Have a go at the key stage 2 grammar SATS.

[neolara]

Have a go at this mini Key Stage 2 SATs test.

See if you'd pass.

I think it's incredibly important that all 10 year olds know what subordinating conjunctions, modal verbs and determiners are because I use these terms on a daily basis in my actual daily grown up life.

In fact, I'm delighted that my kids will be spending more time learning to label parts of speech and consequently less time on largely irrelevant stuff like computer programming, art, developing social skills, music, history, geography etc. The sort of things that barely impacts on my actual daily grown up life as I work alongside other people, use computers every day, travel, work as a social scientist, appreciate a wide range of cultural experiences such as music on the radio, plays, art galleries .......

While I totally get the need for kids to learn good spelling, punctuation and grammar, somehow I can't get my head round the feeling that things have just gone nuts. Firstly, learning to label grammar parts is not the same as learning to use good grammar. Secondly, learning to label grammar parts at the expense of learning all the other much more useful stuff seems crazy.

50% here, and I'm never corrected in a grammar check...shocking.

I asked my DD2 "do you know what a subordinating conjuction is?" "No." "OK, do you know what a proposition is?" "Nope, but I do know how to do my shoes up!"

Well that's sorted then!

Feenie Yes sit there pencil in hand focusing intently, reading every question carefully. ..... Can't think of many 6 year olds that I know being up for that.
lougle Your DD has it sorted. I know which of those she will use most in her life

I got "You have reached 7 of 10 points, (70%)" . I think it is down to me being a non-native speaker. We learned English at school this boring way, however much later than 6/7 y.o.

I got 70% with guesswork and process of elimination. I knew what a preposition was so guessed which ones weren't. I only have English O Level but also an aptitude for grammar and spelling.

It did just appear to be about knowing the terms. I'm not an education professional so don't know if that's useful for learning or not.

I've just downloaded a sample KS1 SPAG test out of interest because DS will be doing it this summer. At the moment I can see questions he will struggle with, but his teacher says his progress is on track for the year so I'm reasonably confident he will be ready for it. She did send us home from parents' evening with family homework this week though, so she obviously thinks a bit of hard work is necessary from us as well as DS.

Regarding other posters' comments about maturity, this is probably where DS will fall down. He is very able but easily distracted and slow to finish a task. The greater difficulty for him will probably be finishing the paper in the time permitted.

I get the impression from his teacher that he's worse for this than many of his classmates. She says it's partly 'the boy thing' so I expect there are plenty in his class who will fare OK.

There's no time limit in the KS1 tests, Ann - but many children get bored in the end.

I didn't have clue about any of it. I teach university students, maybe I shouldn't.

If you read and write a lot good grammar and expression comes by instinct. Prioritising the terminology like that will create self-conscious and stilted writers.

My Ds has SATS this year, I told him they mean nothing.

Is that right Feenie? That's good to know. Based on the sample I've got here I think DS could make it to the end before zoning out completely.

His school is going to hold a parents' information session about the tests in the near future which will be useful.

I got 70%. Once you know the terms it is ok and kids are using these terms on a. Daily basis now, just like year ones are using words like digraphs, split digraph etc. teach them what it means and use it frequently and it isn't as scary. We didn't learn them so it seems scary. On our school they hold parents evenings to teach the parents the new way to do maths, the phonics bits like digraphs and the grammar bits too.

I got 3/10 as did no grammar at school myself.
Thank God mine are all past ks2 SATS, ridiculous.
Fair enough if kids have been taught this for years, but not just a few months.

I got 60%! Never taught grammar st school but enjoyed learning French and German so guess I picked up some through that.
I'mean not anti SPAG but think it's been rushed through and made overly complicated. Will there be SPAG covered at secondary or is year 6 the end? Dd in year 8 doesn't know any of this and isn't being taught it...

I got 80%, but some of it was lucky guess work.

