Category: Year 6

Posted in Key Stage 2 Support, Mental Health, SATs, Transitions, Uncategorized, Year 6

Three clues that your child is suffering from anxiety (and three ways to help them)

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

Anxiety is a bitch.  I used to have a mug with that on and it’s still true!  As adults, anxiety can really impact the quality of our lives, and many of us need help to manage being anxious at times – whether that’s professional therapy, medication, or being able to talk things through with a partner or friend.  We can recognise our anxiety and the effects it has on us.

Children may lack the vocabulary or experience to explain to us that they are anxious, so this is where you need to channel your inner Sherlock Holmes and be a detective!  Here are three clues that your child might have anxiety.

Physical Clues:

  • Feeling sick/vomiting
  • Tummy aches/diarrhoea
  • Headaches

Have you ever felt sick before an exam or an interview?  Me too!  The chemical signals that flood our body when we are anxious can make our body react by giving us physical symptoms.  It’s exactly the same for our kids!  If your child regularly complains of physical symptoms like these, it’s worth while keeping a record of when these happen.  Is it before school?  Is it on a certain school day?  Is it before going shopping?  Before going to a social event?  If there is a connection – there’s your place to start narrowing down what is causing the anxiety.

Sleep Clues

  • Insomnia
  • Early waking
  • Waking in the night
  • Nightmares
  • Bed-wetting
  • Being resistant to going to bed

It’s not just toddlers that can struggle with bedtimes!  Whilst changes in sleep routine can be indicative of a growth spurt or hormone surge (I see you, parents of pre-teens!) it may be caused by anxiety. 

Behaviour Clues

  • Increased aggression
  • Tearful episodes
  • Being short-tempered
  • A lack of interest in activities they normally enjoy
  • being restless
  • A loss of appetite or increased appetite
  • Needing to be in control of activities
  • Getting in trouble at school
  • Becoming withdrawn

A change in behaviour is your child communicating that there’s something amiss.  As adults, we change our behaviour if we are anxious or worried – If I’m worried about something, I often don’t want to talk, or I get irritable at things that normally wouldn’t bother me!  And it’s the same for our children.  If your child changes their behaviour, it’s time to put Sherlock’s deerstalker on again!

There are lots of things that can cause anxiety.  Some of these can come from outside sources – the big one for all of us recently is the Covid-19 pandemic.  Some causes can come from inside our children – the desire to do well at school, or be part of a particular friendship group.  We need to look at what the cause or causes of the anxiety might be.

The media

Events on the news may worry our children.  We haven’t had a news report for over a year that hasn’t had some mention of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Social media can create unrealistic expectations for how they should look, or what they should be doing.

Bullying

Bullying can take many forms, from ignoring your child to physical harm.  It can be in school, on the way there or the way home, or over electronic devices.  Fear of reprisals may make a child reluctant to tell a teacher or you about what’s happening.

Transitions and Life Changes

Changing to a new school year, changing schools, going to high school, moving house, a new sibling, exams (or in the last two years, lack of them), divorce, puberty – all of these are huge life changes and can be a source of worry.

Overwhelm

School is, by its very nature, demand orientated.  Spellings to be learned, concepts to grasp, work to complete on time.  Most schools emphasise attendance and will have lots of information telling you how important it is to be in school.  However, all of our children have missed out on attending school for long periods of time during the pandemic.  There is currently a lot of talk of ‘catch up’ and this can be overwhelming for many children.  Many children are taking assessments within school over the next few weeks that will be very similar to exams – click HERE for ideas to deal with that stress!

There may be other areas that are causing overwhelm too:  the relaxation of lockdown is opening up opportunities to meet family and friends and even when these opportunities are normally enjoyable, they may be overwhelming too.

So what can we do about it?  Here’s three things to help!

Listen without judgment

Knowing that you won’t tell them they are being silly, or that you are going to get angry with them will give them confidence to tell you more.  Even if you feel like their worries are over something small or insignificant, it isn’t small or insignificant to them!  Let them know that their emotions are valid and how they feel is important. 

Give them some control

Involving them in decisions on how you can help them.  Ask them what they think will help.  Can you talk with them to a teacher to see what is happening at school?  Has there been a specific incident that has upset them?  What could you do together to solve it?

Encouragement and affirmation

Let them know it’s ok to be worried, and everyone reacts in different ways.  Tell them that your love and support isn’t conditional on them being a certain way – you know this, but our kids need to hear it A LOT!  Give plenty of encouragement and support when they are doing something they find difficult. You might like to create a Rainbows and Rainclouds jar so they can write or draw something good about the day, or something that worried them that day to place in the jar – I’ve got a great free printable HERE that you can use!

