If your child is taking the Year 6 SATs exam this spring and having a hard time with punctuation and grammar, it might be time to show them a different approach to practising them!
(If you’re looking for help with Year 6 spelling, you can find it here.)
A lot of the time, they’re not aware enough of the bigger picture goals of grammar and punctuation!
Students tend to get hung up on how many different little rules they need to follow all at once, some of which have endless exceptions that they feel like they have to memorise…and they end up basically missing the forest for the trees.
If we break the goal down, it’s simply to write clear, effective sentences—and to understand how the different groups of rules (and different groups of punctuation marks!) work together to make that happen.
be able to construct sentences that follow along with the pattern given by the two most important words in the sentence—the main subject and verb!
The material on the Year 6 SATs for SPAG can be broken out into identifying parts of speech, parts of sentence, picking the right punctuation marks in a situation, and following sentence structure patterns. And by the way, all of these groups of question types are easier to deal with once you understand how they fit into the larger pattern!
Start with smaller groups of questions on related topics, and build outward until you’re comfortable with all the material!
take practise tests. Look for them yourself, or ask your teacher or…you know…some friendly local outside educator to see if they can create some for you!
