Year 4/5 Moderation Clusters 2013 – Guidance for Teachers
Focus – Writing (cross-curricular) and Maths
We have produced some suggested tasks, explained below, for both writing
and maths. The purpose of suggesting specific tasks is so that there will be a
degree of commonality about the evidence that you discuss with colleagues
and it can be interesting to compare different pupils’ approaches to similar
tasks.
However, we appreciate that in some circumstances some teachers may not
be able to carry out the tasks before the moderation meeting takes place. This
is not a problem, although it is essential that teachers do bring some
evidence of children’s attainment in writing and maths.
Also, one task alone is not sufficient to determine the level at which a child is
working, so other supporting evidence should be brought (see ‘What to bring
to the cluster’).
Writing – suggested task
As we want to look at the standard of writing across the curriculum, we would
like to suggest that you try out one of the three following tasks with your
children if possible:
Either
1) Imaginative writing; text-type = newspaper report
Linked to either a current science or history topic, imagine you are a
newspaper reporter at the time of an important historical event or important
scientific discovery. (For example, you could have a headline such as ‘Water
Can Be a Solid, Liquid or a Gas, Claim Scientists’.)
Write a newspaper report to explain to the public the key facts and opinions
about the event/discovery.
Try to include:

details that demonstrate your understanding of the science or
knowledge of that historical time

key features of a newspaper report
or
2) Imaginative writing; text-type = diary
(Linked to the current science topic) imagine you are the thing you have been
learning about, e.g. a water molecule, a planet, a bacterium, an animal, a
plant etc.
Write a series of diary entries to explain what has been happening to you at
various stages of your existence, e.g. as a water molecule in different parts of
the water cycle, or a planet as you rotate on your axis and orbit the sun etc…
Try to include:

details that demonstrate your scientific understanding

thoughts, feelings and responses (pretend that this thing has thoughts
and feelings even if it doesn’t really!)
If you like, you could make it humorous, or sad, or adventurous …
(Or, linked to a history topic, write from the point of view of either a key
historical figure or an ordinary person affected by a key historical event.)
or
3) Imaginative/persuasive writing; text-type = leaflet/brochure
This could be linked to geography, history or science – write a tourist brochure
to encourage people to visit the place that you have been studying. (In
science, this could be a planet, or the moon, or a habitat – the brochure might
be written for a species other than humans!)
Try to include:

details that demonstrate knowledge and understanding of key aspects
of that place

language that would appeal to the target audience (whether human or
otherwise) to persuade them to visit
NB - we will be discussing the assessment of writing, rather than focusing on
the accuracy of the facts included within the piece. However, for your own
assessment purposes, you may well also be assessing the children’s
knowledge and understanding of that curriculum area.
We would suggest that, before the children start the writing, you have a brief
class discussion, or get children to discuss in pairs, to check that everyone
can remember some of the key features of the text type (success criteria).
Children may also want to discuss and share ideas for the writing – this does
not invalidate the assessment, although it is useful if you are able to explain to
colleagues at the moderation cluster meeting how much discussion occurred
and what other aspects of support were in place.
Maths - Suggested Task
This task is based upon a resource produced by BEAM. This is the ‘Venn
diagram game’ (attached) which is taken from the BEAM website
(www.beam.co.uk)
Prior Knowledge Required:

for the initial part of the activity, children need to understand that cards
can be described as ‘red’ or ‘black’, according to their suit, and the
convention that an Ace is counted as a score of one

