St Michael’s CE Junior School Life Without Levels.

St Michael’s CE Junior School Our Motto ‘Building Bridges, Opening Doors’ Broad and balanced curriculum Addressing the needs of each child holistically within a safe, stimulating and inclusive community.

Why has there been a change? In 2014 the Government introduced a new curriculum for Primary Schools. This became mandatory in September This has been the most fundamental change in the way primary Education is organised for a decade. National curriculum Department for Education First published: 14 October 2013 Last updated:16 July 2014

So what has changed? The biggest change for schools is the fact that there are now no more levels. This is because the Government felt that levels did not help parents to understand how far their child was improving and that the curriculum was not giving children breadth and depth of understanding. “In short, levels were just too vague and imprecise. They were misleading as to what pupils knew and could do. The use of levels was pushing pupils on to new material - in the name of ‘pace’ - when they had not adequately understood vital content, and had serious gaps in their knowledge.” (School Reform Minister, Nick Gibb)

Programmes of study are now allocated to each year group and the expectation is that children will not tackle learning from the year above. Instead, the children are given tasks that will develop greater mastery and in-depth understanding of their year expectations. Children are expected to keep up with their year group expectations. So what has changed? Fractions in Year 3: In depth task This is 0·4 or 2/5 of a bag of marbles. How many marbles are in a full bag?

What are the challenges? Lots of new content, some of which was previously regarded as Secondary School learning. Some content has moved down one or two years. As a consequence of this downward shift of content the children are expected to be mastering concepts they have never encountered before. For example Year 3 are expected to have mastered the whole of new KS1 curriculum (despite never having been taught all of it!)and Year 6 are expected to master all of the new KS2 curriculum in just 5 terms!

However it’s not all bad! What this will create is a very personal curriculum for each child…eventually. In the long term it should encourage greater understanding of key concepts. For example children will not be rushed through the curriculum to tick off a series of objectives but will be assessed on the depth of their understanding of the learning.

How will we track and report this? Throughout the year we are continually assessing each child against curriculum objectives (domains). Children are assessed at the end of the year against ‘end of year expectations’. Pupils should be taught to: add and subtract whole numbers with more than 4 digits, including using formal written methods (columnar addition and subtraction) add and subtract numbers mentally with increasingly large numbers use rounding to check answers to calculations and determine, in the context of a problem, levels of accuracy solve addition and subtraction multi-step problems in contexts, deciding which operations and methods to use and why. End of year expectations for Addition and Subtraction (Year 5)

How will we track and report? There are no numbers or levels to report. Children are described in terms of Age Related Expectations (ARE) as being: Below: children have not yet mastered all of the concepts described in their year group. Secure: children have mastered all of the concepts. Beyond: these children are showing greater and deeper understanding of their year group concepts. Written Reports To Parents: New style reports will be sent to parents on 1st July.

How will we meet the needs of all learners? What about the children who are ‘below’ ARE? This can cover a wide range of needs; the children could be just below or they have missed out on previous learning, however it could be that they have needs across a wider range of concepts. Interventions Scaffolding Small group support Clinics

How will we meet the needs of all learners? What about children who are secure? These children are expected to be able to use their skills independently in a range of different situations. There is more emphasis on the children making decisions about how and when to use their skills. At this point in the transition between the old and new curriculum many children, and indeed schools, are finding this challenging.

How will we meet the needs of all learners? What about the children who are beyond? If your child is grasping or mastering new concepts well, rather than moving on to the following year group’s learning. We will encourage more in depth and investigative tasks to allow greater depth of concepts and ideas. There is more detailed information available on our website.

Expectations Do you know what conjunctions, specific determiners, definite and indefinite article, inverted commas and fronted adverbials are? When should a child be able to read and spell reign, occasionally and experience? These are Year 3 and 4 Expectations

Reading There is now a greater expectation that children should be reading more widely. There is a greater emphasis on developing good reading habits and children reading beyond school. There is a greater emphasis on structure and technical language. The Programme of Study for reading in Years 3 and 4 and Years 5 and 6 are similar: BUT the complexity of the writing increases the level of challenge. QUALITY TEXTS ARE KEY!

Guided Reading sessions - example

Writing and Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Spelling rules and statutory spelling list which is in the children’s home link books. Increased focus on grammar, including the correct terminology and there is a long list of complex grammatical concepts. Children are expected to know the terms and apply them independently. Some of the guidelines are very specific. For example fronted adverbials must be followed by a comma. The difference between a preposition and adverb.

Mathematics – do you think this is from Y3 or Y4?

By the end of Y4 children are expected to know multiplication facts up to 12 x 12 and related facts (division/place value)

How do we see progress - mathematics An end of year expectation in Year 5 in the Multiplication and Division domain is: identify multiples and factors, including finding all factor pairs of a number, and common factors of two numbers

What does mastery look like? 8 is a multiple of 4 and a factor of 16. is a multiple of 5 and a factor of..and then to Mastery with Greater Depth Captain Conjecture says, ‘Factors come in pairs so all numbers have an even number of factors.’ Do you agree? Explain your reasoning

Maths Curriculum Expectations

What can you do to help? READ, READ, READ… Use the questions in the home link books to discuss the text. More than ever it is vital to read a wide selection of books that your child enjoys, for example: newspapers, comics and a mixture of fiction and fact books etc. Consolidate multiplication and division facts, mental fluency and counting in various steps. Spellings – practise the spellings rules and statutory spellings which can be found in the back of your child’s home link book.