Preparation for key stage 1 SATS

[Reallytired]

My son is in year 2 and will be sitting SATs either at the end of this term or in May. I am not sure how it works. Do children still sit tests or is it done on teacher assessment?

I found some old papers and mark schemes on the internet. It has been a bit of shock how rigid the mark scheme can be. I get the feeling that quite a few marks can be lost by not understand what is required, even if the child has no problem with the maths, reading or writing.

For example am I right thinking that in Maths if a question asks you to show working out and you only give an answer with no indication of what method you have used then the child will get a big fat zero. Even if their answer is right. Similarly a child can get a wrong answer but get a good proportion of the marks if they show they understand what they needed to do.

How do you make sure that a child has the best chance of showing off their ablity and not throw away marks. I really don't want my son to do practice papers or get stressed. He is only six and too young to have a care in the world.

However I do not want my son to end up in the bottom sets next year with the nightmare kids.

Do not worry about it! It isn't important and they do them as in school assessment now.The teacher will know his ability! Don't get the poor boy doing practise papers- board games or chess would be much better-and fun!

they do loads of stuff in school so don't fret. And sats are about the school and not the child.
I withdrew my kids from sats as I don't agree with testing kids that young.

The SATs are only for government statistics - PLEASE don't make your DS practice for them

Surely the school moves children around as they progress over time? My DS was moved up a group after the first few weeks as he realised that he had to concentrate and try harder in lessons

I have no intention of making my son practice SATS papers. However I have a dreadful feeling like any other test children can be prepared for them. At the moment I have been choosing discrete ways of preparing him.

My son's school is in a rough area and they do set by ablity for numeracy and literacy for keystage 2. My worry is that the bottom set will be virtually unteachable because of the sheer number of children with behaviour problems. I do not want to stress my son out, but I really do not want him taught in a class where its impossible to learn.

I would withdraw my son from SATs if I know which week he was going to be tested. It is not realistic to withdraw a child from school for a whole term.

teachers aren't stupid and will know what your child's ability is for any streaming regardless of how he does or doesn't do in SATS. Hopefully they'll abolish the things soon.

They don't test on one day or week anymore, as someone else has said. They assess the children all through the summer term until about June. They do papers which they will use to 'inform' their decisions, but they can ignore the test result if they think it's not representative. If you want to prepare him in a low-key way, make sure he can spell his Y1 and Y2 words (if they still have them), encourage him to use capital letters and full stops, ask him about what he is reading and practise some everyday maths conversationally - money, doubling and halving, counting in 2s, 5s, 10s etc.

info KS1 SATS

Please don't associate the bottom set with behaviour problems. The "unteachables" crop up anywhere. There are many, many reasons for bad behaviour.

Are you absolutely sure that KS1 SATs will determine which set he goes into in Y3? I think it's much more common and "best" practice for children to be assessed again at start of Y3.

I secretly / quietly like the idea of SATs in general, but the suggestion of studying for the KS1 SATs still makes me feel queasy.

agree with other posters mostly, although not sure i agree about best practise being to reassess achildren at start of new year - wastes a lot of time.

Re maths questions.
If you write down the correct answer you get 2 marks automatically, regardless of what you have shown.
However if you get the wrong answer but demonstrate a method that shows understanding of what to do you can get 1 mark.

Sometime more able children turn their intelligence to mischief so SAT results aren't an indication of behaviour.

My DS sat KS1 SATS last year> He didn't do any practice papers atall, we just carried on as normal and didn't really mention it. He did well, and in fact all the children thst sat on the top table in Yr 2 did well, and have continued to do well in Yr 3. There didn't seem to be anyone who did significantly different from what the teacehr predicted (and as a school governor I saw the stats, so I know I am not being fobbed off) A good teacher should prepare the children and know where they are heading.

Btw - I agree about mischienous children being in any ability group. One of the brightest children in my DS's year group has actually been suspended so intelligence is not an indication of behaviour.

I don't think at the age of 6 you can say that the bottom sets = behaviour problems. They are very young!

