cognitive acceleration

How does CAME fit our use of APP (Assessing Pupil Progress)?

Assessing Pupils' Progress (APP) is a structured approach to periodically assessing mathematics, reading and writing. It encourages teachers to track pupils' progress and helps them obtain diagnostic information about pupils' strengths and weaknesses.

The Let's Think series provides a solid basis for implementing Assessing Pupils' Progress. The resources enable teachers to engage with pupils' thinking and assess their understanding in mathematics and English.

The Let's Think and CAME series help teachers assess information processing, reasoning and enquiry skills from the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, the Renewed Primary Framework for Literacy and Mathematics and the Secondary Framework for Mathematics. Several specific assessment resources have been developed to enable this.

It also develops and strengthens formative assessment in the classroom.

• Activities can be used to review pupils' previous learning.
• Teachers gain diagnostic information about pupils' strengths and weaknesses in, knowledge, skills and understanding.
• Activities provide first-hand evidence to inform secure judgements.
• Activities allow a range of achievement by pupils.
• Teachers can observe how pupils use their learning in a range of contexts.
• Guidance is provided for classroom organisation, to enable teachers' to listen carefully to the pupils' ideas.
• Activities are carefully scripted with clear links to the National Curriculum.
• The Maths activities include diagrams outlining conceptual difficulty as a guide to the expected range of achievement.
• The Let's think through Literacy! lessons are clearly linked to the literacy strands in the Renewed Primary Framework, which enables schools to slot in the activities to their overall planning.

Let's Think! and CAME activities are designed to engage all pupils and involve them in meaningful discussion.

Teachers value all pupils' contributions, helping to establish a comfortable learning environment where the teacher and the pupils explore ideas together.

• The activities promote rich talk that provides insight into pupils' thinking.
• Problems are presented in a way that motivates pupils and introduces the context and the vocabulary.
• Pupils work on the problems as a group and share their own ideas and reasoning, giving teachers more accurate information about their understanding.
• Activities encourage group autonomy - giving teachers more time for monitoring what the pupils are learning.
• This enables teachers to talk to pupils to find out more about how they tackle problems, as well as whether they reach the answer.
• Activities include opportunities for pupils to think about their thinking and make their learning more visible to their teachers.
• There is opportunity to assess less-confident pupils responding in a group context, in which they may feel less inhibited.
• Teachers gain evidence to help to plan next steps and personalise learning opportunities for individual pupils.

The Let's Think! and CAME series help teachers develop a range of sophisticated questioning techniques, to draw out the children's ideas and the thinking behind them.

• Each activity is supported by detailed teacher guidance, with key questions and prompts.
• Questions are framed to provoke or clarify pupil's thinking.
• Some questions probe the 'big ideas' of the subject, others help pupils reflect on their own and others' ways of working and solving problems.

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