And finally, if your child’s anxiety doesn’t seem to be easing or is getting worse, talk to your child’s teacher and your GP.  There are a number of organisations that can help children (and parents and carers) and you can find a great list of them here:

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/for-children-and-young-people/useful-contacts/

Phew!  That was a long one!   Do let me know if this has been helpful.  Hop on over to Instagram or Facebook and let me know what has worked to help anxiety in your kids.

Posted in SATs, Uncategorized, Year 6

Aargghh! SATs Stress!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

SATs week is nearly upon us – Key Stage 2 SATs (that’s Year 6) will begin on Monday 13th May with the SPaG tests (Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar), with the reading test on Tuesday 14th May, Maths Papers 1 and 2 (Arithmetic and Reasoning 1) on Wednesday 15th May and the final Maths Reasoning paper on Thursday 16th May.  Key Stage 1 SATs (that’s Year 2) will also take place in May, but the exact week will be set by individual schools.  The phonics check test for Key Stage 1 will be on or after Monday 10th June.

This can be a highly emotionally charged time for our kids.  Even if you have a very calm child (The Teen wasn’t worried about the tests themselves as he liked working on his own in silence!) the anxiety other children may feel can also influence them (I once had to go in to school to calm down The Teen who was hyperventilating and shaking because so many of his friends and peers were upset and worried).

So how can we help them? Here’s a few ways!

Affirmations

Teaching our kids positive affirmations can help their self-esteem.  Keeping the affirmations short and snappy and getting them to repeat them after you say them, or write them down on a post it note or diary/journal may encourage resilience.  I’m sharing some affirmations every day over on Instagram this May!

Listen

We can listen without judgment, or without trying to solve the problem for them – being able to vocalise their worries can be incredibly valuable to a child.  It is really important to try to JUST listen – I know we all want to jump in with our views on what needs to be done to help because we just want to make it better but knowing that we will listen without interrupting can really help our kids to open up!

Praise

Give as much praise and encouragement as you can – about anything you can! 

“Thanks for emptying your lunchbox, that’s a big help!”

“I’m incredibly proud of you for …”

“I love being your mum/dad/family member…”

“I missed you while you were at school/while I was at work today…”

Sleep

Sleep is SOOOO important!  Having a lack of sleep not only contributes towards low mood and anxiety, it’s not going to help them concentrate during these last days of revision or during the exams!  Make sure that your child is getting enough sleep, and that they are getting some time away from the ever-present tablets and phones they are so often glued to.  Getting to bed a bit earlier but having time to read is a fantastic way to help them relax. 

Keeping it calm

Yes, they’ve left their dirty clothes in a pile on the floor again.  Give them a bit of slack – choose your battles wisely over the next couple of weeks and try not to react if they are more irritable than normal.

Roll with the differences

They might be more clingy than normal, or they might isolate themselves more than normal.  Check in with them regularly – a quick “Do you need anything?” will reassure them you’re there for them.

Have something to look forward to

You might want to do a countdown to a summer holiday, or get them involved in planning a day trip or meal out for after the exams.

Journaling

Some children may find that writing a diary or a journal can help with anxiety.  Being able to write down their worries or fears can be a way to vent their emotions safely. 

Outside interests and friends

If your child wants to keep up with their outside interests or their friends outside of school, this is a great way to take their minds off their current worries.

Eat healthily

Yes, I know that getting vitamins into some children is like trying to get a camel through the eye of a needle (how The Tween has managed to survive considering his idea of five a day is the number of chicken nuggets he wants to eat is beyond me) but eating well really helps with feeling good and using their brain!  Although they might not feel like eating before their exams, encourage them to eat breakfast! 

Try some relaxation techniques

Laughter, stretching, deep breathing, exercising, listening to music and meditating are all activities that increase the ‘feel-good’ chemicals in our brains.  You might like to try some of these together (The Teen has just read this over my shoulder and said, “Fat chance, mother!” but perhaps your child is less contrary than mine is!)I

Here’s hoping we all get through this SATs season as unscathed as possible!

Photo by Ben Mullins on Unsplash

Posted in Maths, SATs, Uncategorized, Year 6

Unpack the RUCSAC to help with Maths!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

It’s all very well learning how to do all the maths operations – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – and being able to put them to work with fractions, decimals, percentages and angles, but our Key Stage Two kids need to know how to use them to solve word problems!

In the Key Stage Two SATs, two out of three of the maths papers are reasoning papers – they are worded questions where a student needs to work out what operations to use to solve a problem or puzzle. This can be really intimidating for many children!

We can help them by getting them to use RUCSAC to approach the question!

Here’s an example from a past SATs paper:

R – READ!

First things first – read the question carefully! What is it asking? It’s asking:

It’s asking for the number of chocolates Ken has bought.

U – UNDERSTAND!

