KS2 SATS writing topic - favouring the boys ?

[orangetulip]

DS came home yesterday saying the long writing topic had been to write a review of a PC game ...
(What about kids who don't have a computer I'm quietly thinking....)
Is this a ploy by the government to claim they have addressed the imbalance between boys / girls' writing - or has my cynicism of SATS just gone too far this time ?! What do you think ?

The maths seemed kinder. There were only a couple of longer questions with lots to break down into little steps. These questions can bamboozle kids who can't find their way through - almost like penalising the ones who can't remember a short passage of reading.

There were some shorter, smarter questions.

Calculator paper tomorrow then done.

Have to admit that I had to think hard about that last question in Paper A about calculating the length of that square!

Me too, clam - I thought it was 24 until I looked at it properly & realised the 28cm included one of the small squares. Definitely having a dim moment there, because if it hadn't, it would have been the size of the large square, which is what they were being asked to calculate....

It's really difficult watching them writing down the wrong answer - even worse is when the put the right answer and then change it....

All finished!

Year 6 now celebrating....

2nd Maths paper was not too bad - pretty straightforward really.

Well done everyone!!!

So Evil rustybea ,what should the answer to the square question have been ?

20cm

The large square plus one small square (the vertical measurement) was 28 cm, the large square plus two small squares (the hozizontal measurement) was 36 cm, the difference is 8cm, so the small square is 8cm, the large one 20 cm.

I am no longer evil btw.....

Hurrah! My DS got that one right. I can cope with a terrible literacy failure if he does well in the maths. The drip drip of information is terrible. I really want to see the maths paper!

There was one which lots of ours seemed to struggle with, even though it was actually quite easy.

The question was something like 'What numbers could be in the boxes' & it had boxes where I've put question marks:

10 x ? = ? - 10

Quite a lot of ours were trying to put an = sign at the end to 'finish' the sum & others seemed confused by the fact that it didn't have just one answer.

He said he was okay with one as well. You are feeding my addiction to being an interfering parent.

I meant, okay with that one.

I can try & remember some more - how about the pie-chart prediction one? - where you had a piechart showing the number of people out of 40 predicting who would win a race - half the circle for one person, a quarter for another, 5% for a third person & the rest of the circle for the fourth - you had to work out how many people predicted the fourth would win (or possibly what percentage) & who won the race if 10 people correctly predicted the winner.

DD says she got both those right Rustybear, although she got the last one wrong on the mental maths.

DS said he got it wrong at first, because he did it as degrees in a circle, but then converted it back into percent. I am not sure if he worked out the correct value, but he did identify the winner.

He said he thinks he got one wrong on the mental maths as well.

I should probably stop doing this though, or I'll find one your DC think they got wrong & they'll spend the next few weeks worrying about it....

I don't really remember the mental maths questions because I was writing for a child who'd broken their arm. I hate having to write it down when they say the wrong answer, so I tried not to work out the answers, just write what I was told.

I assure you my DS is not worrying. He is just annoyed that I keep interrupting his post SATs late night xbox live game to ask exam questions!

Well, I can post the whole lot on Monday if you like, if the spare papers are still in the staff room. My memory is beginning to fade about the details, which is a little worrying as it's only 12 hours since the last one finished....

Oh, I remember one about what percentage of a grid was filled in 4 squares + 4 half squares = 6/20 = 30%

I would love you to post the questions on Monday, but don't feel compelled! I don't dare go and interrupt my son to ask about the % question. As he is playing online all his friends can hear what I am asking. He is very embarrassed by me.

I'll have a look & see if the papers are still there on Monday!

I have the papers here before me!
There was a rather annoying quetion, which should have been easy but wasn't, but involved a circle with 12 dots on its edge. They had to join 4 of the dots to make a square. So many of them drew a rectangle, not seeing at first that you had to draw the square standing on its point!

The other tricky one ours found was that fruit smoothie ratio/proportion one. They were given the recipe for 2 smoothies, (10 strawberries, 1/2 litre OJ, 250ml yoghurt, 1 banana), but then had to work out firstly, how many strawberries they would need if they used 1 litre of yoghurt (OK, fairly straightforward) but then how many more ml of orange juice they'd need to make 5 smoothies, if he already had 1 litre of it. We'd done loads of these types of questions in class a couple of weeks back, but I'm not hopeful...

Yes, clam I saw one of our level 5 hopefuls put 1250ml - no matter how many times you say 'read the questions carefully' they still tend to jump in.

And for the circle/square one, I was really tempted to just go round turning the papers a few degrees clockwise as I passed....

article in times about it today

I am also STUNNED by a kid who has no trainers!!! How funny - do they do no sport at all?!

I have never known a DC not to have trainers-they need them for school PE for a start.
My DSs couldn't have managed without (they never had the ones they wanted but they were very aware of top of the range-I think all DCs are).
It is hardly a problem as they crop up in stories all the time.

really odd no to have them