Help!

[Guest]

Hi there,

 

Our school is being moderated by the LEA assessment advisor on Wednesday and i don't really know what to expect - as they are doing nationally this year (i believe) he will be looking at CLL and Creative development.

I think i am ok with the CLL part - have lots of the childrens work, reading records, Basic skills assessments and photos etc to show (although any other ideas would be a help - just so that i don't stress too much over the weekend) but how sould i present it to him - just show a good, bad and ugly?!?!?!?!?!? (High, middle, low achievers) or what????

As you can tell i am having a little panic this afternoon - i know things will be OK - think i'll be able to blag my way through but it just gets to me a little that i've got to provide evidence to someone who is coming in from outside when i know these kids inside out! and know which are able to write independently and those who are still tracing or have no idea what a q looks like never mind write it down etc..

 

But creative development - what evidence am i going to show him for that????? we don;t have video recorder so have not filmed any of the dance/music making we have done. I do have camera but i think that they can look staged - should really have collected a good sample of paintings etc but the kids like to take them home if their friends are?????

 

I've spent a training day thinking about this and have got nothing done!!!! have been reading this website instead of doing 'proper work'!!!!!!! Whoops, its just so easy to get sucked in!!!

 

OK rant over! Sorry!

I suppose i should go and do something contructive with the rest of my afternoon or i'll have doulbe to do on sunday!!

 

Sarah

[Guest]

Don't panic sarah, creative development covers lots of things look at your displays and the children's work in general, think about their junk modelling their pictures not just paintings, block play anything where they are challenged to create their own version of something. Try giving the children a scrap book to keep throughout the year where they can save their work then they can take it home at the end of the year. Add their comments and it becomes evidence and observational it works for you and for them. Ask them to give them a name we call ours super books for super work things they are really proud off. It may not be a van gogh but they are proud of it. thats what counts. I know you only have a few days but try it now and it catches on really quickly whatever their ability and it only takes a few minutes to glue in and help them write comments or write them for the children. As for assessment if you use your profiles and review regularly with your staff and the children all should be well.

 

Good Luck

[Guest]

A good quick way to collect evidence is to use a digital camera.

 

Perhaps set up a creative themed afternoon linked to your topic. E.g our topic is 'animals' and we have a vets in our role play. We had read books, looked at pictures, played in the role play area, talked about the role of a vet. We got onto talking about x-rays (we found some human ones in school) and one child said we should have some animal x-rays for the vets. We managed to find some white materials and darker paper (at the children's requests) and some children created their own. Another boy wanted to make an x-ray machine. He had definite ideas about wanting tracing paper to see through, a box to put your hand or the animal in, and a light or torch shining from above! I took a few photos of the process, annotated them and there was my evidence my creative point 8!

 

This week we had the story of the rainbow fish. After our morning of literacy/language/subtraction stories about fish, I played some watery music, showed some pictures of fish and then said ' what shall we do this afternoon?'. There was all sorts of excitement and buzzing with the children, and a group ended up making an 'under the sea' world, which has continued durign the week with children nipping off in spare moments to make hanging fish, seaweed, listening to shells, 'swimming actions of fish'. A few clicks of the camera, and a few annotations, and there is your evidence for creative 7 or 8.

 

Good luck!

Marie

 

Marie

[Helen]

Hi Sarah,

What is your observation/recording system like? I was a moderator a couple of years ago, and teachers' obs notes were the main source of information for me. Not beautifully written ones necessarily, but indications of where the child is really at.

His job is to see if your system accurately reflects the child's level of achievement and to a certain extent, the problem is his!! He needs to tease out how you have placed the child at a certain level.

[Guest]

Hi,

 

I have my moderation next week and when organising the meeting she said i needed to get three children of high, medium and low ability for her to assess. She said they would complete a creative activity (making bugs i think she said) and then do a little writing on it. We would then talk about where they were and whether we agreed.

 

As Sarah mentioned i'm pretty sorted for CLL with work they do for rml, literacy work, reading records etc. Creative also worries me, we have no video camera's and only one digital in school so my pictures are limited. I have kept bits of their work but have struggled with evidence for the non-paper part of CD. But i have seen her records and she keeps them for the whole class not indiviuals except for the odd piece... so surely i have more as we keep stuff on every child.

 

Anyway enough rambling... can anyone help me with the high, medium and low ability children? I can obviously show her these children but do i have to find them high at both CLL and CD or just one?

[Guest]

I guess she wants the range for both CLL and CD, but the children won't necessarily be at the same level for both?

[Guest]

That's what I was thinking, I have chosen three children who show a range of ability for both. I don't think i'm going to have to say this child is this and that child is that, that's what the activity is for.

 

My moderator is my NQT EY helper from the lea so i have explained what we do in school already and she is aware we have no early years co-ordinator so hopefully she wont be too scary!

[Guest]

Following a stressful weekend worrying what i was going to show for CD it just so happened that our staff meeting was on Assessment and what we are going to pass up to the Y1 teacher! so i took the opportunity to voice my opinions to the head and assessment co-ordinator about the difficulties faced when providing evidence for this area and some of the others and was backed all the way by both of them! WOO HOO! and they were very understadning about how do i provide paper evidence and they agreee that i know the children and which ones will be able to for e.g. be able to talk about material properties and the good and bad points when building etc. talk about what and why they are doing it! So i am feeling a lot calmer about the whole affair (and they are thinking that the moderator will be carrying out a light touch moderation due to the fact that he is leaving at the end of the month! I only hope that they are right!)

 

Sarah

 

ps Moonbeam - what do youmean by rml??

[Guest]

Hi,

 

I assume you mean me not 'moonbeam'!?

 

Rml is Ruth Miskin Literacy, it's a phonic approach to reading and writing. 'Fred' talking, flashy cards and books. They're assessed every few weeks so it's really up to date on their abilities.

 

http://www.ruthmiskinliteracy.co.uk/.

[Guest]

Sorry buttonmoon - do not know where i pulled moonbeam from?!?!?!?!?!?

 

The moderation went grand - don't know why i panicked so much! he was very positive. he wrote down lots of things and gave us some ideas for future collecting which was all very interesting. He even showed me how to use the e profile which is going to save me hours of time next year when my class size shoots back up to 26!!!

 

Sarah

[Guest]

What actually did he do? Ask?

Sorry to be a pain but mine next Thursday...

[Guest]

He just asked us to show him examples of what we do in school to assess the children! he was very understanding and realised the need of not doing things for 'showing off' prposes and that what we presented him (running reading records, reading assessments, childrens workbooks, post it note jotting - annotated photos etc) wererun of the mill things that we do all of the time adn the fact i could talk about the children in my class and what stage they were at. he also had a look around the classrooms to see how our setting supported the children and ourselves in working towards the early ;learning goals. It really felt like quite an informal chat. and because he has been to 15 other schools already he told us how some of the other schools were presenting / keeping evidence using digital records etc.

 

Hope this helps

 

Sarah x

[Susan]

Can you share any of that Sarah, it sounds really interesting?

[Guest]

Hi Susan

 

Its probably just what people are already doing - instead of keeping actual pictures, models etc they are taking digital photos of them and then annotating them and instead of printing them out - due to the costs involved in printing out loads of pictures they have a folder for each child or each of area of the curriculum and store the pictures on thier computer or RW CDs.