11 Plus Exams Forum

i hope to prepare my dd for sats exam in 2014. can anybody suggest what are the good books for headstart for maths, english and science? her writing levels are quite lower than maths level.

thank you.

I wouldn't bother doing any preparation - they are all about measuring the school.

Whilst I would agree that SATs are not something you "prepare" your child for - other than to suggest that she pays attention and keeps up in class etc - on the "SATs are only for the school's benefit" front, I would check whether any of the secondary schools she is likely to attend do use SATs for the purposes of setting / streaming. Grammar school, unlikely, but e.g. the comprehensive our DD attended in year 7 used SATs levels to stream the intake, and the school DS2 and I looked at yesterday uses a combination of SATs levels and MidYIS scores for setting in year 7.

The other reason you really don't need to "prepare" her, though is that if your school doesn't spend a fair proportion of year 6 doing just that, they must be the only primary in the country that doesn't...

If you think the school has taught them well and they have made the progress you think they are capable of, then don't bother. But if not I would do something. If they were just about the school it would be good, but sometimes they are not.

Even in year 3 at our primary you can have a difficult time shaking off the legacy of illness in May so you felt rubbish during ks1 test papers. I kid you not.

Some secondaries do use this information for various reasons. And really, if you come out of year 6 with level 3 not level 5 it will of course make a difference to what you are taught and what you learn. There are few schools, excepting good independents, that are great at playing catch up for pupils. Ks2 results are a crude measure of one small section od what you have been taught, what you have learned, and how you perform in a test.

This year's papers will be slightly different: no calculator in either paper for 3-5 maths. No theme in the 3-5 reading test.

Level 6 papers remain the same. I was talking to a room full of teachers recently and several were unaware of these changes.

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/tea ... 6/ks2-2014" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can't understand why anyone would bother prepping for SATs, they are just a measure for the school and gets them up the league tables so you will find that most kids are heartily sick of SATs during the larger part of year 6. One of my children was so well prepped at school he came out very high level and at the upper school was then put into a stream he could not cope in and he was not the only one. My advice for what its worth is no more school work at home esp after all the stress of 11+, let them play and have fun before next year when the hard work really begins.