As grammar is being discussed, this is the new Yr 6 SPAG test

[katmanwho]

AIBU to use Google to answer half of them!!

Good luck

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/439299/Sample_ks2_EnglishGPS_paper1_questions.pdf

Am I missing something? That paper linked to was really easy (without Google)...

Everything comes full circle, and I'm ancient enough to have done all this stuff routinely when I was at primary school. I've always found it incredibly useful, for example in learning other languages. Most materially, when I'm presented with a piece of writing that just sounds wrong, it enables me to work out why and to put it right.

What "FithColumnist" said - changing the syllabus and the exam that should build on four years of the syllabus, in the same year, is daft. Teaching kids enough grammar so they can understand foreign language tuition for GCSE is a good idea. Teaching them details of linguistics that only linguisticists and neuroscientists are ever going to need is daft in primary!

ifitsgoodenough - I guessed a past progressive is what we used to call the imperfect. I've had discussions with various friends who lecture this stuff at university and the differences in nomenclature around the world make it tough - primary kids don't need to be involved in those battles!

So, following my earlier post I sat my DD1 (yr10 top 10 out of a cohort of 240 at a great comp) & my Yr6 DD2 down at the kitchen table to sit the test. DD2 scored 20/49 & DD1 scored 33/49. But what most struck me when going through the answers was the marking. All questions were only worth 1 point, only right or wrong answers even if they had answered 2/3 parts of a question right. Some questions requires perfect spelling so even had a child known the grammatical phrase and completed a 3/4 part question they could still score a big fat zero because they cannot spell 'beautiful ' . My yr 10 DD's response to some of the questions are just not repeatable. I'm still left with a great amount of discomfort. I am most certainly going to be writing a letter to my local MP tomorrow asking for an explanation of the purpose of a test that is neither relevant nor marked appropriately. I pity the poor yr6 teachers who have to teach to this test. How can they inspire and encourage kids when their time is restricted to teaching for a test with no relevance or value!

I would also expect a 9 or 10-year-old to know the answers to these. Of course they would have to go to a school which teaches these things during the previous years (as opposed to the meaningless week-long "projects" that involve dressing up and pretending to be Roman soldiers/dinosaurs, etc); and they would need to be in an environment where good English is used (as opposed to "I was sat" and "he has wrote".)

restricted to teaching for a test with no relevance or value!
Knowing grammar is of no relevance of value?
(I'm glad my parents did not think so.)

as opposed to the meaningless week-long "projects" that involve dressing up and pretending to be Roman soldiers/dinosaurs, etc

Oh my god -this^. What the hell are we doing letting kids actually enjoy school???? It should be stopped immediately

I would also expect a 9 or 10-year-old to know the answers to these

Really - I got to 35 without knowing a subordinating conjunction and other types of conjunctions. Or noun phrases.

Feenie, guess what, I attended school in a culture where we sat at desks and worked from the age of 6. There were no projects and we did not dress up as Roman soldiers and build Roman forts from banana crates as a waste of school-time. We learned instead. From books. And from the teachers. Which is why I know the grammar of my mother tongue, and two foreign languages. And you know what? I enjoyed school, too. And I'm hugely grateful that my time wasn't wasted on stuff that you do at the weekend at home (like dressing up).

That's great. I'm pleased you enjoyed it.

Sounds boring as hell though.

And, btw, this is like the experiment of shifting school-days to 11am-6pm because "teenagers body clocks work like that". One of the sink secondaries in my area did this, I saw an interview with the headteacher on the local evening news about it he actually said that forcing teenagers to go to school at 9 and consequently, to get up at 8 was akin to child abuse. By the following January the school slid to the bottom of the league table. But apart from that I could have told him, that it was fine - except private schools will continue to have classes from 9, and they will have sports training and chapel before that - and law firms and banks and other high-flying places will choose candidates who are able to get up early (and are accustomed to overcoming their laziness). Whereas his students will complain of "not being given a chance by society because they are from a deprived background".

Independent primary schools will continue to have children sit at desks and work. They will know their conjunctions and subordinate clauses. They will also be the ones chosen to go to Oxbridge and then on to highly-paid jobs. And they will even be able to enjoy all these things.

drivinmecrazy thank you, I hope more parents do the same.
If the curriculum had been changed and introduced properly there would be less worry. The worry is that this is sudden and the whole ks2 curriculum crammed into 2 terms.

*about it, he actually

I don't think at all that that's difficult - admittedly, I was at school until the 90s, so may have been taught differently: but those were the sort of things we were taught in year 4 and 5.

Mind you, I am routinely horrified at the appalling levels of literacy in the final year university students I teach, so I appreciate schooling might have moved on, and that grammar etc is no longer trendy.

I'm not sure knowing the term conjunction or subordinate clause is a pre-requisite for Oxbridge, is it?

It wasn't something that I was taught at school, and most of my cohort went on to Oxbridge or RG universities. Being able to use them in writing is a totally different matter.

Why is any of this stressful to the children? Only teachers panic about these exams, it means nothing to the children, so teachers who put stress on children and parents should be blamed.

Teaching children to pass tests like this is nothing to do with making them better writers and everything to do with pandering to the Conservative government's obsession with testing children, introducng a 1950s curriculum back into schools and creating hurdles for schools that stifle creative teaching and learning and result in many children not reaching ludicrous test standards, or enjoying learning or learning the writing, maths and communication skills they could usefully be learning.
As an English teacher and Deputy Headteacher in a secondary school, I will be keeping DS off (when he is at primary school) whenever there is a government test until he gets to GCSE age. Until that age, no test will matter to him later in life. The people who will know best how well he is doing are his teachers.

While I can see some value of kids knowing enough grammar to discuss language, I'd much rather my kids spent the two hours a week dedicated to learning grammatical labels to learning how to programme a computer, or public speaking, or learning how to work effectively in a team, or develop leadership skills. Im pretty sure that all of those things are going to be more useful to them than being able to label different kinds of conjunctions.

Out of interest, of those of you on this thread who support these latest SATs, with the more technical level of grammar, etc, how many of you have experience of teaching and/or parenting children with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia? For those of you who do, how do you feel about them taking the tests?

Genuinely interested as I'm definitely on the 'I don't like these tests' camp.

As someone with dyslexia I support the level of learning that's expected and think having this knowledge would have actually helped me however the amount of focus on handwriting, as someone whose never been able to write joined up, disappoints me and I feel for the otherwise intelligent children who will miss out due to it.

As a Primary PGCE student, English grad, mother of umpteen and former journalist, I can't tell you how depressing this all is from a number of viewpoints. Michael Rosen's blogs on this have been

The majority of my fellow students don't have the foggiest about grammar. Fresh out of uni, they're engaged in a frantic catch-up exercise. The additional difficulty is that most of the teachers they encounter on placement are in a similar situation.

Even at university, I never studied grammar to this ridiculous, reductive level. By all means discuss different structures, to have a specific ticklist of 'you must include x, y and z to ensure interest' misunderstands the way our language works. Additionally, the proscriptive descriptions given by government can be queried.

The current structure sucks the joy out of writing.

Oh typical, keyboard fail...
Michael Rosen's blogs have been illuminating.

I'm a writer, I've got a degree in English language, I love words, and I think grammar, spelling and punctuation is really important. I think these tests are utter bollocks. They are completely pointless and a very good way of making children fall out of love with language altogether.