How to help daughter prepare for Year 6 SATs

mrsspendalot

Just wondering if anyone had any advice or links to useful resources on how to help prepare children for the upcoming Year 6 SATs?

My daughter has been sent home with a 40 page revision booklet for maths, as she was attending extra maths classes at school last term. We haven't had anything for spellings, science, literacy etc. I know they've been working on practice tests at school recently, but just wanted to give some extra support this week at home in the run up to them starting.

Thanks

System

Would this be any help? http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/ I remember my siblings using it

mrsspendalot

xXMessedUpXx wrote: »

Would this be any help? http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/ I remember my siblings using it

Ooh lovely ... thanks!

ETA: that looks super! Just perfect as she loves being on the computer on BBC Newsround etc. Just have to persuade her that spending time doing revision at home is a really good idea and hope she doesn't sulk too much.

msb5262

mrsspendalot wrote: »

Just wondering if anyone had any advice or links to useful resources on how to help prepare children for the upcoming Year 6 SATs?

Hello OP,

How lovely that you want to support your daughter.

To be honest, I think the best you can do is make sure your daughter is well rested, well fed and relaxed about the whole thing. The more anxious children become, the worse they are likely to perform.
School has almost certainly been getting them to do endless revision and practice so she will just need a break at home.
Make sure she gets reasonably early nights all this week so as to be in the habit next week, get her to eat breakfast and take a healthy snack to school and let her do as well as she can without thinking it's the be-all and end-all...

Best wishes

MsB

peachyprice

The best thing you can do to 'prepare' her is to be relaxed about the whole thing and not put any pressure on her by sticking extra papers in front of her to do.

The SATS main purpose is to gauge how well the school is performing and their position in the league tables, which is why many teachers no longer want to do them. The results will have little impact when she goes to secondary school as they will most likely do their own set of tests for streaming early in year 7.

So tell her they are nothing to worry about, do her best, and take them in her stride.

Oh, science SATS have already been abolished.

mrsspendalot

msb5262 wrote: »

Hello OP,

How lovely that you want to support your daughter.

To be honest, I think the best you can do is make sure your daughter is well rested, well fed and relaxed about the whole thing. The more anxious children become, the worse they are likely to perform.
School has almost certainly been getting them to do endless revision and practice so she will just need a break at home.
Make sure she gets reasonably early nights all this week so as to be in the habit next week, get her to eat breakfast and take a healthy snack to school and let her do as well as she can without thinking it's the be-all and end-all...

Best wishes

MsB

Yes, she's already been told that there will be no swimming club or dancing lessons on evenings after school for the next 2 weeks due to SATs and needing rest, much to her disgust

Thanks x

mrsspendalot

Her main weakness to be honest is spelling, and according to her teacher, rushing to answer questions without reading properly. Her predicted scores range between 4a and 5b depending on how much she concentrates in class on practices apparently. Those scores don't mean a great deal to me to be honest - but I want her to do her best.

themull1

Not letting her do some things she likes is a mistake. You should let her have a break, don't be too pushy. She could still go swimming etc!!

mrsspendalot

themull1 wrote: »

Not letting her do some things she likes is a mistake. You should let her have a break, don't be too pushy. She could still go swimming etc!!

Not when it finishes at 9pm, I think she needs to be in bed before that for exams really.

msb5262

Isn't it sad that nowadays we are encouraged as teachers to talk about children's weaknesses rather than their strengths?
I bet your DD will do her best. Don't worry about it and try not to push her to revise at home - doing extra stuff on top of what she's doing at school is likely to push her marks down rather than up.
The most hilarious part is that secondary schools usually take not a jot of notice of Year 6 SATs results!

peachyprice

mrsspendalot wrote: »

Not when it finishes at 9pm, I think she needs to be in bed before that for exams really.

If she's OK finishing on a normal school night why do you think she won't be OK when she has a test (not exam) the next day?

The school will have been hot housing the children for the last few weeks so she will be well used to taking the papers anyway.

Honestly, when she walks out of those gates at the end of year 6 no-one will refer to her KS2 SATS again, they really are not that important, but unfortunatley parents don't find that out until after.