Ongoing assessment

Giving children regular opportunities to practise what they have been taught also provides time to focus on a target group of children who may need additional support, or a group who need less practice but some additional challenge to motivate them and to move their thinking on. These periods of practice should be used to monitor children's progress and to identify any particular or common difficulties that may need additional teaching.

Planning short, regular opportunities for practice helps children to acquire and hone their knowledge and skills; but repetition is only one aspect of learning. Children also need to use and apply what they have learned and to see how secure their understanding is when they meet some new context or follow a fresh line of enquiry. This helps children to make connections in mathematics, to refine their problem-solving skills and to reason, explain and communicate their thinking. The introduction of more sustained activity that gives children time to develop an idea, solve problems or follow a line of enquiry also provides an opportunity to assess the depth of children's understanding. Working alongside a group, listening to them explain their ideas and strategies and using a selection of open and closed questions to probe their ability to present their reasons for their choices and solutions, provides further assessment information.

Such day-to-day assessment is central to effective classroom practice. Much of the time, during interactions with individual children, groups or the whole class, there is some assessment being made. What children do or discuss is observed and listened to and then analysed against some set of criteria or expectations. This analysis is often carried out on the spot and later informs next steps in planning children's learning. This ongoing process of assessment for learning is central to identifying where children are in their learning, what they need to learn next and how to ensure that they are successful.