Teach-Primary-Issue-19.2

F EATURE S DA T A www.teachwire.net | 39 Who needs what? For some children, you need to note key information. Who has glasses (and often forgets or opts not to wear them)? Who is left-handed? Who’s younger or older? Who has any sensory needs? Who needs support focusing? Who needs a reading partner or a maths buddy? Online seating plan tools will usually let you colour-code demographics or contextual information. Include anything that you know will help you, and a cover teacher can then more easily keep the class focused on their learning. What challenges? Your one-page summary should list the areas you have identified as being potential barriers to learning for your class. Is it persistent chatting causing disruption? Misunderstandings of the material? Or perhaps some pupils require additional learning aids? Think about which children are getting on well, and which might need more support, and you’ll have your starting point. Which data? Attendance has clearly become a much bigger focus in recent years for good reason – if pupils aren’t in school, they likely aren’t learning what we want them to. Your school’s attendance analysis should help you to identify any children who have been absent for substantial chunks of time, and your curriculum overviews should give you a good idea of missed learning. You should also know which of your pupils has spent significant amounts of time out of class, and the reasons why. Analysing this will help you to work out which areas absent children might need more help with. If possible, you should also have an indication of pupils’ attitudes to learning – who is trying (and not trying) to learn? Finally, use the data you have on whether pupils have learnt what their previous teachers have wanted them to learn. Look at their EYFS profile scores, phonics scores and Key Stage 1 data. If they are in Year 5 or 6, what was their Multiplication Tables Check score? Does your class need to dedicate some time to developing speaking and listening? Would it be beneficial to have more of a focus on core knowledge? Should you revisit topics taught earlier in the school more regularly? Finally, you need to ask whether it would be useful to go back over your analysis and update your seating plan or class summary. Once you’ve done that, make sure both are at hand whenever you – or anyone else – works with your class. TP The who and what OF PUPIL DATA Richard Selfridge is a primary teacher, writer and Insight education data consultant. His latest book, A Little Guide for Teachers to Using Student Data (£10.99, SAGE), was published in 2024. Knowing your class inside and out is truly a teacher superpower. But how can you utilise that information to improve your practice, asks Richard Selfridge P icture the scene: it’s a busy week midterm, and you’ve been asked to take some time away from your class for a day. You want to give whoever is going to be taking over the key facts they need to know about your pupils. But what will they be? The answer to this should help you to understand what pupil data you really need. By thinking about all the information you’d leave for a cover teacher, you can create a summary of your class’s requirements. Ideally, the summary will be on one sheet of A4, so that anyone teaching your class is absolutely clear what the children need to help them get the most out of their time in school. You should also have a plan for what stage your class is at in any given lesson, so that anyone teaching them has all the key information they need at their fingertips. Who sits where? This may seem obvious, but making sure that you’ve got good information to help you decide where to put everyone in the classroom, and how to make sure that each child is supported and – as much as possible – focused on learning, is a must. Most of this information will be based on your knowledge and observations of the children. Very little, if any, of your reasoning needs to be written down, although you might make some short notes about certain choices. @databusting insightinform.co.uk @richardselfridge.bsky.social