Maths-P2-Assessing-Counting-and-Calculation
The aim of this task is to build a rich picture of the skills in number and of your focus children so that this knowledge informs your Focus Children’s progress meeting (week 4) and informs your planning for the whole class.
This task is essentially as for P1, except you can decide the exact number focus to concentrate on. You might want to assess your children’s understanding of multiplication and division, for example. Aim to assess your children more deeply than in P1 e.g. give a range of multiplication calculations and assess which strategies the children are applying. Do they always aim for a written method? Which mental or informal methods do they use? Can they explain their thinking? Link your assessments to the children’s understanding of mathematics using Kilpatrick et al.‘s Model of Mathematical Proficiency. In FS it is probably most appropriate to focus again on children’s counting skills and maybe addition and subtraction in context.
In order to engage in participant observation with your own focus children, if it is possible for someone to observe this process in order to make detailed notes and to share in discussion afterwards, this would be useful.
For all tasks you should make notes and keep copies of any written or drawn work produced by the children (anonymise the work), when applicable, or other records of evidence e.g. photographs (you must not include faces of the children in your photographs.) An outline of the tasks is below. You can also watch the video which was produced for P1.
Remember that you will also be making observations and assessments of the children’s learning in maths as you teach and observe lessons throughout the placement. These will also inform your pupil progress meeting.
Watch an overview of the directed tasks required for assessing children’s counting and calculation
This video was made for P1. The approaches are also relevant for P2.
Counting and Calculating Directed Task slides (these are the same slides as in the recording above)