Against the proposed Y6 Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling Tests - your views needed!

[KarenInglis]

All - please read this open letter to the Times Educational Supplement from Alan Peat about the proposed grammar, punctuation and spelling tests for Y6 children. I don't know Alan - this just happened to pass my Twitter feed. But I am glad that I read it.

My children are all grown up now but as an author and being passionate about encouraging reading and writing I think what he has to say needs a very close look.

If you agree with what he has to say please do tweet/FB etc using the hashtag he has supplied. He is clearly trying to raise the profile of his piece to ensure that it will be picked up by the TES. alanpeat.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/open-letter-to-the-tes-opposing-the-y6-grammar-punctuation-and-spelling-test/

Best wishes,

Karen

pickled, I think that that's largely what this discussion has been about. If your child is actually learning phonics then talking about digraphs and trigraphs is fine if that's he wants to do. But he's unlikely to be using a fronted adverbial in the first place. Or if he is using one he's probably only using it because it's part of his lesson or his homework. So it makes more sense to talk about nouns, adjectives, subordinate clauses, verbs, tenses and punctuation, because the children will be using these all the time, than it does to talk about adverbials and modal verbs, which do seem to be being introduced simply for the sake of introducing technical terms, which seems a bit silly. (Maybe it's not actually harmful. But it's not very clever or necessary.)

Will the children not be using modal verbs then?

Another thing that my DS enjoyed learning about last year in Y3 was pathetic fallacy. You could argue that it is a bit silly to introduce this technical term too I suppose.

I suppose that's the debate! How has knowing what a noun phrase is helped you in the last two weeks?

Learning about fronted adverbials could help DC to improve their writing, no?:

"Fronting is mainly used by writers (authors, journalists etc) for dramatic effect. It is not common in everyday speech. It is useful to be able to recognize fronting when you see it. However, you do not need to use these structures to demonstrate a good working knowledge of English."

And here is an example: "On the table stood a vase of flowers (A vase of flowers stood on the table)."

Knowing the technical terms allows for dialogue to be opened up - it could even be argued that by labelling these parts of speech/written word we are helping students to generalise their usage.

I don't feel I can comment fully without seeing the curriculum.

However, what i do take strong exception to is Alan peat's assumption that childen can and should improve their grammar by reading extensively for pleasure. This is the same waffle that was spouted several decades back about the best way to teach reading and spelling ie Look and Say- as if they learn by osmosis.

Some children- the brightest- will learn a lot by reading well written English, but many won't.

The other point is that this puts the onus squarely on families- and many children do not have educated or supportive families.

It's a nonsense for Peat to bang on about Jane Austen. And anyone who holds up " famous authors" as examples of why it's not necessary for children to master spelling or punctuation, on the basis that some of our great writers didn't get it right all of the time, is bonkers IMO. That's a different argument altogether.

pickledsiblings Fri 21-Dec-12 13:27:55

Learning about fronted adverbials could help DC to improve their writing, no?:

Does he need to know what it's called, or would being taught how to use the technique not improve his writing...

Yes, but why not teach them what it's called too, do you think that that in itself is harmful?

I don't think it's harmful but knowing what something is called doesn't mean that you can use it effectively which surely is more important.

The test doesn't measure whether they can use the technique, only whether they know its name, pickled.

Exactly, Feenie - because the only way of assessing whether the techniques have been mastered is to assess a piece of real writing. Not rocket science, is it? Except, it seems, for Mr Gove.

I against testing grammar, not against teaching it - there's a huge difference. Teachers are can assess a piece of writing and identify strengths and weaknesses without a test like that. Most primary and secondary schools do teach grammatical terms and have been expected to do so for years. I just suspect Gove of wanting to reduce English and Literacy assessment to objective right-or-wrong answers, because it makes it easier to count marks (and therefore to rank school, and calculate percentages). Also, marking the SPAG test will be quicker and therefore cheaper than marking a writing paper. You wouldn't need an English specialist to mark that test, for one thing.
I'd find it much easier if my marking load was reduced to a tick or a cross for an answer, instead of having to read pages of writing and evaluate it as a whole, but I can't imagine that would do much to improve my pupils' writing.

I don't think it's harmful but knowing what something is called doesn't mean that you can use it effectively which surely is more important.

This is true to a certain extent, but not always, because learners do not get things right all the time.

Children are often inconsistent in their use of particular grammatical forms, for example, common errors are where subject and verb do not agree, shifting from present to past tense, inaccurate use of pronoun referents.
It is easier to correct these errors if you have the words to describe the error.
In my experience, most children do seem to have a good grasp of what constitutes a sentence. But for those who do not, it is not easy to say what is wrong with a sentence, unless the child and teacher have some commonly understood terms. This may be the 'correct' grammar term, or some alternative that is used, eg 'doing' word as an alternative for 'verb' or 'the part of the sentence that names someone/something' as an alternative for 'subject'.

Clearly, it's better when we all use the same words to describe the same thing. Part of the spin-off of a test for children, will be that the teachers also have to acquire the knowledge if they do not already have it.
And as with everything to be taught, will also think of interesting ways to teach it to engage the children. Learning grammar terms need not be intrinsically dull.

