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.

100% but I work in yr 6. I question the value of teaching some of this, but as has already been said that test has picked the real b*stard questions and left out the 'easy' stuff in the name of cheap sensationalism.

Gosh! That was tricky! I scored 70% but it was a struggle!

80%
I'm an MFL teacher with a linguistics degree, now teaching Y6.
I am a grammar geek, I love it, I makes no secret of that - but teaching terminology in isolation doesn't make any sense to me.

I was taught the nuts and bolts of grammar through my learning of foreign languages but it was only through applying it in real writing that I developed an interest, and honed my craft. Usage is more important than definition.

And I'm 100% 'fronted adverbials' are a made up thing.

Christ, I only got 2 right on the Maths!

Just done the maths one. Got 100% for that, but I'd have been disappointed with less, as I have 2 maths A levels!

Some of them were more about comprehension than maths ability though, which is normal these days.

100% but I'm a Y5 teacher.

It's been a tough old slog with the grammar teaching especially as the exemplars for writing etc have come out so late. I wasn't taught grammar at school but did a crash course at uni in order to fully understand the Old English part of my degree.

One example for the usefulness of the terminology:

A common mistake is people writing I could of...

You can explain that could is the conditional form of a modal verb, and modal verbs combine with a infinitive: I could have

How do you explain it without the terminology?

Inordinately proud of getting 87.5% on maths despite not opening a maths book for almost 30 years.

DorothyL ok, but when they ask why the conditional form of the modal verb combines with an infinitive, what will you say? "It just does" or "that's the rule". In which case you could say "we say 'could have', not 'could of'" and when asked why, you'd say "It just does" or "that's the rule".

Lougle but if you explain it with terminology you can add that the same applies to the other modal verbs (should, would, might).

Plus, if the children have the terminology, they will learn modal verbs in other languages and immediately grasp that they should combine with an infinitive.

You could simply explain that "could've" (which is what people actually say) is spelt could have

I don't often agree with Michael Rosen but this about sums it up
michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/6-year-old-crying-because-she-hasnt.html

I have often seen it written as could if

*of

I'm sure you have but the reason still stands, people are writing a spoken contraction as two known words

But why not just tell them the rule?

What harm is done by calling it modal verbs and explaining the wider context? Some children might actually like to know?

Telling them what the correct spelling is means they know this one spelling. Explaining the rules behind it means they learn how the language works and lets them apply that language to other situations as well as other languages.

Devil's work

*that knowledge

Sorry!!

Telling them that "could've" is a contraction of "could have" solves the problem without over complicating the issue and actually addresses the real problem

We're still waiting here for just one primary school teacher who agrees with the SPAG test and the content for each year group as it stands.

Why is that, do you think?

I think it is because it's all new terminology to them, therefore they are unsure how to teach it.

I know perfectly well how to teach it! I simply don't believe that it is in the best interests of the children to be tested on their recall of this amount of terminology at 10 years of age.

Drothy,

None of the 'real stuff' - ie not fronted adverbials - is new to someone who e.g. did Latin O-level back in the day. We did the full test at an INSET early on this year, and I scored 96% in the paper, using only my knowledge of Latin and to a lesser extent French (I was at primary in the 1970s, when grammar wasn't taught at all).

My issue with the grammar is that BOTH the grammar and the Writing assessments test grammar - and grammar that is unnatural for a child that age, so for example it is not encountered in age appropriate reading. No credit whatsoever is given for e.g. writing an exciting, suspenseful, well-plotted story, or a well-organised, concise information text. It is ALL about whether or not they have used a modal verb.

So the problem is not how to teach it per se - but how to teach the stuff that is age-inappropriate and irrelevant BUT has not only to be recognised from the terminology (despite the guidance to the terminology being, in places a) made up and b) inconsistent) but also used, however artificially, in their writing.