Primary Science Assessment Tool / Tracker (Without Levels)

After years and years of finding the monitoring of children's progress in subjects such as Science, PE and ICT to be difficult both in terms of practicality and time, I was made Science coordinator at my school, and therefore had the opportunity to face the conundrum head on. I was determined, especially after "assessment without levels" came in, to find a more time manageable, yet effective and clear, method of tracking pupils progress outside of the big three.

Therefore I came up with this; an easily adaptable tracking sheet which allows teachers for each class to simply input their register and planned Science objectives for the half term. Tracking then works like a traffic-light system - if under the first objective some children displayed really good or even advanced understanding, I put a red dot in the first column by their name. If some children really took to the learning well and came away with a good understanding from the lesson, I gave them a green dot to show they were on track. And if children seemed to struggle with an objective and didn't come away with a clear understanding, I gave them a yellow dot. (FYI - this was tracked discreetly during and after the lesson).

ADDITIONALLY - during the next lesson, I would look to start by recapping from the previous week's objective, targeting children on yellow and green with my questioning. If a child I had previously dotted yellow seemed to show a good recollection of key ideas and facts then I would add a green dot next to their original yellow dot to override it.

All the above instructions are at the top of the tracking sheet. Additionally, this assessment tool allows teachers to monitor what Science objectives they have taught through the year, to ensure expected coverage, and can help coordinators ensure that classes across the school have good coverage of the curriculum and are not repeating the same topics unnecessarily.