Ninja Skill Checks
This is our main resource that aims to increase the mental strategies, timestables and key skills fluency of your students to prepare them for 11-16 mathematics study. The emphasis is on this being a regular, short exercise at the beginning of lessons lasting no more than 10 mins.
Preparation
Decide how many sessions you will run Numeracy Ninjas each week (1 to 5) and then download the corresponding Ninja Skill Books from the Members Area.
Print/photocopy one copy of the Ninja Skill Books for each student.
Share the Ninjas Answers PDF with all your teachers running Numeracy Ninjas.
If you have purchased Achievement Certificates, give each student theirs and make sure they keep it safe.
In-Class Delivery
The whole session should be completed within approx 10 mins. The emphasis is on this being regular, quick fluency practice, not on it becoming a whole lesson.
Open the Ninjas Answers PDF and click the link to the relevant week and session- work through the sequentially. Have this displayed as your students enter the room. They collect their Ninja Skill Book and open it to the relevant page, ready to begin.
When all students are ready, go to the next slide which shows the Target Skills being assessed and tell students they have 5 mins (adjust accordingly) to complete the Ninja Skill Check in silence. Start a timer. Students complete as many questions as they can during this time. The Mental Strategies and Times Tables sections should be done mentally; they may use written calculations in the space provided for the Key Skills questions.
Circulate whilst students are working on the task, gaining some feedback on which questions would be good to briefly discuss after students mark their answers.
When time is up, students then get themselves ready to mark their own, or a peer’s answers.
Click through the next 3 slides on the Ninja Answers PDF reading out the answers whilst the students mark their work. Briefly discuss strategies with the class for particular questions that you picked up from your AFL.
Move to the next slide on the Ninja Answers PDF which will display the Ninja Score-Belt slide. Students add up their scores for each of the 3 sections and calculate their Ninja Score. They look up which colour Ninja Belt they have achieved.
Students should then identify the question numbers of any questions that they got wrong and then turn to the Target Skills page for that week in their Ninja Skill Book, ticking in the ‘Target’ column for those questions to identify skills they need to work on to improve. Doing this after each Ninjas session helps students develop an awareness of the areas they need to work on to improve their Ninja Score.
Collect in the Ninja Skill Books and carry on with teaching the syllabus!
Ongoing
On a weekly basis allow students to update their Achievement Certificates (if you purchased these) by giving them the Ninja Belt Stickers relating to their upgraded belt colours achieved. Decide on criteria for Grand Master status. For example, this could be the highest performing, and most improved, students in each class each term, or it could require 3 black belts in a row etc.
Consider whether, and if so how often, you intend to collect students’ Ninja Scores in the Ninja Score Record Spreadsheet so that you can track student progress. Our suggestion is that you collect the scores privately, i.e. not getting students to read them out in front of the class. Instructions for how to use the spreadsheet are included in the first sheet in the spreadsheet.
Skill Focus Worksheet Pack
Once you identify students whoose Ninja Scores are plateauing and which Ninja Skills they need to focus on you might like to consider using the Skill Focus Worksheets to give them intensive, focused, spaced practice on those selected skills. They are great for homeworks!
Ninja Skills Assessment Pack
Download the Ninja Skills Assessment Pack resources from the Members Area.
Each assessment consists of 3 tests:
Test A- Mental Strategies– This focuses on 30 mental calculation strategies which are essential for learners to develop good fluency with mental arithmetic
Test B- Times tables– This tests each of the individual times table multiplications from 1 X 1 to 12 X 12
Test C- Key Skills– This assesses 30 skills which are essential, high-frequency prior-learning topics for successful 11-16 mathematics study
Learners could sit all 3 tests in the same lesson, or you may decide to split the tests up, for example sitting the them across multiple consecutive lessons. We suggest you print the assessments as an A4 double-sided booklet and exclude printing the answers at the end of the booklet.
Decide on the time you wish to allocate to the sitting of each test- this will depend upon the needs of the learners in your class. We typically find most classes can complete and self-mark all 3 tests in about an hour.
All 3 tests should be completed without the use of a calculator. There is a workings page included with Test C and learners should be encouraged to use this to support them with
their calculations.
The answers are included in the assessment PDF files. Decide whether you want to mark the assessments yourself, or you could use the answers in the PDF files to support your learners in marking their own or a peer’s answers in class.
Once the assessments are marked, you can encourage your learners to reflect on their performance by filing in the Assessed Skills pages in the assessment booklet to raise their
awareness of their strengths and areas to improve.
If you would like to do an in-depth analysis of your classes’ performance, or the performance on individual learners you can enter the score of individual learners on each
question in the Analysis Spreadsheet. Details of how to use the spreadsheet are included in the file.
The spreadsheet allows you to create a progress report for your whole class, or for individual learners. You will need to decide the right balance of effort-vs-impact when using the analysis spreadsheet. For example, rather than entering every learner’s question-by-question data you may decide to use the scores on each of the 3 tests as a screener to identify either a target group of learners to do an in-depth analysis on, or a specific individual test to analyse for your whole class.
Once you have identified the individual Ninja Skills your learners need to focus on to improve you can focus on delivering feedback on these skills after Ninja Skill Check quizzes
in class. In addition, the Ninja Skill Focus Worksheet Pack gives daily spaced practice questions on each of the 72 individual Ninja Skills. You could give students targeted extra practice on their developmental skills with these worksheets. The individual learner reports from the analysis spreadsheet can also be used to plan 1-2-1/small group interventions with targeted students.