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

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

Illuminating is not a word I usually associate with Rosen's blogs.

If he is arguing about the test he might have a point, but the last time I read his outpourings on grammar he was complaining because he thought spelling, grammar and punctuation were outdated and shouldn't be taught at all.

If the government had decided to abolish the teaching if grammar in primary, I suspect he'd be complaining about what an outrage it was and how important grammar is.

[drivinmecrazy]

I am really happy for the parents on this thread who can score 100% on this test, even more impressed with the 10/11;yo we all know who will not struggle to gain a great score. After all, who really cares about the majority of kids who will needlessly struggle to spend two terms of their final year at primary trying to remember various grammar terms they will never again have to repeat or recite. And don't lets forget the feckless lazy kids who 'fail' to gain the expected grade in their reading and maths assessments who may have to retake the same test at the end of their first year at secondary. Of course it must be all down to illiterate, inumerate parents because poor teaching (NOT BAD TEACHERS!! ), lack of relevant resources and a child's inability to learn due to other issues bears absolutely no relevance to a child's outcome at end of yr6.

[UndramaticPause]

Or we could do what we've been doing for decades and assuming all children are average and screw the rest of them. Stop telling kids they can't learn things!

[drivinmecrazy]

Too angry! I find it unbelievable that some parents cannot see the problems with the new testing. Have you looked at the test and seen the marking criteria???

[UndramaticPause]

Yes I have and it would have labelled me as a failure under this system. However I didn't have people telling me I couldn't learn x y and z because of my background, attitude to learning and dyslexia. That's what's shouting out at me most in this thread. There is no "let's push our children" just "It's crap they can't do it" fuck. That.

[CrazyLoopholeInTimeAndSpace]

My ds will not pass this. He is two years away from the test. We think he has dyslexia. The school refuse to test for it or put him in for assessment. We cannot afford a private assessment. He will fail even though he is brilliant at creative writing. The schools are failing themselves and their pupils through sheer bloody mindedness.

[ArmchairTraveller]

The true test in how necessary and well-embedded the learning is will be if they can both use the grammar in their speaking and writing a year later, and if they can resit the test and pass with 100% despite not having any revision sessions.
I've found the majority of MFL to be poorly taught, and it's partly the reason for the low quality of the oral skills displayed by many speakers whose first language is English. Not their lack of grammatical knowledge, but that they don't actual;ly leave able to have a conversation in a language other than their own after years of lessons.

[IguanaTail]

I've found the majority of MFL to be poorly taught

How many MFL lessons have you observed?

[ArmchairTraveller]

That was with my grumpy parent hat on, looking at the results over years rather than the input. Somewhat how the majority of ordinary people get the chance to judge the effectiveness of teaching, rather than SLT sitting in with a 42 point checklist. If after three years of teaching, a child is still unable to have a basic conversation in the taught language, is that acceptable progress?
We are not, as a country, producing fluent linguists and haven't for years. MFL nees a huge reboot. Purely IMO.

[ArmchairTraveller]

Couldn't the SPAG tests be available to take online, so that those who struggle with motor skills or poor handwriting could use a keyboard?
That would help some, but not all.
Lessons in correct spoken English would be a start. Much harder to write it if you don't speak it.

[Feenie]

No, because being able to write neatly and spell competently is part of the expected standard in writing. If you can't do that, you are not At The Expected Standard.

[ArmchairTraveller]

So, no scribes then?
Sumfink rong their.

[IguanaTail]

So you haven't observed any, and you are going solely on exam results?

"Having a basic conversation" is not, sadly, a criteria on the GCSE. The new one either. It should be.

They will have to describe a photo, do a short role play (like "at the station") and then "general conversation" which will not be the type you are thinking of, it will be responding to questions (about school, the environment etc).

Disappointingly, very little has changed from the old one to the new one, in my opinion.

MFL is hard to teach, and the backdrop of "my husband and I were always bad at Spanish, it runs in the family". "Everyone speaks English" is very unhelpful.

[IguanaTail]

Also - what "checklist" are you talking about? I've never known one. Or is this just something else you think happens?

[CauliflowerBalti]

All we are teaching our children to do is how to pass tests. That, and that English as a subject is dull as dishwater. Subordinating conjunctions ffs. I'm a writer. I don't know what a subordinating conjunction is, and never have.

