Education News
Is your child ready for SATs? By Jemma Zoe Smith There can hardly be a single child in the country who hasn’t seen their schooling disrupted during the pandemic. In acknowledgement of this disruption, SATs have been cancelled for the last two years but in 2022 they’ll be going ahead as normal. If you’re a parent of a child who will be sitting SATs in May 2022 or 2023, you might be concerned about what this means for your child’s exam performance - a worry which is doubled for those parents whose children are also sitting the 11+. The good news is that if you’re addressing these concerns now, you’re doing so in good time. There’s plenty of opportunity for your child to make up any gaps in their learning before the exams roll around. The first thing to do as a parent is not to worry too much. While your child’s schooling has been disrupted, so has that of all their peers. It’s likely that results will be poorer across the board, which is reassuring if you’re considering a selective school for your child’s secondary education. What’s more, any teacher looking at your child’s exam results in the future will consider the extraordinary situation in which their studies were taking place. Above all, even if the situation is causing you stress, it’s important not to transmit that to your child, whose performance won’t be improved by exam nerves. If you are stressed and are struggling to contain your feelings, make sure you focus on getting appropriate support. You can’t help your child unless you feel calm.
The next step is to find out to what extent your concerns are justified. Speak to your child’s teacher and find out to what extent they’ve fallen behind relative to the performance their teacher would expect at this stage, had circumstances been more normal. For example, it might be that your child spent all of lockdown glued to a book and so needs support in maths, but not in English. Make sure you’re focusing your efforts where they’re needed. Once you know where the gaps in your child’s understanding are, you can address them with targeted learning and revision. At this age, the best approach is little and often. That could be a quick spelling test when your child gets home from school, grammar questions on the way there or a couple of maths problems when they’re waiting for dinner. Keep it fun and your child will be back on track in no time. Jemma Zoe Smith is Director of The Education Hotel. Find out more at www.educationhotel.co.uk
Calming exam nerves Keeping your child calm about the approaching exams is vital for their success. Crucial to this is keeping your own worries to yourself, so you don’t transfer them to your child. Ideally, your child should approach the week of the exams like any normal school week - keen to do their best but not too worried if they don’t. But what if it’s too late for that and your child is already struggling with exam anxiety? If your child is already nervous, don’t be tempted to try to alleviate this by promising them a reward if they do well. This is likely to make things worse, not better. Instead, give them all the tools they need to succeed and feel comfortable. Support them with lots of rest and by making sure they eat well. Past paper practice under exam conditions can help, so that the situation of sitting an exam feels familiar. But above all, emphasise to your child that a failed exam isn’t the end of the world and assure them that all you care about is that they try their hardest.
SATs and 11+ resources Thankfully, there are lots of great resources out there to help you and your child on the journey towards the SATs and 11+. A vast amount of resources for both - some free, some paid for, all reviewed by other parents - can be found on the TES website at www.tes.com. You can search for precisely the area that your child needs to practise. The government has a website of SATs past papers and other practice materials. You can use these to give your child more experience of test conditions. If you plan to do this, it would be wise to speak to your child’s teacher in case they sit the same practice tests at school. If you’re also looking at the 11+, find out which exam board is used by the school your child is applying to, so you can get the right past papers to practise with. Finally, if you’re not already aware of BBC Bitesize (www. bbc.co.uk/bitesize), you should be! There’s lots of learning options including fun games, to help your child learn. familiesonline.co.uk
11+ VERBAL REASONING VOCABULARY FLASH CARDS Expand your child’s antonym and synonym knowledge and achieve a higher 11+ score A comprehensive vocabulary resource with child-friendly definitions and a list of synonyms www.vocabularyflashcards.co.uk Families Birmingham Magazine 5