KS2 Information Evening

English –Year 6

Miss Stanley – Autumn 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Aims

• To share assessment statements for reading and writing

and identify how we assess

• To share examples of SATs reading and GAPS questions

• To share how we teach reading and writing

• To identify how you can help your children at home

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…SATS!

Writing is assessed

by teachers.

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READINGEmma Stanley 2018

Content domains

are the areas of

reading that

children are

assessed against.

What are we

assessing?

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S - sequence in KS1 and

summarise in KS2

This is how we present those

content domains to the children.

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Emma Stanley 2018

We use the VIPERS throughout our reading sessions and in our written comprehension tasks. You can see one here. Sometimes we ask children to focus broadly on all of the VIPERS. At other times, we hone in on one particular VIPER.

This VIPER involves analysing vocabulary choices and making links to known vocabulary.

Don’t assume that your child knows the meanings of words that they can read or decode. Question them about vocabulary and

encourage them to note down unfamiliar words. Look these up in a dictionary together.

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Helping children to develop their vocabulary is vital. Creating ‘word webs’

together can be a good way of finding synonyms for words that children come

across in texts read.

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Inference involves piecing together clues from a text to draw a conclusion.

Inference is heavily weighted in the reading SATs test.

The more that your child reads, the better their inference skills will become. I can not stress enough how important it is to listen to your child read, even in Year 6.

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There are many things that we do in school to develop inference skills, and some of these can be done at home.

Children need help to ‘build a case’.

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In their reading diaries, children could make assumptions about texts they are reading and ‘build a case’ to support those assumptions by collecting evidence from the text as they read.

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VISUAL VIPERS - Images or film stills can be used to develop inference skills. This is something that can be done at home.

Predicting what will happen next in a narrative is not simply guess work. It involves drawing upon clues from

what has already been read.

When reading with your children, ask them to make predictions and question them about where they got their evidence from.

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Explain covers the following content domains:

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When reading with your child at home, you could use the ‘explain’ question stems from your pack to discuss the text read.

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Retrieval involves simply retrieving information from a text.

This information is often obvious and easy to locate within a text.

To locate the information, children need to develop their skimming and scanning skills.

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Skimming & Scanning

Skimming is reading quickly in order to get a general

overview what the text is about.

Scanning is reading rapidly in order to find specific

information.

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We practice these skills when reading with children in school and it is something you can do with your child at home.

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Summarising involves taking the main ideas from the text and writing them more concisely in your

own words.

When reading with your child, you could get them to summarise a chapter or

paragraph to practise this skill.

Types of Comprehension Questions

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Types of questions – Find & Copy

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‘Find and copy’ means lifting words from the text exactly as they are.

Types of questions – Short response

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Types of questions – Open ended

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These questions are worth the highest marks. Children will need to draw upon evidence to support their answers.

‘Book Talk’ – 30 minutes• In order to help children

further develop their reading skills – particularly in constructing well-crafted answers to questions – we also follow the ‘Book Talk’ approach to reading.

• We do a 30 minute reading session every day and 2 of those are ‘Book Talk’ sessions.

• We read one text as a class.

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The FANTASTICS are the Maths

of English. These also form part of

the ‘Writing Rainbow’.

At the point of writing, a writer

has 9 choices to make; 9 lenses in

which to write.

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These can be applied to any of the content domains.

The STYLISTICs are the teaching of

reading. (Questioning understanding)

Setting

Text layout/Structure

Yes/No Relationships

Logical Meaning Making

Interrogating Facts/Opinions

Solving Problems

Themes

Impact

CharactersEmma Stanley 2018

More challenging aspects of text

analysis.

Author Assessment

Navigating Genres

Accessing Phonics & Grammar

Language

Your Personal Opinion

Trawling For Evidence

Inferring and Deducing

Considering Deeper Messages

Stating PredictionsEmma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Our lesson is split into 3 parts. In the first part we focus on the text using a FANTASTIC. Then a STYLISTIC in the second part before focusing on an ANALYTIC in the third part. Children work in groups to construct answers to my questions in each part of the lesson and they can earn points.