I'm not sure that I agree with that at all, Malal. I think the most useful way of correcting young children's grammar is simply to repeat the phrase to the child in its correct form. If the children are very young, I'm pretty sure that doing anything else would simply cause confusion (probably for both the adult and the child.)

There are an awful lot of adults, myself included, who can form correct sentences but do not always know the technical reasons why this or that sentence is correct or not. And my grammar is not particularly bad.

I like the test- not too complex, stretches the most able- first questions are very basic.

Might have to pinch it for class.

I think the most useful way of correcting young children's grammar ....

Repeating the correct form is one way of addressing errors, and one we use all the time when teaching youngsters our spoken language, but it is usually one on one.

Using the correct form in writing, with children who are not always so young - say older primary and secondary, and in a classroom situation - is different. (Add to that, vernacular may be different from the standard English written form.)
For example, saying to a class, "Have you checked that you have written your report in the past tense?" is only possible if the children know what is meant by 'past tense' and know regular and irregular forms.

Hello there

found this very interesting but for parents like me who have no idea what this is about here are the links:

Level 3-5 example papers here: www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/assessment/keystage2/b00218030/gps-sample-materials/gps-3-5-sample-materials - just click test examples/ info on right in blue box.

Level 6 materials (which is the bulk of what mrz & others are discussing) here: www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/assessment/keystage2/b00218030/gps-sample-materials/gps-6-sample-materials

In the test framework (here: media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/g/2013-2015_keystage2_english_grammarpunctationandspelling_test_framework.pdf) on page 19 it explains content of LEVEL 3 - 5 & Level 6 tests (that's National curriculum level - for explanation of levels see Mumsnet learning pages here: www.mumsnet.com/learning/assessment/national-curriculum-levels). It seems Level 3-5 test only spelling and grammar and Level 6 has a 3rd test which is a creative writing excerise (Test 1 extended task) which is this:

Cyberschool
A local IT company is gathering views about Cyberschooling for research purposes. Cyberschooling is a way of learning that involves pupils working at home on their own computers and watching lessons on the internet. The company has asked for pupils? views, to be presented as a short report showing whether they support or oppose the idea.

Now it is clear that mrz is correct there is an increase in technical language in the level 6 test - but the level 3 - 5 test is more about filling in the blank.

On the fence on this one. I can see the government want to ascertain that children are really grasping these concepts but I can see that teachers (like mrz and others posting here) are concerned that this may lead to an overemphasis on grammatical terminology at the cost of creative writing work (which I do value and would hate to see decline further at our school).

One thing that was raised up above somewhere was that grammar would only be of use when learning a foreign language, not when learning English (for native speakers). At our school at least MFL is rolled out in KS2 (not hugely seriously - maybe once a week) - and perhaps grammar can be incorporated a bit more in the MFL work - for example explaining present and past tense/ articles/ nouns/ verbs - all could be explained in the context of MFL teaching and benefitting knowledge gain for Y6 English grammar test?

Very interesting discussion all and a lot to think about. Certainly the first I'd heard about this. Once again Mumsnet better able to keep me up to date on what is going on/ should be going on than our school does (although to be fair this is really a Y6 issues and both DDs are younger).

"This is true to a certain extent, but not always, because learners do not get things right all the time."

so would knowing what it's called ensure they got it right all the time or would be thorough teaching work better?

I'm in favour of schools teaching grammatical concepts, but I'm very much against this kind of testing.

A test like this lends itself nicely to Gove's love of norm referencing exam results. I think there's a separation from the concept that a certain set of skills means a certain level. Tests like this could see the level boundaries being shifted to preserve a particular view of what % of pupils ought to get a level 4/5/6.

This has definitely happened at GCSE level already, pupils are marked according to bands which don't correlate to particular grades. Secondary teachers can no longer say,"If you do xyz, you'll get a C." The best we can say now is, "If you do xyz, and you score more points on the course than 60% (or whatever) of the country, then you might get a C." Pupils - and their parents - don't want to hear that.

FactOfTheMatter -please can you clarify a little. Many thanks. What don't you like about this form of testing? It's unclear to students etc?

Factof, secondary teachers can't even say that any more because Mr Gove and his pals on the exam board now log in after the pupils have sat the exam and change the scores.

so would knowing what it's called ensure they got it right all the time or would be thorough teaching work better?
No, of course not, but to me, thorough teaching would include using a terminology that both child and teacher share, so that where errors occur, they can be discussed. There are of course ways to teach discriminations between a grammatically correct form, and a grammatically incorrect form without having knowledge of the grammatical terms.

I have given an example in my later post.
For example, saying to a class, "Have you checked that you have written your report in the past tense?" is only possible if the children know what is meant by 'past tense' and know regular and irregular forms.

Well I might teach my class that dog, cat, man, house are common nouns but in the test they use "concrete nouns" or I might teach that a and an are "indefinite articles" but in the test they are "determiners" (simply because I'm very old and those were the terms I was taught but aren't the terms used in the test )

Well, as I said earlier, there may be new stuff for teachers to learn too! What's the definite article now called?