Katie Smithers

I'm doing a giveaway of three copies of my new book! Oracy: 100 Ideas for Primary Teachers. Like, follow and retweet to enter. Winners will be selected at random this Friday 19th July 8pm UK time. bit.ly/100IdeasOracyB… @BloomsburyEd

For SATs results tomorrow, remember: - the chn have had 6 yrs of schooling prior to Y6, w/ ~6 diff teachers & only 8 months in Y6 b4 the tests - they were 4h of work which are supposed to represent 7 yrs of education (not forgetting COVID) - they only assess a fraction of the NC

KS2 SATs “pass marks” Maths - 54/110 Reading - 27/50 GPS - 35/70

Teacher retention strategy suggestion. Give teachers who request it a “Glastonbury day”. Makes me sad that no teachers can EVER go ( and was our daughter’s only regret about becoming a teacher)!

Maybe, instead of National Service for 18 year olds they should introduce national service for MPs. They all have to do several weeks volunteering in a school, GP, hospital, care home, social care and police within their first 12 months in office.

KS2 SATs Reading Paper 2024 Q3: 'How can you tell streaked tenrecs are social animals?' Quote from the text: '...streaked tenrecs are very social animals...' Mark scheme: Do not accept reference only to the quotation '...streaked tenrecs are very social animals...' Right.

Exercise books are only really useful as a tool for helping students to think hard in the lesson. What students have written is basically worthless a week later. Full exercise books belong in the bin.

‘The general feeling regarding the maths paper overall is that it was harder than last year’: sector leaders and experts tell Tes how pupils found this year’s Sats tes.com/magazine/news/…

In the interest of balance, todays reasoning maths SATS paper was reasonable. Lots of straightforward questions followed by some harder ones. Almost like a different body wrote it. They do seem obsessed with certain things though.

What happened to the KS2 maths test and when did it get replaced by the Y6 mastery test?

That reasoning was brutal. So many ways our EAL kids could get tripped up; just ask a straight question..

Today’s KS2 maths reasoning paper is a failure at a national level, one which will serve only to put pupils off maths. There is nothing wrong with tough questions in maths. Mathematicians love the challenge of overcoming difficult problems. But that’s not the same thing at all as questions that seek to confuse, mislead or hide meaning in meaningless, tiresome contexts. Show a real mathematician a problem written by someone who is deliberately communicating badly or poking fun by being disingenuous and that mathematician will tell you to bugger off. We’re in the business of grappling with and resolving genuinely interesting and important questions. We have no interest in silly, dull and ill conceived questions that lack meaning and intend to trip up. So, an opportunity to show pupils what mathematics is and can be has been utterly wasted and instead we’ve just made it a lot less likely a nascent interest in becoming a mathematician will flourish for many, many pupils who will, quite rightly, reject the subject as tedious sleight of hand. To those writing, signing off and publishing national exam papers: be better at your job or do something else.

I reckon the #sats question setters look carefully at the White Rose schemes and does it’s damndest to present something in a way they will never have seen before. A paper full of convoluted questions guaranteed to confuse so many children who are actually able enough at maths

'Twas the night before the Maths, when the English was done, Not a paper been.opened, nor sum had begun, The teachers were nervous and saying their prayers, In the hopes that @SATsTestChen would soon be there;

60% of our children don’t speak English at home; some came in boats, or the boots of cars. Some have been evicted, living on food parcels. Next week we will have statutory tests and our outcomes will be compared to the most affluent, stable and resourced schools in the country.

If any Y6 teachers (or anyone else tbf!) wants these sending over tomorrow morning, let me know! I’ll also pop them in a Dropbox tomorrow evening along with the resources so they’re there to access over the weekend 😊✨

‘Third culture kids’ can find life in school difficult if they don’t feel a sense of identity. Here are 4 ways to overcome this and help them feel that they belong tes.com/magazine/analy…

I've made a summary of Ofsted's English subject review which was released at the start of March. It's for both primary and secondary teachers and leaders. There's a written and visual summary on my website: marcrhayes.com/post/a-summary… I hope it's useful!