Teacher's Moderation Toolkit

Prim-Ed Publishing’s Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit is a standardisation resource for writing, that has been written by teachers for teachers. It is a resource that can be used in a variety of ways to support accurate teacher assessment of writing for Years 1 to 6.

It can be used to standardise and benchmark children’s English writing at three termly intervals, as a CPD resource to support teachers working together to make judgements and also as a classroom resource to share the expected standards of writing with children.

Download a sample of Teacher's Moderation Toolkit

Designed to help teachers accurately assess pupil writing

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit is designed to help teachers assess writing accurately and efficiently. The Toolkit is made up of three books which support Years 1 to 6.

The Toolkit resources for key stages 1 and 2 include:

Teacher's Moderation Toolkit: Book 1 - Key Stage 1 resource that also includes some EYFS writing, created for use with KS1 (Years 1 and 2).
Teacher's Moderation Toolkit: Book 2 - Lower Key Stage 2 resource, created for use with LKS2 (Years 3 and 4).
Teacher's Moderation Toolkit: Book 3 - Upper Key Stage 2 resource, created for use with KS2 (Years 5 and 6).

Ensuring accurate teacher assessment of writing and consistency across the school is high on the agenda for many primary school teachers. Moderation of pupils' writing is essential to ensure that teachers are assessing against the expected standards, both accurately and consistently.

Features of the Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit is an essential resource for any teacher who wants to ensure that their pupils understand and are meeting the expected standards in writing.

The Toolkit provides a wide range of resources to assess pupils writing, including:

annotated versions of the collections of children's writing;
unannotated versions of the collections of children's writing; and
non-negotiable writing grids for each year group to use when assessing writing.

Collections of writing for lessons

Each book in the series includes three collections of writing that cover a wide range of genres.

Autumn expectation
Spring expectation
Summer expectation

Each collection provides detailed guidance on the expected standards for each year group, as well as a range of moderation activities that teachers can use with their pupils.

Some examples of the collection of writing that teachers may use to benchmark their pupils are:

Spring of Year 2: Newspaper report, Diary entry, Narrative, Description
Autumn of Year 3: Non-chronological report, Fictional recount in the front of a diary, Recount
Autumn of Year 5: Narrative, Character Portrait, Report

The Toolkit provides exemplar writing at the expected standard for each year, as well as moderated pieces of writing that are not yet at the expected standard and samples that are above. For each writing sample, there is a commentary from the author which highlights what makes the writing effective.

With this comprehensive resource at their disposal, teachers can be confident that they are accurately assessing pupils' writing and providing them with the feedback they need to improve.

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit supports the National Curriculum

The Teachers Moderation Toolkit is an important part of supporting the National Curriculum. The Toolkit provides guidance and resources for teachers to use when moderating pupils' writing.

Criteria based on the National Curriculum framework have been used to form judgements about pupils' writing, and this moderation has ensured that previous years' writing objectives have been met in addition to the expectations for the current year group. This process ensures that pupils are making good progress in their writing and that they are meeting the expected standards.

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit is an essential part of supporting the National Curriculum and ensuring that pupils are achieving the expected standards.

Benefits of using moderation in assessment

Moderation is important in primary schools as it ensures that all teachers are assessing pupils’ work against the same standards. This is vital in ensuring that pupils make good progress and do not fall behind.

The Toolkit can be used by teachers to benchmark and compare their pupils each term, by looking at a selection of pupils’ work and making consistent judgements about what level they are working at or by using it as a resource to support teachers in making their own judgements.

This method allows teachers to see if the child being assessed is:

writing at the expected standard;
working at greater depth; or
writing below the expected standard.

How moderation can be used in the classroom

Moderation is a process used by teachers to compare pupil performance against an external moderation standard.

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit provides a set of resources to support teachers in this process. It can be used for three different purposes:

a benchmark for teachers;
a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) resource; and
a teaching resource to share with pupils during lessons.

The Toolkit includes guidance on how to moderate pupil work, how to involve other teachers in the process, and how to use moderation to improve pupil performance. It also includes a range of moderated tasks and activities that can be used in the classroom.

By using the Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit, teachers can ensure robust internal assessment processes and that their pupils are receiving a reliable assessment of their achievements.

Writing standards used in moderation

The internal moderation tasks and activities in the Toolkit are designed to assess these five writing standards.

Features of writing: This includes the use of capital letters, full stops, sentence structure and vocabulary.
Punctuation: This includes the use of commas, apostrophes and quotation marks.
Spelling: This includes the spelling of words using a range of strategies, including phonics.
Handwriting: This includes the joined-up writing and presentation of text.
Content from previous years: This includes the links that are made to previous learning.

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit provides clear guidance on each of these standards and includes exemplar tasks and activities to support teachers in moderating pupils' writing.

Why moderation is important

Moderation is an important process that ensures pupils receive a fair and accurate assessment of their writing. It also allows teachers to identify areas of the curriculum where pupils need more support, and to plan accordingly.

Moderation ensures that all teachers are using the same standards to assess pupils' writing. It also allows teachers to check that their own judgements are accurate, and to make necessary adjustments if they are not.

How teachers moderate writing in primary schools

Moderation is the process of ensuring that teachers are making accurate judgements about pupils’ writing. It involves comparing pupils’ work with exemplar materials and agreed standards and discussing these with other teachers. This process ensures that all pupils are receiving a robust and reliable assessment of their achievements.

Whole-school approach to teacher assessment of writing

Ensuring that the teacher assessment of writing is accurate is a whole-school responsibility. One of the most pivotal forms of CPD in relation to this is completing whole-school moderations, phase moderations or clusters of moderations. The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit provides teachers with collections of children’s writing to assess together as a staff. Staff can then go on to benchmark and standardise their own pupils’ writing using this Toolkit.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit?

The Teacher’s Moderation Toolkit is a set of three books, each containing a range of writing moderations for Years 1 to 6. The moderations are grouped by genre, with each book focusing on a different type of writing: narratives, non-narratives and poems. The Toolkit is also available in e-Book format.

Why do we moderate writing assessments?

Moderation is the process of checking that teachers are making accurate judgements about pupils’ work. This is important because:

It provides a check that standards are being applied consistently across the school.
It gives all staff a shared understanding of what is expected at each level.
It can identify any areas where further training may be needed.
It can help to improve the reliability and validity of teacher assessments.

How do you moderate writing in primary schools?

There are a number of different ways to moderate writing in primary schools. The most common method is to hold moderations, which involves bringing together a group of children’s writing samples for professional discussion and assessment between all staff. Other methods include using exemplar materials or inviting external moderators into schools.

How many pieces of writing do you need for moderation?

Usually, a minimum of six pieces of writing are moderated. However, it is best to moderate a range of writing, from different genres and from different pupils. This will give you a more accurate picture of the standard of writing in your school.