when it came to assessing the new HSW skills required for Key Stage 3. This led us into developing the Formative and Summative Assessment Support Pack, or ASP as we’ve taken to calling it. The pack contains a wealth of different ways in which you can assess progress and performance, and allows three distinct types of assessment:
- Baseline – to get a snapshot of pupils’ prior knowledge of a topic in order to inform your short-term planning, and indeed getting pupils to think about what they are about to learn.
- Formative – to allow you to monitor how pupils are learning at any given moment during the study of a topic.
- Summative – to allow you to assess how much pupils have retained after studying a certain area of science.
Whatever the final form of the Assessing Pupils Progress directive and the recommendations of the White Paper in February 2009, our range of assessment materials are there to fully support you: Quick Quizzes, Assessed Tasks, Peer- and Self-Assessment Sheets, Assessed AT1 investigations, End of Unit Tests, End of Year Tests. And don’t forget that all the questions in the Pupil’s Book are available with level-assessed specimen answers on the ActiveTeach.
I can also assure you that, should APP or the White Paper spring any surprises (e.g. by recommending the implementation of a specific form of assessment) we will be there to support you and provide materials for you to use.
For the moment, let’s enjoy the fact that SATs have gone, allowing teachers to spend more time encouraging and inspiring the scientists of the future rather than teaching them how to take a certain type of test.
With best wishes for the rest of the academic year ahead.
Mark Levesley
Series Editor