Here is your sentence starter…

‘The emotion of _____ is palpable when…’

Your ‘Book Talk Bonus Word’ is apparentYou get:1pt for using and finishing the sentence stem1pt for adding evidence1pt for using the bonus word

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Try this with me. On your table, you have a short text to read. You get one point for using the sentence stem. Another point is given for finishing the sentence, drawing upon evidence, and a third point is given for using the ‘book talk bonus word’.

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Here is an example of a written response from a child in my class.

•Something you can do at home is ‘wring a sentence for meaning’. This involves zooming in on one or more sentences and squeezing as much meaning out of the words as possible. • In one sentence there could be up to 3 talking points to identify.

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She fiddled with an empty teacup, unable to look either of us in the eye.

What can you infer from this?

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She fiddled with an empty teacup unable to look either of us in the eye.

‘Fiddled’ suggests that she feels uncomfortable.

She has ‘an empty teacup’ that she no longer needs to hold, but she holds it for comfort.

She is ‘unable to look’ into the eyes of the people she is talking to which suggests that she feels ashamed or embarrassed by something.

Try this at home. See how you get on!

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How can you help at home?

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Read, read, read! Make time for reading and remember to read toyour children too. They may be 10/11 but they still need to hear an adult modelling accurate reading fluency and intonation.

WritingEmma Stanley 2018

Writing is assessed by teachers using the ‘Interim Teaching Assessment Framework’.

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

As a moderator in the local authority, I go into schools and moderate writing. Therefore I have a very clear idea of what ‘expected standard’ looks like, and it can be different from child to child but essentially the key assessment points are present.

Children are allowed to have a particular weakness. This is an area of the assessment framework that they are unable to do fully. By allowing this ‘particular weakness’, children are still able to reach expected standard.

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This child will meet expected standard at the end of the year. The writing isn’t perfect, as I would like to see more of a range of punctuation and you can see some homophone spelling errors. But, essentially, the writing is descriptive; the child has a good awareness of the reader and the sentence structure is varied.

Going that one step beyond; thinking cleverly and drawing upon what they’ve read as models for their writing.

This is why reading is vital! The more a child reads, the more vast their vocabulary is, and the more chance they have of becoming a greater depth writer.

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Did you notice the war words weaved throughout?

This is clever writing and it is this creating of symbolism or theme that takes the

writing to another level. Children can be technically accurate – through use of

punctuation and grammar – but if they churn out monotonous sentences then

they won’t meet greater depth. Greater depth writing sings to you and feels like

it has come from a writer who has crafted every word carefully.

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Did you notice the clever use of ‘light’ words throughout? This child has selected vocabulary deliberately for effect and has created a theme running throughout. Some teachers believe that you can’t teach a child to be greater depth but I disagree. I think children can be shown how to use language cleverly and can be shown how to borrow ideas from other authors.

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We help children to craft sentences not only by modelling them, but by occasionally doing what is called ‘slow writing’. This involves slowing down and crafting each sentence carefully. You have this activity on your table. Let’s try it!

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Here is an example from a child (the stars denote a muddle in sentence order that the child has indicated). Is slow writing something you could try at home?

GAPS or SPAG – Spelling, Punctuation & Grammar

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GAPS – Example Questions

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GAPS – Example Questions

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GAPS – Example Questions

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Spelling

Spellings are set and tested weekly. Spelling patterns are taught in class and children are expected to apply those patterns in their writing.

Exception words – These are words that have no set spelling pattern. In Year 5, children are expected to be able to read and spell at least half of these words. In Year 6, children are expected to be able to read and spell all of them.

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018

Practise these words with your children at home. Can they read them? Can they spell them? Do they know the meaning of the words and can they use them in context?

How can you help at home?

Revision guides are great for practising grammar

Help your child to learn the weekly spellings.

Emma Stanley 2018

Emma Stanley 2018