Developing assessment

Key stage 1

Why should I assess children's work in history?

Children need to know how well they are doing in history and what they can do to improve. Assessment will provide you with the information to plan appropriate teaching and learning activities, which help children make progress in their learning in history.

History teachers and coordinators have two main assessment concerns:

• the need to support children's progress in history
• making judgements about the standards of children's work in history in the longer term.

What is the statutory requirement for assessment and reporting
at key stage 1?

Although schools are not required to report a level for history at the end of key stage 1, there is a statutory requirement to report to parents once a year about the progress of their children in history.

The level descriptions may provide a useful reference to help make more summative judgements about children's attainment in history. Such judgements can serve a number of purposes:

• to summarise attainment and track children's longer term progress in history
• to summarise attainment for parents or another teacher
• to help monitor the effectiveness of a school's history plans.

In what ways can I assess children's work in history?

Opportunities to monitor children's learning will occur during everyday classroom situations through:

• watching children as they work in history
• listening to children as they talk about their learning in history
• questioning children
• discussing and reviewing children's work with them
• marking children's work
• asking children to assess their work or the work of their peers.

Examples of assessment in history at key stage 1 are currently being collected. If you have a good example, submit it for possible inclusion.

For examples of assessed pupils' work in history at key stage 1, go to the National Curriculum in Action website.

Progression in history

Knowledge, skills and understanding are interrelated in history.

Progression at key stages 1 and 2 is characterised by:

• asking and answering more complex questions
• making links and connections between different areas of learning
• understanding more general and specific historical concepts
• growing understanding of and proficiency in the use of historical skills
• an increasing ability to apply skills across different areas of learning
• using a greater depth and range of historical knowledge to provide more reasoned explanations
• becoming independent in learning.

By the end of key stage 1 most children should be able to:

• speak and write about familiar and famous people and events from the recent and more distant past, using everyday terms concerned with the passing of time
• distinguish between aspects of their own everyday lives and the lives of people in the past
• identify some ways in which the past is represented
• find out about the past by asking and answering questions using a range of sources of information.

Building on children's earlier experiences

Many children will have attended nursery and reception classes where they had opportunities to find out and learn about the world in which they live, and to develop a range of skills. These experiences are likely to have included:

• talking about their families and past and present events in their own lives
• showing sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others
• showing respect for people of other cultures and beliefs
• listening and responding to stories, songs, nursery rhymes and poems
• taking part in role-plays
• exploring objects and looking closely at similarities, differences, patterns and change
• comparing, sorting, matching, ordering and sequencing everyday objects
• talking about their observations and asking questions to gain information about why things happen and how things work.

Primary teachers in Hampshire LEA have produced some guidance on practical ways to assess children’s progress in key stage 1 history.