How to help ds achieve greater depth in reading (year6)?

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My DS is doing ok with his reading, but his results can be very different whenever they practice sats at school.
I want to help him achieve greater depth, any tips?
Also how can I get ds to slow down and take his time reading the texts and questions properly?

Thank you

I don't think there are any quick fix for improving reading ability, imo.
Skills like inference/deduction/summarising/etc, maybe improved by doing some workbooks etc. regularly.
As for slowing down, you just need to keep reminding him. (My ds is exactly the same.)

IME SATs results can be a bit random - your DC might do very well with one test (perhaps they engage more with the text) and less well with another one.

So I'd just focus on reading lots, talking about what he's read, rather than being focussed on SATs.

Go cautiously on the slow down advice. The texts are long and they have to go at quite some pace to finish the paper.

Worked in year 6 for 4 years. The reading paper is all about what's being inferred from the text not how good of a reader the child is.

Eg. 'Johnny walked to the park at after lunch.' Q. What time did Johnny go to the park? 9am, 2pm or 7pm? Explain why.
So your DC would say 2pm because it says he went after lunch which is typically early afternoon..

You used to only get the mark if your spelling and grammar was correct too, although, that may have been dropped by now.

So, in terms of helping him practice. See if you can find old reading papers online and read through the text and help DC pick out the relevent information.

Reading anything for practice and asking lots of questions about what he's reading to see how much he has understood (google reading conferences for year 6)

Skimming and scanning is a great skill for reading too. Good luck

You used to only get the mark if your spelling and grammar was correct too, although, that may have been dropped by now.

That's never, ever been the case!

of course I'm lying @Feenie, I only worked in year 6 for 4 years.... what would I know

At the moment my year 6s are working on understanding what is required for the 3 mark questions. They either try to avoid them as they are “hard” or they write one sentence which gets one mark. We have looked at lots and are thinking about what each of the 3 marks might be for plus finding the best evidence from the text to back it up.
Agree about the inference. And again EVIDENCE FROM THE TEXT! Might have said that a few times today!

What an odd comment! I didn't say you were lying. But you are mistaken. I've been a teacher for as long as they have existed, and either a Y6 teacher and/or Literacy Lead (and therefore responsible for checking the results/re-marks) for most of them. I can assure you that children have never, ever been marked down on their spelling or grammar in the reading test.

A good strategy for answering the three mark questions is to teach children to make a 3 row/3 column table in that massive offputting answer box. The questions are usually something like characterisation - easy then to put three character traits from the text in the first column and 3 pieces of text evidence to match in the second. Works very well.

@Feenie No, children aren't marked down, but they wont get the mark if they forget to put in a full stop / correct grammar in the right place... This was included for the reading paper. After 'Level gate' two years ago, that might now just be required for just the SPAG... or dropped completely, which I did explain.

Children have never, ever been penalised in the reading paper for not using a full stop or the correct grammar.

Not once.

Not ever.

You are mistaken, or someone has badly misinformed you.

I guess we will have to agree to disagree but I would encourage looking at the mark schemes (old ones should be available easily online) which should clear up any disputes for any one who is mistaken

Good luck with the revision, OP.

sirlee,

how many years ago? I have just checked 2009, 2013 and 2014 (randomly, since they to meet your criteria of 'a few years ago', and the answer booklets explicitly state:
"In assessing each answer, markers must focus on the content of what has been written and not on the quality of the writing, expression or grammatical construction, etc."

When do you think that the grammar and punctuation mattered? This link has all booklets back to 2003.

sirlee, you are making yourself look more and more ridiculous. I have access to every mark scheme since 1995 (not difficult - most of them are on Testbase) and children have never, ever been penalised for grammatical errors in a reading test. That's 23 years' worth.

It wouldn't work anyway, since children are not required to even answer in full sentences for most of the answers, which only require a word or a phrase.

"You used to only get the mark if your spelling and grammar was correct too, although, that may have been dropped by now." Spelling and grammar have never been part of the reading test

Back to the OP's question. Does his teacher think he can get greater depth? Is he being targeted at school for GD? Past papers will definitely help. But if he teacher has not told you that he's likely to get greater depth then at this point in the year he might not unless he's very close or has worked at greater depth in KS2 in general.

Also a Y6 teacher and also would like to say that the reading test has never been linked to punctuation - are you getting mixed up with the SPAG?

Feenie I love your 3 mark question approach. Why have I never thought of that?

Sounds silly but having a go at every question is a big thing - so many children leave things out and it's just thrown away marks. Agree that actually slowing down isn't always helpful as there's normally a lot to do. I get my kids to aim for 15 mins per set of questions which gives them 5 mins time to read each text and have a bit of leeway time.

If they get stuck on a question I get them to spot the different types of question. If you have a look at page 4 on this doc:
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/614598/STA177732e_2017_key_stage_2_English_reading_mark_schemes.pdf
The content domains are listed. This helps them identify what the question is looking for them to do. A useful task is to get them to go through a whole paper identifying what type of question it is. With my lower attaining children I simplify this to 'find it', 'explain it' and 'word meaning' questions and it really helps them work out how to answer.

Cgp have some good resources like revision guides and practice papers which are reasonable. Get him to read widely with lots of variation and some older texts e.g. Children's classics.

All of this said, a GD score on the reading paper doesn't tell you much about the child other than they are good at comprehension.

Feenie I love your 3 mark question approach. Why have I never thought of that?

That's exactly what I said when someone showed me!

Thanks for the answers.

ThisIsNotARealAvo Yes the teacher and head teacher believe he can get greater depth.

As a primary school teacher, I agree that revision really is key to help develop these skills. CGP and Collins have some nice materials and so do Monster SATs, which have practice papers which are completed online rather than in a workbook. Love the 3 mark question approach too - going to try that out this week!