Step 1. Your training and preparation

For you to be fully prepared to make APP teacher assessment judgements you need to be:

• trained on how to introduce and support APP
• familiar with the AFs and standards files
• clear about what counts as evidence
• prepared to adjust your planning and teaching as necessary to obtain evidence
• clear about ways to fill in the assessment guidelines sheets.

Step 2. Deciding the timing of APP judgements

Your school policy will determine when you should make APP judgements. APP is a process of periodic review of work already done, not a new assessment event. As a basic principle the work reviewed should cover more than one unit and at least one term's progress. This suggests that you will most likely formalise your judgements termly.

Step 3. Practice in making judgements

In order to make robust judgements in mathematics and reading and writing you should follow the appropriate flow chart.

• Mathematics: making a level judgement flow chart
• Reading: making a level judgement flow chart
• Writing: making a level judgement flow chart

You will find it helpful to work through an example of making judgements using a blank assessment guidelines sheet for a pupil in your class. As you do this, you should refer to a standards file with its completed assessment guidelines sheet to clarify the process.

Please note that the full annotations in the standards files are there to demonstrate the teacher's thinking around each pupil's sample of evidence. You do not need to annotate your own pupils' work in this detail.

Step 4. Starting with a small group of pupils

Initially you should choose a small focus group of pupils whose performance is representative of the broad levels of attainment in your class. You will find that you can then begin to generalise from these individual assessments.

For example, teachers in the pilot reported that selecting two or three pupils, on two of the level borderlines which are significant for many in their class, made the process of detailed assessment something that illuminated strengths and weaknesses in other similar pupils' work. Often, the patterns of attainment can be related to gaps in curriculum provision, as much as to pupils' ability.