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In this learning overview are suggested assessment opportunities linked to the assessment focuses within the Assessing Pupils’ Progress (APP) guidelines. As you plan your teaching for this unit, draw on these suggestions and on alternative methods to help you to gather evidence of attainment, or to identify barriers to progress, that will inform your planning to meet the needs of particular groups of children. When you make a periodic assessment of children’s learning, this accumulating evidence will help you to determine the level at which they are working.
To gather evidence related to the three Ma1 assessment focuses (problem solving, reasoning and communicating), it is important to give children space and time to develop their own approaches and strategies throughout the mathematics curriculum, as well as through the application of skills across the curriculum.
In this unit the illustrated assessment focuses are:
Children process, present and interpret data to pose and answer questions. They pose a question such as:
What is the most popular boy's name and girl's name in the school?
What is the most popular hobby in the class?
They agree as a class what data they should collect to answer the question, then plan and organise how to collect it efficiently. They design an appropriate data collection table such as a frequency table or tally chart. Children recognise that they may be able to make use of existing data in order to collect information efficiently. For example, to find the most popular girl's and boy's names in the school, children may decide to use class registers and suggest that each group could add the names for one year group to a frequency table.
Children learn that the most common item in a set of data is called the mode. They use their collated data to respond to questions such as:
What are the five most popular boys' names in the school?
Which girl's name is the mode within the school?
How many girls have a name that no-one else in the school has?
How would you find out the total number of boys in the school from this chart or graph?
Children suggest and explore extensions to their enquiry. For example, they may suggest that the most popular names from 20 years ago would be different from the most popular names today (the Social Security Administration website gives the most popular boys'/girls' names for particular years).
Children plan and pursue an enquiry related to a cross-curricular topic or area of interest to the class. For example, in the science topic 'Keeping healthy', children answer the question: Do children in our class eat enough fruit and vegetables in a week? They discuss, clarify and agree what is involved in answering their question. For example, they research how many portions of fruit and vegetables are recommended. They weigh out 'portions' of particular fruit and vegetables in order to develop a shared understanding before children collect individual data. They agree how to collect the necessary information, for example, deciding that each child should keep a 'fruit and vegetable diary' or create a 'fruit and vegetable portion pictogram' over the week. All children appreciate how their individual data needs to be collected in order to contribute to the class data.
Assessment focus: Ma4, Processing and representing data
Look for children who describe or explain, in their own words, the data that the class decided to collect and how it will help with the enquiry. Look for children making appropriate suggestions about how to structure the format of a data collection sheet so that all of the information that is needed is captured. Look for evidence of children choosing an appropriate chart or diagram to represent the data in a way that will help answer the question posed. Look for children considering the reader of their graphs, including themselves at a later date. For example, look for children who label the axes, provide a title and write an explanatory note about their enquiry.
Once the data is collected, children suggest how to present the information using pictograms or bar charts in order to answer their question. For example, they each find the total number of portions that they ate over the week and then collate this information in a class bar chart. Children suggest and produce alternative graphs and charts. They consider the most sensible scale to use when producing their graphs. They use the different representations to answer their question, discussing which graphs or charts show the information most clearly and why. They highlight and discuss other features of the data, suggesting other questions that can be explored such as: Do children eat more fruit and vegetables at the weekend than on weekdays? They find the modal number of portions of fruit and vegetables eaten in the week.
Assessment focus: Ma2, Mental methods
As they represent numerical data, using a scale of their own choice, look for children using multiplication facts, and place value if appropriate, to calculate how tall the bar to represent each number should be.
Assessment focus: Ma4, Interpreting data
Look for children who can read a range of scales on the vertical or horizontal axis of a bar chart, including reading between labelled increments. For example, look for children reading the value 12 from a scale with labelled increments of 5. Look for children drawing conclusions from the data, for example, identifying the most or least popular or common event.
Children reflect on any difficulties they had in answering their question and how they might improve the data handling process if they went through it again.
| Objectives Children's learning outcomes are emphasised | Assessment for learning |
|---|---|
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What are you trying to find out? What information are you aiming to collect? How? |
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What does the data tell you about your original question? |
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What information will you need to collect to answer these questions? |
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How will you display your data? How did you decide on the scale for this axis? What labels have you put on the axes? What titles have you given your graphs and charts? Why did you choose this type of graph? |
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Sam found out the shoe sizes of people in his class. The mode was 4. Explain what this means using everyday language. |
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Estimate the mass of this bag of carrots. Weigh the bag to see how close you are. |
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What is the value of each interval on this scale? What information did you read on the scale to help you? What calculations did you do? |
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You have an hour to find out which soft drink children in this class prefer. Work out how much time you will give to each part of the task. |
| Activities | PDF 1MB |
| Activity 53 - Square it up | |
| Activity 58 - Spot the shapes 2 | |
| Activity 60 - Three digits | |
| Activity 64 - Flash Harry | |
| Activity 69 - Coins on the table | |
| Activity 74 - Anyone for tennis | |
| Activity 75 - Bus routes | |
| Activity 77 - All square |
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Objectives for Springboard intervention unit |
Springboard unit |
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Use decimal notation for tenths and hundredths |
Springboard 5 Unit 5 (PDF 305KB) |
| Springboard 5 Unit 5 supplementary (PDF 88KB) | |
| Multiply and divide whole numbers by 10 and 100 and understand the effect | Springboard 5 Unit 6 (PDF 305KB) |
| Springboard 5 Unit 6 supplementary (PDF 57KB) |
| Diagnostic focus | Resource |
| None currently available |
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