pre assess and teach: options
We are happy to say we are mastering the auto pre assess process - so this page and all child pages are redundant
Purpose
The pre assess process makes it easier for teachers to get to know both what their students can and can't do and enables the teacher to begin to get to know how most topics are split into layers.
Pre assess is one of the 3 big changes to teaching expected by timely practice - see Why pre assess before teaching?
We offer a suite of pre assess options which will suit any scheme of learning (see the table below)
The suite of carefully devised pre assess documents
Each pre assess document enables the teacher to
- follow fairly closely the departmental chosen scheme of learning (see adjust a scheme of learning to be more timely practice friendly).
- be sure that pre assess has been done in advance of teaching providing the teacher also follows the suggested sequence of lessons found at the beginning of each document. This is especially important if students already "know" quite a bit of maths.
- use an efficient trial and improvement method to pre assess their students - rather than just pre assessing every student on every topic and within each topic all the layers the teacher thinks any student in the class may be able to do.
The first topic theme will pre assess a mixture of questions from the topic theme and word problems - column 2 in the table (if you are interested see pre assess of "word problems" needs to be different for the reasons why).
After the first topic theme has been pre assessed and taught for the first time, then other topic themes can be pre assessed and taught - the order of the topic themes may approximately follow the departmental scheme of learning (except we strongly advise leaving any work which requires a calculator until last).
| Topic Theme | First Topic Theme | Subsequent Topic Themes |
|---|---|---|
| Number (not FDPR) | pre assess and teach Number 1st | pre assess and teach Number next |
| FDPR | pre assess and teach FDPR 1st | pre assess and teach FDPR next |
| Word and Proportion | Must be taught after another topic theme. To find out why see pre assess of "word problems" needs to be different | pre assess and teach Word and Proportion next |
| Algebra | pre assess and teach Algebra 1st | pre assess and teach Algebra next |
| Geometry and Measure | pre assess and teach Geometry and Measurement 1st | pre assess and teach Geometry and Measurement next |
| Probability and Statistics | pre assess and teach Probability and Statistics 1st | pre assess and teach Probability and Statistics next |
| Using a calculator | Should be pre assessed last. | Do this last (see info box below) |
FDPR
FDPR: fraction, decimal, percentage and ratio
Avoid using a calculator problems for most of the pre assess process
We strongly recommend that the students are only pre assessed on any maths requiring use of a calculator after all the other topic themes have been taught once. This removes for the first half term the need to check "did the student do this question without a calculator". Just before moving from the Finding and firming learning foundations to the Teaching on firm learning foundations phase is the ideal time to pre assess and teach calculator skills - as by this time the progress on topic will be accurate for all topics, even those topics which could be made easier by secretly using a calculator.