I'm not sure knowing any of that helps you become a good writer. It might be useful if you want to study linguistics, but I think it's a waste of time. Indeed, I think it's wasting time focusing on things that are easy to test rather than things that will help build key skills (but which cannot be tested as easily).

I learned most of this stuff at primary school in the 1970s, in what is now lower KS2. The only reason people are freaked out by it is because it hasn't been taught since then. Your kids are learning it, so they know.
When I learned foreign languages later my tutors were always astounded at the Brits' poor grammatical knowledge.
It's not cruel to teach kids tools to enable them to understand language.
SATs are shit, but teaching grammar is a really good thing.

60% which is more a comment on my psychic abilities than my grammar.

You can use language perfectly well without knowing the labels and grammatical terms. parsing has been out of fashion for a long time.

bernard shaw is turning in his grave?

The test is not ONLY about knowing the terms. But obviously it's going to be pretty difficult to answer a question about prepositions if you don't know what one is. The thing is, people bloody well should know what a preposition is! They are basic words we use all the time. I just don't understand why this kind of thing gets taught as a matter of course at school in other European countries but not here. I'm tutoring a Spanish girl atm who is spending a couple of years at school in England and her mind is boggled by the fact that her classmates seem to know nothing about the way their own language works.

Seriously, knowing what a preposition, or even a subordinating conjunction is - that's no harder than knowing what a verb or an adverb is. Parents are freaked out by it because THEY never learnt it so it sounds hard.

I know it's tough introducing this stuff when it hasn't been on the curriculum for ages, but frankly it never should have left the curriculum in the first place. If it hadn't, we would all have learnt it and MN probably wouldn't be littered with 'should of', and 'are you been serious' . Ok I'm sidling out now before I seriously piss people off...

Oh hang on, one more parting shot... I also suspect that part of the reason lots of (not all) primary teachers are so pissed off about it is that they secretly don't know all of this stuff either. I love my y6 dd's teacher (he's also the Head) to bits and think he's an absolute inspiration, but I don't think grammar is his strong point...

The test is not ONLY about knowing the terms.

Yes, it is.

I also suspect that part of the reason lots of (not all) primary teachers are so pissed off about it is that they secretly don't know all of this stuff either.

Your suspicions are way off - I gave you the reason most teachers are against this. Literacy coordinators DO know this stuff, and they are the main voice.

Told you no one listens.

I don't know what a verb is, or a preposition. I would get my qualifications out at this point but that would be crass.

I would expect the teachers do know this stuff, you tend to know the stuff you teach the most thoroughly.

No it isn't. I just did the test. You need to properly understand how the parts of speech work within a sentence and be able to adapt that knowledge to different sentences. It's only 'just knowing what the term means' in the same way as knowing how to add up is only 'knowing what addition means'.

Bollocks. It doesn't in any way teach grammar in context, or in any meaningful,living and breathing way which flies in the face of any research conducted on how children learn to use grammar best (google Professor Debra Myhill, Exter University).

70%. Have no idea what half these things are in English - most of my English grammar comes from Latin, French and German.

It should be easy to teach to the test and being able to recognise parts of speech in general really helps when dealing with foreign languages with more formal grammar (i.e. pretty well all of them!) and making sure what you write is in clear English and as unambiguous as possible...

My class of 12 year olds (private selective school) rather shocked our Latin teacher that we had no idea what an object was let alone if it was direct or indirect!

I got 80% ...and I have a degree in English language!

100% but also a teacher. I have to admit I do find it somewhat unnecessary to learn the official terminology for grammatical structures we use effortlessly and continuously in everyday speech, but at the same time, it's not actually that difficult to learn them if you put a bit of time into it. Unless you have specific learning difficulties of course and then it can be just horrible, along with the spelling test and the times tables etc.

I got 90%, so pleased that my kids are in an international school overseas and not having so much importance placed in this, they have a principal who is concentrating on future technologies and transferable skills, not the syllabus that was designed nearly 100 years ago and remains unchanged.