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.

And I think it's important for children to understand grammar, parts of speech etc. It's very useful for learning other languages too.

It would take a skilled teacher to make this interesting for kids though!

I really think the argument, "Oh I will never use this in my adult life!" is a stupid one.

Having a lot of knowledge and understanding of how things operate is not necessarily applied in every day life.

Should you only learn about what you'll use in every day life? You should remain utterly ignorant of stuff outside your own little sphere of life because you don't use that knowledge every day?

I would encourage as much knowledge as possible and not least of the very amazing and very hard to learn English language.

I got 90% not by guess work but because I remember learning this stuff in school and was able to recall it from then. I work with language and it is sometimes a problem that colleagues appear not to know basic grammar rules. I'm not sure I am sold on the argument that it is a waste of time for children to learn this: school isn't about teaching you a trade.

Blameit I certainly think it's valuable for jobs that involve language or speech but if your colleagues are struggling with grammar terminology now in their job, why aren't they learning it now, just as many jobs require you to learn new skills?

I think it's more important children can use grammar correctly

The other thing is it's often taught badly or in a way that over generalises. Eg adverbs are often taught as words ending in ly, like he walked slowly whereas there's much more to it than that, but teaching resources will usually just have lists of ly words. Similarly prepositions go far beyond positions but are generally taught as on, under etc. Words can be a noun in one context and a verb or adjective in another. The way the test works is a bit of a simple rote learned view that doesn't really get to the bottom of how grammar works. I wasted hours checking whether an example sentence in a teaching pack actually did contain a subordinate clause it said it did as it didn't contain a verb. Even my Oxford grammar book couldn't give me a definitive answer.

60%

I have pretty good grammar but I've always been horrendous at the labelling/ descriptions of our language. So I had no idea what many of the questions were asking if me and had to take a guess.

I got 90%, and I didn't have to guess at the answers. I got the determiners one wrong because I didn't really know what those were; fair enough.

However, I did do 5 language O levels, including Latin, so had an awful lot of grammar drummed into me! I may not have recognised the names of some of the terms, but I could still work out what they meant in most cases (apart from determiners)

I don't think it's desperately important to know the "big word" names of some of these terms, but it IS important to know what they are and how they work; or it is to me, anyway. (Maybe I should be more bothered about small children learning the "big word" names as well, but I'm not).

We don't have SATS here as such (Australia) but we have something equivalent, called NAPLAN, tested at Y3, 5, 7 and 9. DS1 will get his first go at it this year. I think it's far too often. I remember when I was back at junior school, decades ago (dim and distant) that we did some kind of whole year test, twice while I was there, so probably would have been 2nd year juniors (aged 8/9) and 4th year juniors (age 10/11) - is that the same as Y4 and Y6 now? (It is here, but not sure about the UK). But there was no stress about it, as I remember, we just did it. The stress inflicted on the children about the NAPLAN and SATs just seems so unnecessary, they're so young for this sort of shit! :(

I got 70% but I live abroad and speak another language fluently. I could only really "get" the other language after I understood the English rules. I had to teach myself as I didn't learn this at school. Making English clearer helped me learn another language. I doubt I would have scored 70% before this. My children will learn the structures in English as they are learning EFL at school. It is embarrassing when foreigners know more about your language than you do.

90% and I'm dyslexic and dyspraxic. I'm also at the end of an undergraduate English Language MA, though I focus on historic language. This means half my life is taken up with translation work for which I do have to know which is a verb, and how the determiners work.

BUT this is all pretty basic grammar. Often taught to children in very basic ways such as:
Nouns are naming words
Verbs are doing words
Prepositions are words that say where something is (eg. on, in, under, beside)
etc etc etc

I'm hoping to start my teacher training this year and while I don't see anything wrong with teaching grammar I do think it shouldn't be taught to the exclusion of other subjects. History and geography and science are important and if we stop teaching everything that you could Google for yourself we might as well just stop with schools altogether.

I got 80%.

Never learned what a preposition is at school but managed to gather it from understanding the joke "ending a sentence with a preposition is grammatical laxity up with which we must not put"

But how can you be good at grammar and understand unless you know the names for each part of the language?

How do you explain your knowledge? How do you demonstrate it?

It's important to know the grammatical terms. Of course is so that when you are asked (in an exam or whatever), you can demonstrate your understanding.

