Assessment

Much like adults, children need to know how they are doing. At Bassett, we make it abundantly clear that any child who simply makes an effort is doing well.

We encourage children to self-assess their learning using success criteria, linked to the learning objectives for the lesson. This enables them to take ownership of their learning process and realise their opinion counts. We also encourage them to seek feedback from classmates before the teacher makes their assessment.

True to our growth mindset approach, effort is recognised and rewarded then followed up with constructive and specific ‘next steps’ guidance. .

Immediate, oral feedback is also given wherever possible. We believe there’s nothing like spontaneous encouragement and guidance coming straight from the horse’s mouth!

Testing

Tracking individual progress

We monitor progress using teachers’ assessments combined with tests which provide standardised scores. This allows us to track the individual progress of every child in relation to age-related expectations.

Testing is operated unobtrusively to the point that younger children do not even realise they are being tested. Little do they know their results allow us to fine-tune their personalised learning programme.

Homework

There’s a fine balance between constructive homework and robbing children of their childhood. Whilst there is real value in children working independently at home, we do not ever want them to feel overburdened or de-motivated at the end of a fun day at school.

Accordingly we have recently started setting more pre-teaching tasks for homework. It involves giving the children a stimulating home activity prior to a lesson on a specific topic. For example, they would watch a fun animated video at home introducing, let’s say, long division. We believe homework can be homeplay.

Pre-teaching allows children to familiarise themselves with new topics ahead of the lesson. The combination of pre-teaching and traditional consolidating homework makes children’s learning more time-efficient and stimulating, so the learning process is accelerated.

We also ensure children have appropriate homework in preparation for 11+ examinations in English, mathematics and reasoning.