Key Objectives Assessment Grids

Ramblings of a Teacher

Just as term ended, Tim Clarke (@tim_jumpclarke) sent me an excel spreadsheet he had created to record assessment against the key objectives for Maths and Writing and Reading.

After a few emails and a bit of tweaking, we’re releasing what will hopefully be a useful tool for schools choosing to use the Key Objectives approach. For each subject there is a spreadsheet covering all year groups (although it would, of course, be possible to combine sheets from different files to put, say all the Y5 pages into one document).

For each subject and year group, there is a list of objectives and a grid into which the numbers 1, 2 or 3 can be entered (representing, say ‘Working Towards’, ‘Achieved’ and ‘Exceeded’, or whatever such terminology as you choose to use). The cells change colour, and importantly the summary at the foot of the column does too, to represent…

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From the train

This is one of my favourite photos from my recent trip to Norway. It’s on the train between Oslo and Bergen.

#100WCGU #141 – in the garden

This week the prompt for 100 Word challenge was ‘…but there are so many seeds…’

***

“But there are so many seeds!” she exclaimed as she flipped through the catalogue. “Who’s idea was this again?”

They had taken advantage of the bank holiday weekend to redesign the garden. The undergrowth had been cleared, and everything stripped back to bare earth. Now came the matter of deciding what to plant, and where. Was it to be a vegetable garden or a wildflower garden, since it was difficult to imagine both fitting in the small space. Or just grass to rest on in the long cool evenings?

They settled on a range of vegetables – beans, peas, carrots and lettuces – and set up the slug defences.

Having Choices

Dreaming With Your Feet

The Connection field trip to Garden Cove Produce

For some reason, people tell me their problems. I avoid eye contact with people beside me on airplanes or in line at the dry cleaners because next thing I know, they are telling me about their awful spouses or their problems with work. I have found myself caught in conversations with complete strangers about the most personal of topics, like the time I was minding my own business at an Alabama football game and a woman proceeded to tell me all about her menstrual cycle, in gory detail. Completely unsolicited …

My friends used to unburden themselves to me like I was Dr. Phil or something. When I was younger, I was an enthusiastic audience for my friends’ complaints and worries, happy to dispense my sage wisdom while telling myself that I must have my shit together or else they wouldn’t be…

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Loom Bands – A Social Anthropology

jonny walker teaching

As is widely known by anybody who works in any primary school, or even anybody who has attended one, primary schools are social spaces which are prone to life-consuming fads. I am not speaking her about Mindfulness or Learning Styles theory but about playground crazes. In my hazy memories of concrete joy, play time was a time to swap Pogs, to swap wrestling cards, football cards and the most prevalent craze among them all, Pokemon Cards. 

There is an interesting uniformity to the way in which these crazes operate, which I think – from my overly academic point of view – hold a lot of social significance. 

Today, we talk about Loom Bands, those annoying things the children fiddle with under the desk whilst I am trying to teach them how to read. Loom Bands are fairly cute, which is possibly why teachers have allowed them to proliferate more than with…

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#100WCGU #139 – things that go bump

This week’s prompt for the 100 Word Challenge was ‘…but even when I listened carefully…’

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There it was again. About the same time every evening, a bump and a thud coming from somewhere in the house. I thought it was downstairs, but even when I listened carefully I still couldn’t make it out. It had been happening pretty much since I moved in two months previously, and I was getting worried. Not that anything had gone missing, but I was wondering what it was that was making those noises.

I stood at the window thinking, and there it came again. And – oh! There was next door’s cat using the window sill as a way of getting over the fence!