Assertive Mentoring: New Curriculum Welcome parents In association with

Aims of Assertive Mentoring To raise standards for all To motivate and involve children To inform and involve parents

Why Assertive Mentoring? It’s a proven system nationally. It works and it works for ALL pupils.

What is Assertive Mentoring? Assertive Mentoring brings together many outstanding school systems together in one place. It is a focussed, child centred, collaborative approach based on a dialogue about the child’s present and future learning needs. Peter Boddy

It incorporates and facilitates: Assessment: Where are the children? Tracking: How are they progressing? Target Setting: What do they need next? Support: What help is needed?

It starts with your children being set targets: by the senior staff Teachers work with them with your children Ambitious & achievable Pupils motivated by them

National Changes to Assessment This academic year has brought about changes to the language used to assess children. We are all used to using levels to judge where a pupil is at e.g. The average year 2 pupil at the end of the year was a Level 2B, likewise, Level 4 was an average year 6 pupil. This would be their attainment level. Levels were also given to pupils in the year groups 1,3,4 and 5. This enabled schools to demonstrate progress. Levels no longer exist. Throughout the Key Stages pupils will follow the New National Curriculum and be judged at the end of year 2 and year 6 on attainment. The interim arrangements for 2015/16 will mean that children in year 2 and year 6 will be judged at ‘working at the expected standard’ or ‘working towards the expected standard’ or ‘working at greater depth within the expected standard’.

National Changes to Assessment However, schools still need to demonstrate progress, in year and across several years. Schools have been given the freedom to choose whichever assessment system and language they want. The most popular choice emerging is the use of age related stages e.g. Stage 3 equals year 3 and within that stage, breaking it down into emerging, securing and developing (a bit like the old level A,B,C breakdown). This way we can track progress. Our first job then was to map old levels to the new stages for each pupil. The age related expectations are higher in the New National Curriculum so there will be pupils who are operating in stages below their age. We then look at target setting data to set an ambitious and achievable target for each pupil based on their starting points.

Long Term Targets: End of Key Stage End of year Reading, Writing Maths

track pupil progress against the targets Teachers regularly track your child’s progress towards the targets & make sure they stay on track

Medium Term Targets: End of term End of half term Attainment Achievement Attitude

Maths System  Pupils take a Weekly Basic Skills Check in class during a normal numeracy lesson… at the Stage they are currently working at... once a week.  This regular practice supports mastery of the basic skills as the weekly repetition enables pupils to keep getting right those questions they’d previously got right so that basic skills are not forgotten over time  And the teacher addresses common group misconceptions  They are supported by prompt sheets to help them

Further Use of The Weekly Basic Skills Checks. Once a week, in a specially timetabled slot, pupils go to BIG MATHS to be taught by stage not age  Here, teachers and LSAs are each assigned a group of pupils who arrive with the Basic Skills Check that they completed earlier in the week in their own class  So everyone in any of these groups will have taken the exact same skills check that week even if they are from different Year Groups (but within the same phase)  The teacher or LSA leading the groups go through the weekly basic skills check question by question  They teach to the misconceptions that are identified through this process ie those areas that a significant number of pupils got wrong  Next week, back in class, when the pupils take their next weekly basic skills check, they will have a much better chance of getting right the questions they’d previously got wrong and the idea is to try and beat their score without any support

Half Termly Maths Tests Once every half term, the children will take a maths test in their class The results of this will be used to judge their rate of progress The results are also recorded on a tracking sheet which shows the teachers where the common misconceptions are occurring and thus informing their future teaching The tracking sheets also highlight issues for individual pupils.

Mentoring Meetings: Mentor = Teacher, TA or SLT Meet every term as minimum Meetings last min Must be 1:1 Must be out of class Must be Assertive

Benefits for children Focussed teaching Know where they are Relevant intervention Personalised learning Motivation Targets met Success

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