How To Help Your Children Succeed In Their SATs

How To Help Your Children Succeed In Their Year 6 Sats

The Year 6 Sats test your child’s knowledge at the end of Key Stage 2 in Maths and English and are also a barometer of how well their teachers and school are doing. There is quite a bit of debate about how important Sats really are. However, they might be taken into account by your child’s secondary school so it’s certainly worth supporting your child to do the best they can.

For a parent, their child’s preparation for their SATs can be a challenging time. On the one hand, you don’t want your 11-year old to feel under a lot of pressure. On the other hand, successfully preparing for the Sats and achieving great results can help your child feel more confident going into more important exams in future (not least, their GCSE’s a few years later).

Here we will outline a few tips which you can use to help your child through their Sats so that they achieve the results they deserve and think positively about exams in the future.

Make revision fun

A typical question on a Sats maths paper could be something like:

‘If Molly has eight sweets, and she gives five sweets to Sajid, how many sweets does Molly have left?’

Why not turn this into something a bit more fun?

You could, for example, use real sweets to help your child prepare for this question, ensuring that they have more or fewer sweets depending on whether they are adding or subtracting. Fraction-based questions can be approached with pieces of cake. Of course, if you were feeling health-conscious, you could use fruit-based treats instead!

However you choose to do it, by bringing these concepts to life, you will hugely improve your kids’ understanding of them.

For English, you could ask your child to pick short extracts from their favourite books, and then explain how each of these sentences works grammatically. Writing about a recent holiday or day-out while you complete various tasks around the house and seeing how much they have written after you finish each task is a great preparation for them to write a fantastic piece under exam conditions in their Sats.

Assure them that whatever results they get, you will still be proud of them

Many children fear that academic underachievement will make their parents upset – and that places children of all ages under huge pressure unnecessarily. Parents should be realistic about the results their child can achieve and put a positive spin on results when they are published. It is important that you sit down with your child and discuss the results they would like to achieve in their exams and how they are going to get there.

Don’t pre-occupy your children with your own stresses while they are studying

Almost every adult faces some form of stress in their day-to-day lives. Whether work is causing them issues, they have urgent bills to pay, or a million other things. However, it is important that you don’t make any of your children feel this stress, particularly as they approach their Sats.

They might want to talk to you about these exams and any uncertainties they feel. When they do, giving them your full attention and reassuring them will ensure your kids’ exam preparation becomes much calmer and easier.

 These tips will help you to help your child get the best results that they can from their Sats while developing crucial life skills along the way.