The Reception Baseline Assessment has to be done in the first six weeks. For a lot of us that means sitting one-to-one with children who've only just learnt where the toilets are.
It doesn't have to swallow your whole settling-in period.
Spread it out
I do two or three a day, never more, and never in the first week. By week two children know me and the room, and the tasks feel like a game rather than a test.
My checklist
- A quiet corner, not the corridor
- The kit laid out the night before
- A familiar adult covering the class
- Stop if the child is upset. Come back another day.
It's a short, practical assessment. Treat it that way and so will the children.
What it isn’t
It isn't your on-entry assessment. You'll still want your own observations of what each child can do, and those come from play, not a tablet. More on that in my post about skills progression.
Written by Laura
Reception teacher and EYFS lead. Everything here has been tried in my own classroom first. More about me
