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.

I've just done it and got 90% which is fine but I used to teach English grammar as an EFL teacher many years ago.

I very much doubt my Y5 DD will do well. I'll try her later but may have to find a tutor for this.

I looked at the maths and gave up at q3 as I'd need a piece of paper or a calculator to do it.

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

Do you realise how fucking insulting that is, and how stupid? Yes, let's write off the views of an entire profession, including those who have proved on this very thread that they know a fuck load more about teaching grammar at primary level than you do, because they're just ignorant?

It's not insulting at all. It's just saying other countries teach this level of grammar and children and teachers cope, therefore the UK can do it, too, and in my opinion it is not as daunting as people think and there will be benefits to it.

I asked you why you thought teachers on this thread were against it - every single one. Your answer was that we don't know the terminology and we're unsure of how to teach it. The former is contradicted on this very thread - in fact, you've repeatedly shown the greatest ignorance on exactly what us and us not taught at primary level.

You seem to have a great deal of trouble just keeping up with this thread, Dorothy.

Not keeping up with the thread appears to be your stock insult, but if you say so...

It doesn't really matter what I think anyway, none of you are going to change your mind, but then again neither will I.

One last point though - all this hysteria about the stifling of creativity - what kind of schooling do you think Wordsworth, Dickens or Shakespeare received? How on earth did they manage to become such great writers?

I'm unlikely to change my mind when the person I'm discussing a point with either sidesteps the argument completely or answers in German, yes.

As for your last point - brilliant. Let's revert to a 1800s curriculum immediately.

That's not the point I was making. I was making the point that creativity can flourish in spite of or maybe even helped by formal instruction.

Re the answering in German - you asked for a link, I gave you one - as you knew I was talking about Germany but didn't specify that you wanted a link in English I wrongly assumed that you would be ok with a link in German. I apologise for that oversight.

In Shakespeare's time spellings weren't even formalised so I very much doubt his schooling had a huge emphasis on it. In fact he made up words which would be a definite no no in today's curriculum. If a child wrote a poem without capital letters or punctuation they would have to rewrite it under the new regime, despite the fact many poets do not use either as part of their form.
We have been told categorically that OFSTED's new thing is perfect writing and to pare back the creativity and instead focus on SPaG. This is what they look for now.

I feel there is too much emphasis on this perfection too early; children are learning and practising, give them a bit of a chance to actually enjoy writing!!

The point that creativity may flourish despite the grammar curriculum is bizarre!

No need to apologise. It didn't help you to back up your point that children in Germany do learn grammar at a young age, is all.

I was taught grammar in my grammar school not at age five and for the record scored 100% on the test ...
I find it quite strange the German mother of one of my class was surprised by the grammar content

It's interesting you mention some of our literary greats ...as many wouldn't meet to KS2 writing standards published last week

I think it is absolutely fine to teach children the proper grammatical terms for the language structures that they will encounter in their age-appropriate reading and writing.

So reception children are absolutely fine with 'phonemes' and 'graphemes' during phonic teaching. because those words are the names for something they are working with every day. Equally there seems to me to be no problem at all with teaching 'non-simplistic' definitions of verbs, nouns, adverbs, adjectives etc from an age when children encounter such things in their everyday reading and writing, or the past, present and future tense.

What seems to me to be wrong - or rather the wrong way round - is to teach grammatical terms for complex structures that the child will rarely encounter in age-appropriate reading or write in their age-appropriate writing, and then expect them not only to name these structures accurately but artificially introduce them into their own writing in order to achieve particular levels.

It also seems to me to be difficult when the terminology has been arbitrarily changed. In: 'Over the purple moor, the Highwayman came riding', while 'purple' remains an adjective, and 'moor' a noun, 'Over the purple moor' was called a prepositional phrase (old terminology). It is now called a 'fronted adverbial'.

I think the problem lies more with the testing rather than the teaching of grammar. Teaching grammar is a good idea imo. Teaching grammar in order to pass this test, not so good.

Teacher, reception children use present and past tense in their daily lives, why not tell them what they are called?

And Year 2 use subordinate conjunctions. Hey, let's make them sit down and do a test on them!

Are year 2's going to be tested on subordinate conjunctions?

Yes! They also have to include them in their writing to reach ARE.

They could be ... The exact content of the tests is unknown until the day

These are the writing expectations for year 2, the children have to demonstrate ALL of these over a range of genre and when written independently
• demarcating most sentences with capital letters and full stops and with some use of question marks and exclamation marks
• using sentences with different forms in their writing (statements, questions, exclamations and commands)
• using some expanded noun phrases to describe and specify
• using present and past tense mostly correctly and consistently
• using co-ordination and some subordination
• segmenting spoken words into phonemes and representing these by graphemes, spelling many correctly
• spelling many common exception words*
• spelling some words with contracted forms*
• adding suffixes to spell some words correctly in their writing,
• using the diagonal and horizontal strokes needed to join letters in some of their writing
• writing capital letters and digits of the correct size, orientation and relationship to one another and to lower-case letters
• using spacing between words that reflects the size of the letters.

And these are the grammar expectations for year 2 which they will be formally tested on
Formation of nouns using suffixes and by compounding
Formation of adjectives using suffixes
Use of the suffixes to turn adjectives into adverbs
Subordination and co-ordination
Expanded noun phrases for description and specification
How the grammatical patterns in a sentence indicate its function as a statement, question, exclamation or command
Correct choice and consistent use of present tense and past tense throughout writing
Use of the progressive form of verbs in the present and past tense to mark actions in progress
Use of capital letters, full stops, question marks and exclamation marks to demarcate sentences
Commas to separate items in a list
Apostrophes to mark where letters are missing in spelling and to mark singular possession in nouns
additional vocabulary:noun, noun phrase statement, question, exclamation, command compound, suffix adjective, adverb, verb tense (past, present)
apostrophe, comma

60%, but learned formal English grammar at primary school in Ireland.

i got 60% but definitely had to make an educated guess at some of them, also was taught grammar at school and did latin and german both of which mean you need to understand grammar

leccybill, you said, "And I'm 100% 'fronted adverbials' are a made up thing."

But I came across this yesterday, on sentence challenge.

pobble365.com/the-garden-of-life/

Fronted adverbials

A fronted adverbial goes at the beginning of a sentence.
It describes the verb in the sentence.
It describes where, when and how.
E.g. During the day, the animals sleep.
After sunset, the lady animals come to life.
Can you write your own sentence starting with one of the adverbials?

I don't know what the target age of this site is, but my ds in YR3 is capable of understanding what it is.

www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244216/English_Glossary.pdf

Wow, thank you mrz for the link. (It will really help me help my ds!)

So, even some sites use it, is it still "made up" thing? I haven't got a clue with all those terminology. As for relative clause, coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions, I remember vaguely that I've seen it before on his past homework. I just feel like in the past, children(and parents) dismissed all those terminology, but now they need to remember more precisely to pass the test?