for the follow-up ideas, children also need to know the names of the 4
suits of playing cards (hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades), and the
convention that the Jack, Queen and King are counted as 11, 12 and
13 respectively
Introduction – draw or display a large Venn diagram on the board, using the
2 labels ‘red’ and ‘6 or more’ (as shown in the Venn diagram game).
Use a pack of cards (picture cards removed). Hold up the 3 of Hearts and ask
the children to discuss in pairs which region of the Venn diagram the card
would go in and why. Check which children have understood and see if they
are able to explain the reason.
Do the same thing with the 8 of Clubs – children to say which region and
explain why.
Then ask pairs of children if they can think of a card that would go in the
middle region (the ‘intersection’) – explore answers given and explanations.
Finally, can pairs think of a card that would go in the outside region of the
Venn diagram?
Assessment point – (based on listening to children in this part of the lesson)
children who understand how to correctly sort the cards into the Venn diagram
are showing evidence of Level 3 in Ma4. The language they use to explain
their thinking may also provide evidence of Level 3 in Ma1.
NB Children struggling with this understanding of Venn diagrams will need
support to access what follows. The activity could be adapted to use a Carroll
diagram instead of a Venn diagram, if preferred.
Main activity - Children could now play the Venn diagram game – continue to
observe to check correct understanding of the Venn diagram.
Mini-plenary - After children have had sufficient time playing the Venn
diagram game, draw the class together to discuss what happened:

Which region ended up with the most counters? Is this the same
across different pairs of children or is there a mixture of results?
(Note for teachers – the 4 regions of the Venn diagram are all equally likely,
so the results should be reasonably equal.)

Do the children think that any particular region on the Venn diagram
has a better chance than the other regions of having cards placed in
that region?

What about if the picture cards (worth 11, 12 and 13 points) were
added back into the pack – would that change the likelihood of each
region?
Assessment point – listen to pairs of children as they discuss this latter
question. Children who understand that the addition of the picture cards will
make it more likely that cards will be placed in either of the two ‘6 or more’
regions are showing evidence of Level 4 in Ma4.
Explore children’s answers to this latter question, particularly encouraging
them to say why they think that.
Second main part of the lesson – Children could then, in pairs, create their
own Venn diagrams – see attached sheet ‘Venn diagram game (part 2)’.
This activity involves the children making predictions of which regions of the
Venn diagram will get the most and least results. For some children, this may
be guess-work, or they may have an intuitive feel for which is more or less
likely, based on the criteria they have chosen.
Assessment point – if children can explain why a certain region is likely to get
the most or least results, this is indicative of Level 4, e.g. (using criteria ‘Heart’
and ‘Less than 10’) “there are going to be more cards that are not hearts than
hearts, and more cards will be less than 10 than 10 or more, so it will be that
one” (indicating correct region). Children working at Level 5 may use fractions
to describe the probabilities e.g. “there is a ¼ chance of a card being a heart
and a ¾ chance of it not being a heart”.
Plenary – share children’s understanding of what happened – did their results
match their predictions? Can they explain their thinking around how they
made their predictions?
- Can anyone think of 2 criteria that would mean that one of the regions of the
Venn diagram must be empty? (e.g. if you used the criteria ‘red’ and ‘hearts’
– all hearts are also red, so there would be no cards in the ‘non-red hearts’
region)
Assessment point – again, the language used by pupils to explain and justify
their thinking may give you evidence of Ma1, as well as Ma4.
What to bring to the cluster
Writing

Choose 2 or 3 children that you feel represent different levels of
attainment. We would suggest focusing on levels 3, 4 or 5.

Bring 4 copies of the writing produced by these children.

Also, it would be useful if you could select 1 or 2 other pieces of writing
produced fairly recently by these children – these might also be crosscurricular or could come from literacy lessons. Again, if you could bring
4 photocopies, this will make it easier to share with colleagues.
Maths

Choose 2 or 3 children that you feel represent different levels of
attainment. We would suggest focusing on levels 3, 4 or 5.

Bring any written evidence produced as part of the task. Alternatively, if
children played the game but did not record anything, photographs
could be used to record the outcomes. (Again, a few copies would
make it easier to share with colleagues.)

If possible, it would be useful to bring brief notes of key things that
children said, i.e. explanations and justifications of their thinking. (It
could be that a TA jots down key points made by children during the
intro and plenary sessions.)

Also, it would be useful if you could bring a few other pieces of maths
evidence produced fairly recently by these children – particularly if they
are from open-ended tasks, or tasks that have required children to
make some decisions about what maths to use.