8 replies to this topic

[Joanne1277]

Help!!
I have received a letter today to say that our school has been chosen for a full moderation regarding the foundation stage profiles!!
Now i am in panic mode.
Can anyone help me, by sharing how they record evidence / prove the different scales. I feel really nervous and would appreciate any advice. How do other people assess their foundation stage children. I have 29 reception aged children.
Looking forward to some responses
Jo

[JacquieL]

As far as I understand it the FSP areas being moderated this year are CLL and Creative development, unless your authority has decided something different.
Just keep your observations and samples of children's activities, pictures etc and annotate against profile statements. You do not need to keep evidence for every statement and one good observation will provide evidence for more than one area of learning.
Everyone seems to provide evidence in different ways. I keep planned observations, which are annotated for each area of learning plus nest steps, just handwritten notes. I only do one of these each term. These go in a book which also has pictures, samples of work etc. which I write a note about the learning taking place.when you add to these do it with the child there, then you can talk about it which can be very interesting, and also means you are not spending hours after school. I keep spontaneous observations on a sheet for each child, and have a diary where I also record things such as who knows their shapes when doing an activity, or the sort of language used. Anyone working with the children will keep brief notes on a sheet of paper and I just stick these in the diary with the date. for some aspects of literacy you will have phonic and reading records and writing is fairly easy to evidence as long as for 'free' writing you can find out whose it is!
Somewhere else on the forum is a lot of discussion from last year about the profiles, no doubt Steve can point you to it.

[Lisa E]

Hi

Hopefully you will have had LEA training on completeing FS profiles. When I recently recieved my training the assessment manger for the LEA was keen to stress that the usual assessment methods we use (observations, photographs, post it jotings and team discussions were valid methods, as well as those that we 'hold in our head'. She had also collected samples of work on disc that exemplified the points. I could email these to you if you feel that they would be useful. She was very keen to state that she doesn't expect to see reams of written records when observations take place. Also have you been asked to attend any cluster meetings concerning FS profile assessment- these are pre set by my LEA and we are invited to attend these even if the recepetion class is due their visit. It would also be useful to contact your LEA assessment team if you are new to the recpetion year as you may have missed/ or not recieved information in a handover.
I have to say that I found the FS profile traing useful as it showed how diverse peoples assessments can be!!!!! But we also made steps to converge our final assessments for the profile. It was also suggested that assessment of FS profile points is a valid exercise to carry out within your FS team and the wider school team.

[Sue R]

Joanne,

No help, I'm afraid but lots of good wishes! When will it be?

Sue :D

[Debs]

As previously mentioned my LEA is moderating 2 areas of the profile so we are focusing our evidence mainly to this.
As a school we were moderated last year and we had to provide a sample for a girl and a boy who were high, average and low achievers for those areas of the profile which were being moderated by the LEA.
Another idea was to produce a portfolio of agreed evidence which could be built up over time by the setting. All i have done is get a file and divide it into the areas of the profile. I then put photos and work sample with the context and the profile statements annotated at the bottom. As a setting it was useful as we sat down and talked about the statements and agreed what we meant by them as a setting.
When i was told about the visit i was anxious but found after that it was a positive experience and helped us as a setting work and understand the profile.
Hope this helps.

[hali]

hi

i have just been today on a profile update course..we are in berkshire and our advisor told us that they too are looking at CLL and CD this year but said as long as we could prove from our heads what a said child could/could not do not to worry too much about evidence......... :D

[Joanne1277]

Have just checked the letter. Our LEA are focusing on all 6 areas!! Autumn term for PSED and CD, Spring term - CLL and PD, Suymmer term MD and KUW. Help!!
Its nice to hear what others are doing and how you record your evidence. How do you all plan for assessment. I know some is just as and when but I also know it is good to plan to focus on particular children and goals/areas. Any help and guidance appreciated.
Many thanks again
Jo

[abi]

Hi Joanne,
I was moderated last year and I was terrified too in case I was doing everything wrong. On the day it was fine she was very supportive and said that I was worrying too much and doing too much!My authority Cheshire are doing exactly what it says in the profile file which is CLL and CR this year. I will have to go to a moderation meeting. I had photos and samples of work for the moderator and she was fine about it. I think your authority is being very mean doing the whole lot - what a burden. Good luck with it.
Abi

[fay]

I was moderated last year. The moderator spent a morning with us, he looked at three children observing them for about 40 minutes, looked at our documentation, then spoke to me. He was very pleasant and supportive. This year we have had Ofsted in looking at how we asses our children's progress towards the early learning goals and this was much the same, but they also spoke to parents.
We have a seven page record with all of the stepping stones, ELG and profile statements on (this is started in our local playgroup and goes through to the end of reception, each setting fills it in, in a different colour) We high light to show progress and put in a reference if there is evidence to go with the statement. our evidence includes post its and written notes on the back of the sheets, childrens work on sheets,in books or photocopied, photos, and individual and group observation forms.We keep our records in a concertina file so evidence can be quickly dropped in and then checked through on a regular basis.
We were told it was up to the moderators to follow through the paper trail and find referenced evidence and, has been said, one piece of evidence may cover several statements and you don't need evidence for every statement. Our moderator looked at what was acutually in the files and decided he agreed with the judgements we had made and didnot check through our observation sheets.