Further information about the 4+ Assessments August 2023
/Let’s talk about subitising.
This simply means that your child can say the amount of objects without counting them, For example looking at the dots on a dice and knowing their value without having to count them individually.
Children will be assessed on this in the 4+ Assessments.
Your child may be asked to count items/objects individually or this may be asked to say how many they can see. Of course, your child can choose to count individually but in my experience, as children gain more skill and confidence with their counting, they will able to demonstrate subitising and immediately say, ‘That is the number 4 of the dice face’ rather than counting each dot individually.
This is the skill of subitising.
It is important because it will lay the foundation to support your child with more complex maths skills as they make more and more progress.
How often should you teach phonics?
There is no one size fits all here.
All children are different.
Some children will need more time and some will need far less. Some children focus for longer and some for less. Some children want to sit down for longer periods of time and some for far less.
If my opinion and in my experience, little and often is best. 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes in the evening every evening is optimum.
Short bursts of learning are key at this age. No one wants to sit for hours at the age of 2 or 3.
What are your thoughts?
Is your child happy to leave you?
All of my clients worry about this one. This one is completely not in your control because no matter how much you prepare for this, you just do not know what will happen on the day of the Assessment. However, it is very important to practice the skill of leaving your child in new and unfamiliar environments and ensuring that they are happy for this to happen.
If your child is upset on the day of the Assessment they will not show their best learning. They will either be too upset to focus or they will just be wanting you to come back the whole time.
Here are my two top tips to prepare your child for being left at the 4+ Assessment:
Practise leaving them for short periods of time in new places (eg. creches, nurseries, with friends etc.
Talk to them about it frequently and explain to them what it will be like.
To which number do children need to be able to count up to?
This will vary from school to school. Each school will have their own criteria in the Assessment,
At the very minimum your child will need to be able to confidently count up to 10, recognise numbers to 10 and write numbers to 10. In our lessons, we always aim to go up to 20 and beyond. Because regardless of what is assessed, if our students are confident up to 10, we can definitely move them onto larger numbers.
If you are teaching the numbers to 20, please make sure that you teach your child the value of the digits. Eg. That the number 12 is 10 + 2. This is very important. You can use physical resources like numicon to visually support your child to see the value of the numbers. You can also count physical items. This is where you can also practice subitising by asking your child if they can visually see what the number is without counting it.
Does your child show a good level of focus and understanding?
This is a big ask of any child who is 3 years old. However, this is one of the many things that will be assessed in the 4+ Assessment.
So how can you support your child to work on their focus and concentration?
Model it. Show them how you focus and concentrate on a specific task.
Practice it - Start with small amounts of time and build up to larger lengths of time. Eg. Today we will do a puzzle for 2 minutes and we will only focus on that. As time goes on, increase the time.
Don't make it a big deal.
If your 3 year old doesn't focus and doesn't want to concentrate please don't make it a big deal. We are asking a lot from them.
It's all good if they lose their focus, just tell them that you will try again another time and let them do what they want to do.
Come back to the activity another time and try again.
If they do focus for whichever amount of time you allocated to the task, make a big deal out of it. Praise them but make it specific.
Well done, you focused for 2 minutes on the puzzle. Amazing, you concentrated for 3 minutes.
