How often do you track?!

[Madmum]

I work in a school nursery and am becoming embroiled in a somewhat heated debate!!

We do focused obs on each key child each half term and also day to day notes. The teacher puts the notes into the children's records during her PPA updates the records and LJs. Each half term she tracks the progress and collates data to reflect this.Our reception class however are only collating data 3 times a year- baseline, mid year and year end. They apparently update records more often ( not convinced this is true!) but only collect the % below, in line and above 3 times.

We are now under pressure to reduce our data tracking and are being told 3 times is good practice in EYFS. We feel strongly we have an excellent grasp of where each child is. Our head says we shouldn't need data for this ( and to be frank we don't), but to update records only 3 times a year would be a massive job.

I am not sure if I'm missing something here but can't find anything to suggest a 'right and wrong'.

 

What's everyone else doing?!

[Guest]

my staff track data as they keywork, we input data only 3 times a year

onto a tracker. I think a tracker is to show progress and plotting more frequently would really show this.

 

My staff know where their children are and write for their own benefit in the childrens LJ

[Susan]

I think you should do what is right for you. If your tracking regime is working then why change it?

 

I would have thought good practise was to have an accurate assessment of your children, which you feel your system allows. In my last school we had to update our assessments through FS and KS1 every half term.

[Guest]

Could you argue that in the nursery half termly tracking is more appropriate due to a wider range of abilities or something like that? As reception teacher I'd love to do tracking half termly but I simply don't have time. If you have a system that works for you I don't see why it should be changed to make it look like the school are doing it the same as you.

[green hippo]

Hi,

I track the obs at least every half-term - I write where each obs 'fits' in a simple grid with the corresponding number. But, I only do a 'formal' summative assessment 3 times per year - as the school on-line system allows - October, End of Feb and June/July. This is where I have to give them a corresponding number as to whether they are emerging or securing in which age and stage.

My day to day obs tracking is what I use most to inform my planning - obviously there are less obs for some aspects than others e.g. you don't tend to write down all the children that can go to the toilet independently, you just know those who find this more difficult! etc. The summative assessment 'numbers' are less useful in day-to-day practise as they don't really tell me exactly where a child is up-to e.g. 2 children can be classed as 'Securing in 30-50' in the same aspect but they will have different specific things that they need to consolidate, if that makes sense.

Not sure if this helps,

Green Hippo x

[Melcatfish]

I am also in a school nursery. We update LJs and do our observations on an ongoing basis. Half Termly I use these to make an assessment in our Personal Learning Journey documents (document that includes development matters through into KS1 national curriculum level descriptors) However I only input data into Target Tracker (Essex tracking system) 3 times a year. Autumn half term once I have had half a term to get to know them and make an initial assessment, mid year and just after the summer half term.

 

It works for us but it is important you find a system that will work for you. Because I do the actual assessment process half termly inputting two half terms worth of data is not a problem for me, it is certainly quicker than going through the process twice and I don't need the actual data to inform our planning, I can do that based on the observations and Personal Learning Journeys.

 

Mel

x

[Guest colechin]

We do exactly the same as Melcatfish and this works for my staff.