Developing assessment

Key stage 2

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 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 2?

Although schools are not required to report a level for history at the end of key stage 2, 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 point 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.

There are also occasions, perhaps once or twice in a unit of work, when you may want to undertake a more formal assessment of each child's attainment in history.

Examples of assessment in history at key stage 2 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 2, 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 2, most children will be able to:

• describe the contribution made by people, events and developments in the recent and more distant history of Britain and other countries, and make links across the periods of history studied
• give some reasons for, and results of, main events and changes and provide explanations about why people in the past acted as they did
• find out about the past by asking and answering questions, using a range of sources of information
• give some explanations for the different ways the past is represented and interpreted
• record their knowledge and understanding about the past in a variety of ways using dates and historical terms.

Building on children's earlier experiences

Children will have studied history at key stage 1. When starting key stage 2 most children will 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.