Sunday 7 February 2016

Year 2 teacher talks about teaching to the test

"I'm a year 2 teacher and even we have to teach to the test, more so with every year. For the first time ever, my class will be tested on clauses, word classes including subordinating conjunctions and past and present tense (etc) in their SPaG test this summer. Spelling is 50% of their Mark in one of the tests and as we have many EAL I think they may not do so well on the spelling part, even though they are otherwise bright, hard working and articulate. This at the same time as the maths expectation has risen to the level of what they call 'mastery' ; what this equates to is a lot more focus on maths and English (specifically, grammar) at the expense of everything else on the curriculum. We are already priming them for sats and they spend most days practising for them in some way. This has led to some very bored children and very frustrated teachers! No such thing as learning for fun any more."