William Shrewsbury Primary School, Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire

William Shrewsbury Primary School is a primary school for boys and girls. The age range of the pupils is 3-11. The school is a very large three-form entry community primary school and is located in a semi-rural area. The school has been given the following awards: Healthy Schools 2002, Investor in People 2002, Basic Skills Quality Mark 2003 and Activemark 2003.

History

During the academic year 2003 - 2004 a pilot group of six children from three reception classes at William Shrewsbury took part in the Keyboard Crazy challenge. This was very successful and as a result the school agreed to take part in the Flying Start Challenge.

The target group / context

The school targeted a group of 17 part-time afternoon pre-reception children who were due to start full-time reception in September 2004. All the children were aged 4 and all but one born between January and March 2000. The children had only been attending the part time pre-reception class since Easter 2004.

Parents were contacted by letter and all agreed to take part in the challenge. They attended a short introductory session led by members of Keyboard Crazy. The children were assessed on number and letter recognition just before school broke up for the summer holiday and each took home a Keyboard Crazy set for the summer break.

The children were reassessed in their new reception classes during the first week of September in the Autumn Term. They had had the Keyboard Crazy sets at home for 6 weeks.

Findings

Out of the 17 children who were involved in this, one child had special educational needs and does not verbalise. As a result, it was impossible to test her number and letter recognition in the usual way. She also refused to pick up the correct letter or number when asked. Of the remaining 16, all but 1 showed improvement in number recognition, letter recognition, and giving names of objects for letter sounds.

Of these remaining 15:

• approximately 50% showed a marked improvement in their recognition of lower case letters.
• there was little change in numeral recognition but most children were already recognising their numerals to 10 in July.
• 73% were now able to give an item for some specified letters e.g. 'a is for apple.' 6 children could give an item for almost all the letters of the alphabet.
• The greatest improvement was in the recognition of upper case letters. 100% could now recognise some upper case letters and 50% could recognise over half, if not nearly all.

Some points to note...

It must be noted that the reassessment was very early in the Autumn term. The children were in full-time education for the first time with a new class teacher and Teaching Assistant as well as in a strange new environment and with a new set of peers (approx 30 children in each of the three reception classes - the 17 assessed children were mixed into these three classes).

This context must be taken into account when viewing the results as it is felt that, had the children been given longer to settle into their classes and become more familiar with their teachers, the results may well have been higher. The children may still have felt too shy/unsure to give a true picture in such new surroundings. The results do show an improvement in the ability to name an item for a specified letter sound and a clear improvement in the ability to recognise upper case letters.

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