Year 7 Information Evening: High Expectations for Reading & Homework

1. Year 7 Information Evening • Welcome from Martyn Henson • Principal Aims of the evening The vision for Year 7 Reading High expectations for homework Assessment

2. Ms Jones Year 7 vision- To be happy, confident and enthusiastic Nobelians who set an example around school and in the wider community. A year group who are always Ready, Respectful and Safe.

3. What we have achieved so far… • Students are arriving on time • The majority of students have had perfect uniform • Students are finding their way around the school • Students are getting to know new class mates • Students are making new friends • Students are starting to form new relationships with staff • We have 0 behaviour points!

4. Moving forward… Continue to follow Nobel’s high expectations- • Arriving on time • Perfect uniform • Achieving CARE points • Working to the best of their ability • Continue to try their best • Continue to be proud Nobelians • Start working through the Super Curriculum • PLT changes

5. What can you do to help further settle your child/children? Ensure their bags are packed and ready the night before. Make sure they students have had breakfast, we also have a breakfast service here. Students who have breakfast score roughly 25% higher on tests before break. Make sure children know the lessons they have the next day. Students are arriving to school without their timetables and not knowing where to go. Check Show My Homework Ensure your Gateway app is working correctly. Follow all the information and guidance given by my colleagues this evening.

6. Attendance • Every day absent is 5 hours of learning missed • Target- 100% • If a child wakes up not feeling great still send them in!

7. Literacy & ReadingJanine Port Head of Literacy “Reading for pleasure is one of the most important factors in children's cognitive development.” [Sullivan and Brown (2013)]

8. At Nobel we want our students to: • Recognise that reading is a valuable, enjoyable and worthwhile endeavour • Increase their knowledge, vocabulary and cultural capital • Take greater responsibility for their learning • Develop a life-long reading habit

11. WORD RECOGNITION • Attention • Phonological Awareness • Decoding • Sight Recognition LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION • Background Knowledge • Vocabulary • Literary Knowledge • Inference & Hypothesis SKILLED READING Fluency & Understanding Ski Scarborough, 2001

12. A 30 minutetest sat by students in Year 7-Year 11 • Students are tested at the beginning of each academic year • The test is not a formal examination What does NGRT test? • Word Recognition (i.e. phonics, decoding, sight recognition) • Sentence Completion • Passage Comprehension • Other higher order reading skills (i.e. understanding of figurative/ idiomatic language, authorial intent, contextual knowledge) Why do we use NGRT? • To monitor our students’ ability to read and understand text • To provide well placed and targeted intervention

13. Reading at Nobel is a whole school routine built into the school timetable for all students in Years 7-11. Sessions take place twice a week, during AM registration. Reading at Nobel

15. Library Lessons • One library lesson per fortnight • Free choice from a range of quality fiction and non-fiction texts • Reading incentivised through our ‘Reading Reward’ scheme - Bronzefor 3 books - Silverfor 6 books - Goldfor 15 books - Platinumfor 30 books - Diamondfor 50 books - Headteacher’sAward- for reading challenging or canonical texts

16. Reading at Home • Students are expected to read a text of their choice for at least 30 minutes, 5 times a week • Support your child to avoid distractions when reading • Provide a calm, quiet and supportive environment for your child • Listen to your child read aloud • Read to your child or share an audio book • Talk to your child about what they are reading • Year 7 only: signed once a week by parent/ carer and main English teacher

18. Homework Charlotte Harnetty Assistant Principal

19. Homework • Your child will have homework set on SMH and the reading that Ms Port discussed. You can login to view this. • They will also have Knowledge Organisers. • These contain the key information your child will be expected to learn that unit. We know the importance of working with parents and hope you find this a useful tool to support learning at home.

20. Why are we using Knowledge Organisers? 1.) We forget most of what we first learn but retrieving information can help students to remember.

21. Why are we using Knowledge Organisers? 2.) Working memory is typically limited to four things at a time. Long Term Memory – vast storehouse in which you maintain your factual knowledge of the world. Working Memory – part of your mind in which you combine and manipulate information. Working memory is extremely limited. e.g. What colour is a polar bear?

22. How should students use them? Please read through the KO Students should self-quiz for around thirty minutes a day. They can do this in a number of ways: • Download the Knowledge Organisers from the school website, edit parts out and fill in the gaps. • Cover and copy the information and see how much they can recall in their exercise book. • Have their parent ask them questions from the knowledge organizer. • Make flash cards based on the knowledge organiser and then quiz themselves. • Draw a mind map, jotting down everything that they can remember from the knowledge organiser

23. How will teachers use them? • Teachers will direct students to the key information to learn that week. • Teachers will use low-stakes tests to check that students have revised. • Teachers will contact you with any gaps in student’s learning.

24. Next steps • These are our first attempt. • We would welcome feedback on how students have found using these and how useful you have found having them as parents.

25. Assessment David Martin Assistant Principal

26. Children attaining identical scores in KS1 go on to achieve widely varying results at the end of KS2, and by the time they’re 16, the best we can say is that 66% of them will achieve a grade other than the one they were predicted to get. D.Didau Assessment • The only thing we can accurately assess is how well students have acquired the curriculum • Other measures (flight paths/GCSE grades/levels etc) are guesswork. • We trust that acquiring our KS3 curriculum is good enough preperation for KS4. Documenting whether a student has or has not made ‘expected progress’ is not necessary or particularly meaningful, since there is huge variation in rates of learning between students with the same baseline attainment. DFE, Making Data Work, 2018

27. Training groups? Difficulties with training groups: • Expected progress is hard to track • Ambiguity for parents and students. Do they understand that ‘Not Yet’ means underperformance? • Difficult to see how much of a unit students have conquered • Difficult to gauge performance in relation to peers • Students can be limited by their grouping and are not offered access to the full curriculum

28. What are we doing? • Removal of training groups and move towards a % score • Data drop 1 to focus on attitude to learning • Data drop 2 to provide an interim assessment based on tests of topics taught so far • Data drop 3 will provide an end of year assessment based on all topics taught to date • End of year exams built into the school calendar • In the lead up to exams, students will be given assemblies on revision and revision packs

29. What do the new KS3 reports look like? Reports contain the following information: • Attitude to learning (AtL) : A score linked to “Learner Profiles”. There are six learner profiles and the score provided gives a best-fit reflection of the student’s attitude towards their studies. • Exam results: These will be in the format of a percentage score for each subject. You can better understand your child’s score by comparing it to the year group average and highest percentage in the exam (these are also given in the report). Exams will take place at approximately halfway through the year and again at the end of the year and will include everything your child has studied up to that point. DT is taught in a carousel and will be reported as individual disciplines are completed. • Progress in practical subjects: Some subjects such as PE and Dance will report a judgement based on an assessment of your child’s skills or work produced using the following colours:

31. Questions Please see staff afterwards with any questions.