10 ways to help prepare your child for Year 6 SATS

The year is whizzing by and before you know it, it will be the summer term and time for Year 6 SATs. As a parent, it can be very difficult to know how best to support your child in the next couple of months and what is the correct approach.

Some parents believe that lots of revision is best, others prefer it if their child does very little to prepare. As you hear the different approaches being discussed in the playground at pick up, you may also be getting conflicting messages from your child.

Some children get very worried and stressed, others moan it’s too much and as a parent, you can be left wondering, Am I doing too much? Too little? Should I support them more? Shall I buy those revision books or take them away on an Easter break?

What’s the answer?

The answer is, as is often the case, preparing for Year 6 SATs is a balancing act. You need to support your child in such a way that they feel confident and capable and are going to be able to fulfil their potential. At the same time, you should avoid putting too much pressure on them. However, there’s often a fine line between the two so in this post, we’ve outlined 10 suitable ideas which should enable you to get the balance just right!

1.      Make sure your child has mastered the basics. Just because they learnt something last year doesn’t mean they still know it. For example, check they’re still confident with all their times tables. Ask the school for a list of spellings they need to know (if you haven’t got one already). Go over the basics of punctuation. These are the foundations of English and maths, and if your child has mastered these, it will help build their confidence.

That said, if they have mastered the basics already, make sure you don’t keep going over the same old ground or you risk your child completely switching off.

2.      Ask your child’s teacher about any particular areas where your child would benefit from some extra help. Then ask your child if there is anything they are worried about. It’s amazing how often we get bogged down in the detail and just forget to ask. What’s more, it will make it much easier to work with your child, if they feel that you’ve listened to their concerns.

3.      Use quizzes. A quiz is a simple way to make learning fun. You can try impromptu quizzes in the car, like a game of eye spy where you have to spell the word when it’s been guessed. Or you could spend a little time preparing more formal quizzes at home, such as who can guess the cost or the weight of the ingredients for the evening meal. Consider including some rewards for doing well!

4.      Ask the school about their approach to Year 6 SATs. Different schools have different attitudes. Some will focus on SATs right from the beginning of Year 6, working their way through lots of past papers. Other schools take a more relaxed approach. How they’re approaching it at school will have an impact on how you might want to do things at home. If there’s a lot of pressure and hard work at school, for example, you might want to ensure weekends and evenings are kept for rest and relaxation.

5.      Encourage reading and then ask your child questions about what they’ve read. Encourage them to provide specific answers, rather than generalisations and also encourage them to reply in complete sentences. If you can, get them to write down their answers, but if you can’t, it’s still worthwhile just talking about their answers.

6.      If they don’t like reading, read to them. Your child will get a great deal from being read to and will still learn about grammar by listening, for example, verb conjugation such as, he was, not he were.

7.      Write every day! Try and encourage your child to write something every day. It doesn’t have to be long or complicated, in fact something short that doesn’t feel like work is probably better. Ask them to write a reminder for you, write a shopping list, make a list of what they want to do in the holidays. Anything to get them practising the skill of writing each day!

8.      Try and ensure you don’t make it a big deal. Make no mistake, SATs are important. They help prepare your child for the more formal teaching and more frequent testing of secondary school. They may also be used by your child’s next school to decide which sets your child will be in and they can help build or break your child’s confidence. Your child will be aware of how important they are, so make sure that at home you create a relaxed atmosphere around the subject of SATs. You don’t want to add to the pressure.

9.      Enrol in MagiKats.   If you’re trying to get the right balance of enough support but not too much pressure, MagiKats is the perfect solution.  Our English, maths and reasoning tuition is hands on and practical. We don’t just ask them to work through test papers – we make it interactive and fun! Done in a workshop style, it doesn’t feel like hard work to the children, but it does help them develop all the necessary skills – and a few more!

We have a thorough understanding of what your child needs to know and do for their Year 6 SATs, and this includes making sure they are fluent in maths and English and can show reasoning and critical analysis. These are concepts which aren’t always easy for parents to explain and teach at home but are an important part of the tests.

We also tailor the tuition to suit your child, so that if they struggle with one particular aspect, we can focus on that. And your child will be supported by our mentors, who will teach, encourage and reward them – all of which takes the pressure of you!

10.  Take time out.  The last year at primary school is a great year. Your child has finally reached the top of the school, which usually comes with a little bit more freedom (perhaps walking to school on their own for the first time). There’s lots going on, with end of year performances, school trips and the like. When they move on to secondary school, life will be much harder for a while. They’ll be back at the bottom of the school, with lots more homework and pressure and they suddenly seem to grow up! 

So make sure you make lots of time to relax and enjoy the last few months of their primary school years! Take a break over Easter, kick back after school and do some fun stuff. Let MagiKats take the strain, so you can make the most of what you’ll look back on as a very special time!

Don’t ignore Year 6 SATs or leave revision to the last minute. Call us today or contact your local MagiKats centre and ask them how they can help.