My boy is in Y3. He does 10 spellings a week. He gets 10 out of 10 every week. He can't spell for toffee. Ask him the same words again in 10 days' time and he goes right back to his phonetic equivalent. All he is doing is using his short-term memory. That's another thing we're teaching our children to do. And it is a useful life skill, but it doesn't equate to knowledge.

He comes home from school so downhearted. They're assessing him all the time. Tests he can't hope to pass, just to benchmark him. But he doesn't know that. He just sees that he's sitting tests and failing. They have to be able to spell 100 frequently used but awkwardly spelled words by the end of Y4. None of which we've practiced. School tested him on them now to see how far he has to go. He got 6 out of 100. It destroyed him. I know they'll spend 3 months before the exam exhaustively cramming them into him, I suspect he'll do OK in the end - but what is the bloody point? He won't be able to confidently spell them coming out the other side. It's just ridiculous. It makes me so sad and so fucking angry.

[ArmchairTraveller]

'Also - what "checklist" are you talking about? I've never known one. Or is this just something else you think happens.

No, that's how observations were done in my humble primary school. Checklist was linked to OFSTED criteria. 42 points in all.
I come from a family background that involved a lot of travel, and I'm married to a linguist, so it's not fear of MFL that makes me despair when I hear the basic bumbling that passes for speaking foreign here.
If the focus isn't on communicate orally at the introductory stage, what's the point in learning it?
Or do you think that the low uptake and high drop-out rate is due to laziness?
Lack of interest in working in the EC?

[ArmchairTraveller]

'All he is doing is using his short-term memory. That's another thing we're teaching our children to do. And it is a useful life skill, but it doesn't equate to knowledge. '

This. I had a teacher look at me in anmazement the other day and say 'How do you know this stuff'
Because I predate Google and the internet. So I had to remember stuff if I didn't want to spend a day in the library. Knowledge is retention, on a long-term basis.

[Obs2016]

I Find Yr6 and Yr2 spag tests threads hard to read.
The complexity, children crying. Makes for tough reading.

[MrsTedMosby]

I've just caught up with this thread.

So I see that handwriting must be joined up and consistent size. That's DS buggered then. His handwriting is dtill virtually unreadable - worse if he attempts joined up (which he does because in y2 they taught all children joined up. Never mind that DS had only started writing properly in the last term of y1.) despite constant talking to his teachers he hasn't had any extra help at school. Thus he hates writing, it hurts him, and any attempt at home is met with a meltdown.

I am thinking of HE for y6, maybe y5 too. But am worried about that if he doesn't sit the SATs in y6 he'll just be made to sit them in y7 instead? Can anyone confirm if that is true or not? Or if it's just if you've taken them and (how I hate to say this about young children) failed them?

[foragogo]

Children from independent schools don't do SATS and just rock up in y7 of state secondaries having not done them and no one gives a monkeys, they are just set according to previous school report andbthe secondary schools own initially assessments that they do for all their pupils. Which is the ultimate proof that they are for the schools not the pupils IMO. So I'd say the answer was no (though I'm not a teacher)

[chrome100]

I think it's great kids are learning this stuff.

It IS important, and very helpful when learning MFLs. As someone said above, children in France learn this stuff in primary school, there's no reason why British children can't do the same.

[Andrewofgg]

Some of the questions are difficult at that age, but isn't that at the point of any sort of test? I came from a home where three languages were spoken and I was fluent in two of them (my DPs kept me out of one to keep some privacy!) having learnt the second formally from age seven, and I could have answered most if not all of these questions. Why should not a test like this include some questions which not all will be able to answer?

[iwantbrewstersmillions]

At last a government that is getting all children to do well.

[GruntledOne]

I see too many otherwise bright and able students really letting themselves down because they repeatedly make basic grammar mistakes. I work in a field where the ability to express yourself is important, and there have been times where we've had to let people go because, despite every effort to help them and many opportunities to put things right, they simply seem unable to draft letters and other documents coherently. The reason for that in the majority of cases is that they've never had to learn basic grammar at school and, for example, simply don't see what's wrong with a sentence that has no verb, and apparently genuinely believe that if a word ends in "s" it needs an apostrophe.

I can see why these tests are difficult for pupils who haven't come up through the school system, and I do think therefore that there needs to be a bit of leeway until the new syllabus has been in place for a few years. However, despite being in general a lefty liberal type I do think that the current emphasis on grammar will, with the right balance, ultimately be helpful to all pupils. If it results in fewer posts on social media full of "could of" and "would of", so much the better!