Exercise Books - Expectations

What are our expectations around student workbooks?

Builds on previous knowledge

Books will demonstrate a consistent, coherent and logically sequence in line with our medium and long term plans. Within a given unit and across the year there will be evidence of progression. Progress will be evident in a number of ways, either through the introduction of more complex concepts, the introduction or development of key skills, reduced scaffolded and a greater expectation to write in more depth.

Shows Depth and breath

The Humanities planned curriculums ensure breath and coverage of the national curriculum while planned assessments provide more in depth exploration of given areas. Books will therefore demonstrate this coverage. Depth can be evidenced in the planned extended written opportunities which has been a target for the department. Particularly in Geography students lacked resilience and skill to discuss / assess / evaluate in depth. A new assessment approach for 2022/23 will ensure that when students are assessed there are clearer expectations and scaffolding to support the progress of all.

Demonstrates Pupil Progress

Across the year there will be evidence of new knowledge, skill and progression of skills. Individual lessons will show how learning is scaffolded and chunked. There will be opportunities for students to write in more depth and comparisons can be made between work at different stages to show progression.

The curriculum and assessments have been planned to evidence progress. IN KS3 assessments are completed and kept separately to build a record of work completed across the key stage acting like a portfolio and evidence that students have studied the content and necessary skills linked to the national curriculum.

Involves Regular Practice aND RETRIEVAL

Given skills are introduced and built on across the key stages and revisited.

In History the assessment approach introduces key second order concepts of causation, significance and consequence along with source and interpretation skills. Each of the assessments in Year 7 is linked to one of the skills which is then revisited in more depth in Year 8. In Year 8 students will begin to analyse sources and interpretations further through the introduction of provenance and there is an expectation for evaluation and greater expectations to be more independent.

In Geography

feedback expectations

No flick and tick marking is required. All assessments will be marked and whole class feedback sheets are recorded. There is no expectation for individual comments on assessments. Feed forward activities will be planned to take into account the teaching needs of individual groups. Students are expected to respond to feedback on complete feedforward / therapy tasks. Improvements made to work will be evidenced in purple pen.

There is also an expectations that students independently self-assess their work and make corrections throughout the lesson when feedback is given, again this will be evidence in purple pen. There is however a need to improve the independency of students with regards to acting on feedback on the go.