I have taught so many students who, despite managing to cover fairly complex topics in class, have made little or no progress in assessments by the end of the year. Sure I knew that they had low reading ages, and weak literacy levels, but I guess I always thought I could overcome that by simply being more awesome at teaching the Mathematics. This year I have accepted that I need to develop literacy in my lessons, and I am not talking about helping them know when to use colons and capital letters.
I realised I needed to assess their level of understanding of Mathematical vocabulary, that way I would know what words I needed to teach them and embed them in their everyday Mathematical conversations in class.
Unfortunately for me I could find no such assessment on the internet. So I made my own.
Here is it - a comprehensive Mathematical Literacy assessment for Year 7s.
It focuses specifically on the vocabulary needed to access Mathematical assessments by the end of Year 7. The master plan is to develop further assessments for Y9 and KS4 going forward.
I took me quite a while to do so if anyone is interested in collaborating on this kind of thing going forward I would love to hear from you. Let's narrow that attainment gap and make our assessments as accessible as possible for all our students.
To keep updated on further materials I produce, follow me on Twitter @MrsHsNumeracy
<Download the assessment here>
<Download the answer booklet for students here>