SATS Year 6

[Hannahmum35]

My DD was told to start practising for sats and asked me to print of some papers. I looked as website and eventhough I know i have to download KS2 papers, some papers have on them level 3-5 and others ?

I dont know what that means & I dont really want to print both as it's a lot. Any suggestions ?

The standard SATs papers are level 3-5 so those will be the right ones.

It is utterly lazy of the school to make you do this out of your own resources.

yep 3-5. ask the school to print off old papers! don't do it yourself!

Why do their work for them?! Half term is for having a break.

Too right, lljkk. I was delighted to see DD2 come home with no more than the usual amount of homework, which will be done next weekend before she starts back. Kudos to the school for not piling it on.

I always thought SATS were something you shouldn't prepare for, maybe I'm wrong! Still, if I did want to prepare DD for SATS, I would not do it during holidays, especially if they already have homework from school to do during half term. Like bigbuttons, I would ask school to print them for you but doing it yourself is fine!

DS1 has done some practice papers in school but no suggestion of buying books or printing off papers. School has set some online maths homework and usual spelling but it's ridiculous to get parents to spend time and money printing off papers for something that is important to school rather than child.

Far more important to have a break. The SATs matter to the school, not the child.

'off you go and start practicing for sats with resources provided by your parents' -?
how lazy is that?
what about the children whose parents will not do this or do not have a printer?

interesting. DS1 bought home some maths old papers that had 4-6 on them what does that mean? have we got the wrong ones or really old ones?

Neverknowingly I think that the old KS3 papers went from 4-6. If your DS is working at a high level 5/aiming for level 6, he may have been given them rather than the separate 3-5 and level 6 ks2 papers.

Yes SATS are for the school and children will be assessed and tested again when they get to secondary (this is just the start of the endless treadmill of tests -ours even did one on transfer day!) however you do want your child to learn as much as possible in Y6 so they can do well at secondary. SATS revision and practice is a useful way to identify gaps in their learning and to check understanding. I do tell my class the better they do at primary the better they will do at secondary. Because for most children that is true whether we agree with SATS or not and that is how the system works.

Lizzie I have no problem supporting revision and practice, but I think school should be setting this as specific homework rather than asking parents to organise.

Actually I'm very impressed with how homework has changed for DS1 in Y6 (a little each night rather than loads at the weekend) which seems to me to have improved his knowledge / skills and therefore prepared him for SATS without making him feel like he has been drilled for a test all year. I am surprised by threads on here and friends in RL that some schools expect parents to buy books or print off practice papers when they could have set specific homework and not left things to parents to manage.

I agree. it would never occur to me to ask parents to do that.

Wow, I'd never ask parents to do that. My class of year 6 kids haven't really seen SATs papers yet, it's too soon - they get all stressed out by it and obsessed by levels.

DD has had routine (some commercial exercise book based) homework for maths, SPaG and Reading-comprehension. Plus the long-standing weekly spelling lists.

In most respects it's not that different, it's just it's clearly SATs as opposed to [whatever they were learning that week in previous KS2 years]. However she's also had four assessment weeks so far this year doing past papers etc. i.e. one every half term.

Because she's also doing L6 i.e. quite well enough, I'm doing my very best to emanate ::Shrug:: SATs Does Not Matter vibes, especially if there is ever any hint of perfectionism. So far so good, DD seems quite grounded about it all.

That said it is not entirely for the primary school performance figures, otherwise we wouldn't get to witness quite so much whining from secondary folk complaining about having to make X amount of progress from some completely, utterly, dodgy, unreliable, inconsistent, fraudulent, summer-slide-makes-brains-fall-out primary KS2 SATs level.

DD has no half term homnework, as ever. Her school will attain great SATs results, as ever, by teaching really well for all of the 7 years, not panicking at the end...