It was decided at the end of last year that across the school the GCSE grades would be taken down into Key Stage 3 as an approach to life after levels. I truly struggled with this concept over the summer holidays and in fact still am, as a result I turned to twitter.
Dropped GCSE grades into KS3, introduced them this week. Needs development, lots of it. #feedbackgrid #history pic.twitter.com/ZqqALfWOrr — Mrs Humanities (@MrsHumanities) October 3, 2015
My goodness, the response was rapid; I’m clearly not the only one struggling.
I firstly mentioned that I had introduced the 1-9 grades to KS3 this week using a feedback grid. In the lesson we discussed what the GCSE grades equated to in terms of ‘old’ levels – my school have created a conversion from levels to grades 1-9 which are linked to progress points. The grades have then been broken down further into 4 categories; mastered, secure, developing and entering. Having a level to GCSE grade conversion makes things slightly easier for developing the new assessment system however a lack of information from the exam boards is making it more difficult.
From mentioning the introduction on twitter I ended up in discussion about the struggles we were having taking the grades down into KS3. Before long I was setting up a collaborative Dropbox for history and geography teachers to share ideas and to help others develop a 1-9 grading system at KS3.
I hope it will enable many educators from Humanities, Geography or History, who are struggling to develop a KS3 1-9 system to find a collaborative space to share ideas, research and approaches as well as an opportunity to gain feedback from other professionals. We are all approaching this with different experiences and ideas, hopefully with each other we can develop a system that works for each of us.
However this isn’t an attempt to create a standardised system but an opportunity to discuss and share to help us create something that works for each school, department and educator.
Please Note: Since we are in the dark in regard to grade descriptors at the moment yet have to create some form of assessment system, our assessment criteria may all change once grade descriptors are released.
If you’d like to join the list of contributors, send me an email at mrshumanities@outlook.com or DM on twitter with your email address and I will happily add you to the list.
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