What is Pearson Abacus?
Abacus is a unique maths toolkit that’s carefully crafted to help you inspire a genuine love of maths and help every child master mathematical concepts. It’s built on research into successful teaching in the UK by a team of expert authors and teaching practitioners to help you ensure mastery of skills for all. To subscribe to Abacus and adopt the programme, please book a demo with Pearson and purchase through your local consultant.
How can I use Abacus in Classroom Monitor?
Assessment statements are accessed and assessed via the online markbook or the Classroom Monitor app, select the curriculum "Pearson Primary" and the subject "Abacus Maths". There are assessment statements for Reception to Year 6.
Assessment statements are organised into "strands", by maths topic and term to match Abacus planning e.g. Multiplication and Division (Spr). These progress through the ability levels, so that teachers can focus their markbooks to streamline viewing and recording assessment. Teachers can view and assess objectives for single or multiple year groups at a time.
Assessment judgements for each pupil in each statement are recorded using a traffic light scale. Judgements are recorded as Target, Almost or Met.
To assist teachers in making their judgements, examples are given where appropriate. These can be accessed by hovering the cursor over an objective in the markbook.
You can use the markbook to record pupil attainment during the course of the year. This can inform planning and subject development as well as being used as the basis for reporting to parents.
Attainment and Progress data
As assessment judgements are recorded in the markbooks, they are automatically saved. These are then used to calculate a score for each pupil in the subject. These scores can be viewed and analysed in the Attainment and Progress module. Individual pupil scores are generated based on the assessment judgements recorded in the markbook, taking into account the different weightings assigned to each colour. The terminology and weightings are shown in the image below.
To calculate the overall score, Classroom Monitor checks the total number of statements within the relevant ability level, checks how many statements are set at each of the assessment judgements colours, and then uses the respective weightings to calculate the overall percentage coverage of the content within that markbook. Percentage thresholds are then used to allocate an appropriate score for each pupil. Scores of Below, Below+, WT, WT+, ARE and Exc exist for each year group.
Example
If there were 21 statements in a Year 3 and a pupil had:
- 4 green ‘M' judgements each weighted 1
- 13 yellow ‘A’ judgements weighted 0.5
- 1 red ‘T' judgement weighted 0
- 3 statements 'unassessed' weighted 0.
And no judgements above Year 3.
(4 x 1) + (13 x 0.5) + (1 x 0) + (3 x 0) / 21 = 50% of Stage 3 which would be translated to a score of 3 WT
In addition, schools can import external test data to be used alongside the data that is generated from these markbooks.
Activation
If your school already subscribes to Abacus, please log a support ticket if you would like to request activation of this framework within Classroom Monitor. There is no charge but your school's details will be passed to Pearson.