How to help daughter prepare for Year 6 SATs

peachyprice

mrsspendalot wrote: »

Thank you

Yes I feel quite anxious about them on her behalf. She doesn't seem too concerned, which is good. I'll just stick with the early nights and try not to pile too much revision on.

It's difficult when it's your eldest and you have no knowledge of what to expect.

My DD's head wanted to abandon them altogether last year, but couldn't in the end due to pressure from a handful of parents, mainly those going through SATs for the first time. I don't know whether they'll do them this year.

louise3965

They don't matter, don't stop the fun stuff just so she can take part in a tick box school scoring exercise. There's plenty of time for that when she gets to 15. My dd is in year 6 too, doing the exact same tests as yours and I have told her to be relaxed, there's no pressure on here whatsoever, just to treat it like a normal day. The word *exam* will definitely not feature. But she's not my eldest, and maybe I was a bit more stressedslashinterested years ago!

mrsspendalot

louise3965 wrote: »

They don't matter, don't stop the fun stuff just so she can take part in a tick box school scoring exercise. There's plenty of time for that when she gets to 15. My dd is in year 6 too, doing the exact same tests as yours and I have told her to be relaxed, there's no pressure on here whatsoever, just to treat it like a normal day. The word *exam* will definitely not feature. But she's not my eldest, and maybe I was a bit more stressedslashinterested years ago!

Thank you x

FBaby

If her level is assessed as 4a/5c, she is already above the expected level and therefore does not need to do better. I do agree that it is important to prepare children to taking test. The good thing about SATS is that the result doesn't matter per se, but it is good preparation to revising, relaxing, concentrating etc... Learning how to best take exams is as if sometimes no more important than the content of the exam in the first place!

My daughter is also way above the expected levels, I'm sure she will do very well, we are not revising or anything but I do want her to take it seriously and do her best.

alwayspuzzled

I wouldn't worry about them, as others have said they are purely to measure the schools performance for the league tables etc. My oldest did his last year and I just asked him about them, got a shrug and a "don't mean anything, don't make any difference to anything" comment. I know a couple of the secondary schools (not ds1's) round here use them for initial "streaming" but quickly carry out their own assesments anyway.

mrsspendalot

FBaby wrote: »

If her level is assessed as 4a/5c, she is already above the expected level and therefore does not need to do better. I do agree that it is important to prepare children to taking test. The good thing about SATS is that the result doesn't matter per se, but it is good preparation to revising, relaxing, concentrating etc... Learning how to best take exams is as if sometimes no more important than the content of the exam in the first place!

My daughter is also way above the expected levels, I'm sure she will do very well, we are not revising or anything but I do want her to take it seriously and do her best.

Thank you x

brummiebabe

My son has been bombarded with SATS papers as practice over the last 3-4 months!! As a parent, and many of his friends' parents agree, I think it's WAY too much!! He's done nothing but SATS papers in school & then has had them at home too!! The teachers are counting down how many days til the SATS with them - constantly (didn't stop them having a teacher training day the day after the school's closed for voting though;))

We've reinforced constantly to our son that although it is important that he does his best - they're of no real relevance once he's left Junior school. As long as he's done the best he can do - I'll be proud of him!!

I wouldn't stop my son doing any of his activities outside school - he's got a major football game the day before the SATS start...there's no way he'll be missing it!!

We're focussing on what happens after the SATS - they have a Y6 residential trip the week after the SATS, so we're encouraging him to think about what he has to look forward too. Y6 for us seems to have been a horrible year so far....all he's done is literacy/numeracy with very little other topics to learn anything new - bit of a waste in my view...2 terms of revision!!!

As everyone's said...they're only important to the school!!!!

mrsspendalot

alwayspuzzled wrote: »

I wouldn't worry about them, as others have said they are purely to measure the schools performance for the league tables etc. My oldest did his last year and I just asked him about them, got a shrug and a "don't mean anything, don't make any difference to anything" comment. I know a couple of the secondary schools (not ds1's) round here use them for initial "streaming" but quickly carry out their own assesments anyway.

I'm sure the school she is going to uses them for streaming initially too, so maybe this is why I'm quite concerned about her doing her best at them. I just want her to have the best start at her new school I suppose.

mrsspendalot

brummiebabe wrote: »

My son has been bombarded with SATS papers as practice over the last 3-4 months!! As a parent, and many of his friends' parents agree, I think it's WAY too much!! He's done nothing but SATS papers in school & then has had them at home too!! The teachers are counting down how many days til the SATS with them - constantly (didn't stop them having a teacher training day the day after the school's closed for voting though;))

We've reinforced constantly to our son that although it is important that he does his best - they're of no real relevance once he's left Junior school. As long as he's done the best he can do - I'll be proud of him!!

I wouldn't stop my son doing any of his activities outside school - he's got a major football game the day before the SATS start...there's no way he'll be missing it!!

We're focussing on what happens after the SATS - they have a Y6 residential trip the week after the SATS, so we're encouraging him to think about what he has to look forward too. Y6 for us seems to have been a horrible year so far....all he's done is literacy/numeracy with very little other topics to learn anything new - bit of a waste in my view...2 terms of revision!!!

As everyone's said...they're only important to the school!!!!

Wow, that seems quite full on! She has done practices at school, but other than the maths revision book she hasn't been sent anything home. The maths book was only sent home for those in the extra maths tuition class. I was worrying that she wasn't going to get any revision on the other test areas, but perhaps they do enough at school to pass and don't want to over-do it by sending it home as well.

Thanks for all the replies, I feel a bit less anxious about it now and I'll just make sure she gets early nights and try not to go on about the tests too much over the next week or so.

brummiebabe

mrsspendalot wrote: »

Wow, that seems quite full on!

Thanks for all the replies, I feel a bit less anxious about it now and I'll just make sure she gets early nights and try not to go on about the tests too much over the next week or so.

It is full on - 6 SATS papers over the Easter holiday!! It's been awful & he's been really worried about how he's doing compared with his friends....far too much pressure at their age!!!

Don't be anxious about the SATS..it's our first time doing them too, so I know it's difficult, but all the senior schools we went to see reiterated that the SATS are, really, irrelevant..they do their own assessments and stream them accordingly.