Charmander is right, I don't really know what 'best' practice is, though reassessment at start of school year sounds like a 'best' practice thing to me.

The children are assessed in basic subjects about twice a term at our school... actually, the school just had an 'assessment week' about 5-9 December, when they were formally sat down and assessed at every subject. But what they usually did in past was just quick little snapshot tests (just 20 minutes or so), to confirm ability.

DS's Y3 teacher said (at October parent-teacher evening) that DS was much better at maths than his KS1 math SAT score suggested; being reassessed at start of Y3 was a very good thing for him or he might have been stuck in the wrong group for a long while.

The result of the SAT tests in Key Stage 1 are not reported any more - not to governors, parents or anyone. Rather, they are a tiny part of the much larger picture that is the teacher assessment - this is the only figure that has to be reported at the end of Key Stage 1.
As previous posters have stated, the test is such a small part of this teacher assessment that the marks can be discounted by the teacher if they are not representative of where the child is at as a whole.
Teacher assessment is not unusual - it takes place day to day throughout primary and secondary school, and informs teachers of what to teach next and when. The only difference with Y2 teacher assessment is that it is reported - to parents, to governors and to the authority. The test results are not.
Hopefully, by next year, KS2 SATS will follow suit.
Hth.

I'm amazed you lot talking about SATS on Christmas eve!!!!

Anyway, one of the tests for ds was comprehensive reading are whatever it's called. So let him read lots of books from the library. He also did some stuff on BBC school website as he loves playing computergames.

I never found out when he actually sat the tests.

hm, sat the SAT

Please don't coach your DS or do anything at all to "help" him do better.

These SATs are not about setting the pupils, they are about assessing how well school/teacher is doing.

Any decent school will make it so that the children are hardly aware that the kids are doing any more than their usual work that day anyway!

To answer yr first qu, it's basically on teacher assessment anyway, but the chn do do some kind of work eg comprehension, maths etc.

If your child doesn't understand what's needed in some work, wouldn't they benefit from being given some help anyway? My DS1 is a lovely boy thanks, but he is in the bottom set for literacy as he struggles to concentrate and his reading and writing are not where they should be. I'm very glad he's getting extra help.

Try not to worry - I have worked with children who have gone on about SATS and worried because of parents going on and it does them no good. Teacher assessment of work though the year is the most important mark. Just keep doing lots of reading, I let DD choose her books and we read them together. If you want to practise number and numeracy games try ictgames.com - we sometimes use this in school and it practises literacy and numeracy.

Do not do work with them. Leave school to do it.

Dd's only in Y1 so thoughts of SATs are not in my mind yet. But I was interested to hear that parents aren't given the results as from what I've gathered from parents whose children had SATs last year, the results were given. I would be interested to know the results, even if they're relatively meaningless to how the children are placed in the class in Y3.

IF at our school you are told what your child got (FWIW).

I would imagine it would not be a surprise to anyone with a passing interest in their DCs' school career tho (ie I knew DS1 was a poor reader and knew DD was a good writer).

If I understand Feenie's post, there are two types of SAT info:

1. Teacher-assesments
2. National standardised tests

Parents only get told a final result, which is a teacher assessment. As part of their assessment, teacher usually take into account the standardised test results. But parents aren't automatically given the results of the national standardised SATs (by themselves) for their child (is that what Feenie meant??). However, I suspect parent only has to ask to get the national standardised results, surely it's parental right to know anything in their child's school record, if parent asks?

Yes, Lljkk - and no, the school would have no statutory obligation to tell you the test result. I guess an individual teacher may tell you if you asked - but why would you want to know? I've never had a parent ask me the actual test result, nor have I had a Y2 child know that they had actually even done a formal test since the tests were revamped to the teacher assessment format, which is exactly how it should be, imo.
The activities which are in the test will be completed as part of normal school practice, so your child will be very comfortable with the style of the questions all year round - therefore it isn't so vital to know what happened in a particular 30 minutes of a child's life any more, because not everything rests on that tiny aspect , ifyswim.