Otherwise surely it would be like trying to describe how parts of the human body work without using terms like 'muscle', 'bone' or 'ligament'.

I don't reckon it's that hard to learn anyway.

BUT this is all pretty basic grammar. Often taught to children in very basic ways such as:
Nouns are naming words
Verbs are doing words
Prepositions are words that say where something is (eg. on, in, under, beside)
etc etc etc

Unless you plan on only teaching KS1, you have a pretty rude awakening in the post!

Too basic even for KS1

Winky you demonstrate it in your mastery of spoken and written language

I have no problem with the teaching of grammar.

I do have an issue with exactly how much is expected and the complexity at too young an age.

I also have massive issue with a meaningless test which only tests knowledge of terminology - like mrz, I would prefer that the emphasis was on using grammar icorrectly - and n context.

Rogue i there

Indeed, Mrs.

Here you go, winky:
Understanding verbs
Progression – as set out in Primary English Curriculum Appendix 2

Year 1 Present tense verbs are used to talk about the present and about the future

Simple past tense – uses the ed ending.
Past tense verbs are used to talk about the past, She walks... she will walk
I paint.. I will paint
She walked
I painted

Year 2

Progressive present tense
Also known as continuous

Progressive past tense
Also known as continuous

A function of verbs is to help us understand when an action takes place, if it is complete or is it still going on? By changing the form of the verb it can give us more information about time.
Using the ing form of the verb with an auxiliary verb be shows an action over a period of time.She is walking.
I am painting.

She was walking.
I was painting.

A dog barks.
A dog is barking

Year 3

The perfect form of the verb is used instead of the simple past.

This is used to stress an action started in the past and continues to the present. It tells you the event is still going on.
The auxiliary verb have is used with the main verb in the past tense.She has walked.
I have painted ...

Compare
I lived in a flat for years

I have lived in a flat for years

Year 4

Standard English forms of verb inflections

Ensuring in writing we use the correct form of the past tense which may vary from local spoken forms of the verb.

Was /were
Is /are
Is/amWe were walking
Not :We was walking

It was sunny yesterday
Not: It were sunny yesterday

I did my homework
Not: I done my homework

I am going to help out
Not: I is going to help out.

Year 5

Modal verbs - indicate degrees of possibility. They are used to change the meaning of other verbs.
They can express meanings such as certainty, ability or obligation.
A modal verb has no suffixes – it does not change .may, might, shall, should,
will, would, can, could
must, ought
He might persuade you to..
You should paint...
It might rain today.Year 6Passive verbs change the way information is given in a sentence. It helps writers to change the view point of the action.

The cat chased the mouse. The subject the mouse is the active element – therefore the clause is in the active voice.

The mouse was chased by the cat. The subject The mouse receives the action – therefore the clause is in the passive voice.

The main job of the passive is to take attention away from the subject of the active clause. It gives the choice of an impersonal voice as you can omit the agent (cat) if you want to.
The mouse was chased.
I painted my front door.

The front door was painted.
I broke the window in the green house.

The window in the greenhouse was broken.

Regular verb forms can be predicted by the rules of grammar when changed into a plural, or the tense is changed,
jump , jumps, jumped, jumping
look, looks, looked, looking
remember, remembers , remembered remembering
cry, cries, cried, crying
Irregular verbs forms are often unpredictable, there are about 300 of these.

Most irregular verbs change the vowel:
Meet - met , take - took , speak – spoken , see - saw
Some change the consonant as well:
Keep – kept , teach – taught, sell – sold
The ed ending is never used in a regular way:
take, taken, see, seen, have, had, send, sent, drive, drove, driven, bend, bent
The most irregular verbs
go, went, gone
be , was, wereswim, swam, swumbegin, began, begun

Sorry, mrz, my autocorrect changed your name

I seem to have lost Y6 there, ain't, but you can imagine, can't you! About as far away as 's verb is a doing word' as you can get!

90% but I teach grammar - but not that well it would seem!

Feenie I really hope no one in England is teaching it that way anymore! But I'm still seeing it here in Scotland both with the kids I nanny and in schools I've helped in.

Winky, not ain't

30%
I have never heard of most of those terms.

Writing tasks assess a child's ability to use grammar correctly.

Exactly - in context.

Children in Germany certainly learn grammar of similar complexity at the same age. The question was raised earlier - why do people see this as so scary but not complex terminology in other subjects?