Year 6 Information for SATS (How to support at home)

Year 6 Parent Workshop Aims: 1.No levels/New Curriculum Information. 2.SATs this year. 3.Access to materials that may help at home. 4.Short, Sharp Snippets – Support at Home.

No Levels! Previously – Levels given at the end of Year 6. Vocabulary now changed – we will still inform you if your child has ‘met’ year group expectations, is below or above. We now assess against the ‘New National Curriculum’ and each year group’s set of expectations is higher than ever before. Therefore they will be harder to achieve. We have been on training recently with all other Year 6 teachers in the county and the message is the year will be hard! For the teacher and the children. We have to cover the new Year 6 Curriculum which in itself is much harder, then revise with them all the previous year groups (as they haven’t been taught the new curriculum from the other year groups, but will still be tested in it). E.G. Roman numerals on the Year 3/4 curriculum, but wasn’t before – it was on the sample paper. We are working hard and they are working hard to prepare for this whilst maintaining a broad and balanced curriculum. WE ARE NOT BECOMING A SATS FACTORY!

SATS May 9 th – 13 th 2016  2 Maths Papers  Mental Arithmetic (new)  Reading  SPAG – Spelling, Punctuation & Grammar  Writing (Teacher Assessment)  Science Sample Test – possibility

What have we learnt from the sample papers? 2 Reasoning Maths Papers 40 minutes rather than 45 minutes. Very wordy – they can put their hand up and ask for it to be read. What appears to be simple are not necessarily as simple as they seem – room for error. Must read it very carefully. No Level 6 Paper – 10% of these papers will be Level 6 questions – children will need to have the exam technique of spotting these and moving on – no time to waste. Mental Arithmetic 36 questions in 30 minutes. Have to be secure with written methods for the 4 operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. There are many fractions questions. Knowledge of Times Tables Facts is VITAL! Exam technique of knowing when they need a written method or when a mental method is best – need to pick up some time with using mental methods with simple questions.

What have we learnt from the sample papers? Reading 3 or 4 text types and questions to go with them. 1 hour – have both the reading text and the answer booklet open together. Reading at pace and skimming and scanning skills are vital. The texts and the questions increase in difficulty throughout the paper. Focus on getting the simple questions earlier in the paper correct – be very careful with them – don’t make simple mistakes. Read the question very carefully e.g. Tick two boxes – TICK TWO! Advice – skim and scan the questions for the first text and then start reading the first text – as soon as you find an answer fill it in – you don’t have to answer them in order. You can make marks on the text to highlight answers – copy them to the answer paper carefully. Don’t think you remember the answer – skim and scan find the answer you think it is and then read the sentence to check it is definitely answering the question.

What have we learnt from the sample papers? SPAG (ESPG) 45 minutes – Short Question Paper. Broadly the test is in order of difficulty. Separate spelling test. On the short paper the only spellings that will be marked will be plurals, contractions and prefix/suffix words. Spelling tests are taken from the ‘New National Curriculum’ spelling patterns and word lists (not just from Year 6, but possible from previous year groups too). The SPAG test overall is out of 70 (50 Short Questions & 20 Spelling Paper) – some of the Short Question Paper is based on spellings – roughly 30 marks (nearly half) are linked to spellings. WE MUST TAKE THESE SERIOUSLY.

Writing – Teacher Assessment All other papers will be sent off to be marked externally and we will get the result back on July 5 th Writing This will be ‘Teacher Assessed’. We gather independent writing from September to June (when we have to send it off) and judge how the children are working towards the Year 6 objectives. We could then be moderated – they’ll check they agree with our judgements. Before official moderation we will moderate with out family of schools to check we all have an understanding of what ‘met’ in the new curriculum looks like. Also we have extra training on writing judgements in March. The children will not ‘meet’ the new Year 6 writing expectations if they are not spelling accurately – the Year 3, 4, 5 & 6 word list and patterns (stated in the document on our website). THIS IS A BIG CHANGE AND COULD BE A PROBLEM FOR SOME CHILDREN – THEY NEED TO APPLY THEIR KNOWLEDGE CONSISTENTLY IN INDEPENDENT WRITING - NOT JUST IN TESTS.

Writing – Teacher Assessment All other papers will be sent off to be marked externally and we will get the result back on July 5 th Writing This will be ‘Teacher Assessed’. We gather independent writing from September to June (when we have to send it off) and judge how the children are working towards the Year 6 objectives. We could then be moderated – they’ll check they agree with our judgements. Before official moderation we will moderate with out family of schools to check we all have an understanding of what ‘met’ in the new curriculum looks like. Also we have extra training on writing judgements in March. The children will not ‘meet’ the new Year 6 writing expectations if they are not spelling accurately – the Year 3, 4, 5 & 6 word list and patterns (stated in the document on our website). THIS IS A BIG CHANGE AND COULD BE A PROBLEM FOR SOME CHILDREN – THEY NEED TO APPLY THEIR KNOWLEDGE CONSISTENTLY IN INDEPENDENT WRITING - NOT JUST IN TESTS.

Help at Home Go on our website on the Year 6 Page – follow the link to ‘Support at Home’ – information on how to help with all the areas. Check often as we will up-date this when necessary. SHOW WEBSITE… We’ve recently added on the ‘Sample Papers’ for you to have a look at them.

Short, Sharp Snippets… Our advice – Remember they are working really hard in school on some tricky objectives, so they may be tired, ratty and/or hormonal! We see this in Year 6 – never mind with this new curriculum! Short, Sharp Snippets of revision are best minutes a night of a focus area and vary this throughout the week e.g. Monday – reading, Tuesday – Time Tables etc. Use the ideas and website links on our Year 6 page for inspiration. They often remember it when you do it and then forget the next week when you move to the next area – aim to go back and revise previous areas if you can – just take a few minutes to do this before you start the next area.