OK, so we need to know how many chocolates Ken bought. How are we going to work this out? Let’s look at the information we’ve got:

He bought THREE large boxes containing 48 chocolates, and TWO small boxes containing 24 chocolates. Three lots of 48, and two lots of 24.

C – CHOOSE!

So let’s choose what mathematical operations we are going to use. In this case, we are going to have to use both multiplication and addition:

3 x 48 = and 2 x 24 = and then add the two answers together!

S – SOLVE!

Using whatever method we feel comfortable with (column method, grid method, repeated addition) we can now work out the calculation! In the SATs exam, when we see this box and the wording ‘Show your method’, it is important that you write your calculations down in the box provided.

To get the full two marks, you’ve got to get the right answer AND show how you got there! If you don’t get the right answer, but show the correct method, you will still get a mark for doing the right mathematical operation.

A – ANSWER!

And the final answer is 192! It is really important in the SATs exams that the answer is written in the box provided (see the above image) – IF THE ANSWER ISN’T IN THE BOX, YOU LOSE A MARK, EVEN IF YOU GOT IT RIGHT!

C – CHECK!

Check your answer – have you answered the question? We needed to know how many chocolates Ken bought altogether, and we worked out that he bought 192 chocolates. So now let’s quickly check the calculations are right to get to that figure – check to make sure we’ve made the right multiplication calculations and then the right addition.

One last point – in the SATs exams ALL children can ask for a question to be read out to them. It’s really important to encourage them to do this, especially if they are unclear about what the question is asking. Although a teacher cannot explain what is needed to answer the question, often just having the question read to you helps to clarify what the question is asking. This is the guidance the government gives to teachers and teaching assistants:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/762829/KS2_access_arrangements_guidance_.pdf

And that’s our RUCSAC unpacked!

Sample SATs maths questions found here

Top photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

Be Determined To Get The Right Determiner!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

A determiner is a word that shows us the noun in a sentence – a, an, the, each, many, every, these, those – and even a number!

For example:

AN apple was given to EACH child EVERY day for THREE weeks.

✔ THE is known as the DEFINITE ARTICLE – it refers to a particular item.

For example:

I would like THE apple. (You want a particular apple – I bet it’s that juicy red one!)

(Note: Although we can also use the words this, those and these to denote a specific noun or nouns, they AREN’T definite articles – only ‘the’ is known by this term. This, those and these are sometimes known as ‘demonstrative determiners’ – imagine that you are demonstrating what you are talking about by pointing to them! You don’t need to know this for Year 6 SATs!)

✔ A and AN are known as INDEFINITE ARTICLES – they don’t refer to a specific item.

For example:

I would like AN apple. (You would like any apple.  You’re not bothered which one!)

It’s easy to work out whether you need to use A or AN in front of a noun as long as you know your vowels – A E I O and U! If a noun begins with a vowel, you use AN – if it doesn’t, you use A!

For example:

I placed AN orange on A plate.  (Orange begins with a vowel, so you use ‘an’, whereas plate begins with a consonant, so you use ‘a’!)

(Note: The determiners my, your, his, her, its, our, their, whose are known as ‘possessive determiners’ because they show that the noun belongs to someone or something. You don’t need to know this for Year 6 SATs either!)

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Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

So where’s the preposition, then?

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

Prepositions are the words in a sentence that tell us the position of something, when it’s happening, or the direction it’s going.


Position: these include on, under, behind, in front of, next to, inside.
For example: The cat is under the table.

When: these include before, after, during, on Saturday.
I’m going shopping on Saturday.

Direction: these include towards, away from, along, into.
Mikey walked along the road.

This term is quite easy to remember because preposition has position in it!

Photo by Elio Santos on Unsplash

Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

Let’s join together for – Conjunctions!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw
a picture of two hands holding each other.

Conjunctions are words that are used to join sentences, or bits of sentences together. There are a couple of types of conjunctions:

✔ Co-ordinating conjunctions
These are the words that join two sentences together – we can use FANBOYS to remember what they are – For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So.
For example:
I was hungry so I made myself a sandwich.

✔ Subordinating conjunctions
These join two parts (clauses) of a sentence together. There’s another mnemonic to help us remember them – I SAW A WABUB!
If, Since, As, When, Although, While, After, Before, Until, Because.
For example:
I’m going home before six o’clock.
When Mikey comes home, he will have a snack.
The subordinating conjunction always comes before the part of the sentence that wouldn’t make sense on its own!

Photo by Roman Kraft on Unsplash

Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

Show how you do it with adverbs and adverbials!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

Just like adjectives describe a noun, adverbs tell us more about the verb in a sentence. (Yes, I agree, adjectives should really be called adnouns!!)⠀⠀

Adverbs tell us how, why, where or when something is happening.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
She danced gracefully.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Carefully, Mikey picked up the cat. (Tells us how something is happening)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The cat pooped in my shoe yesterday. (Tells us when something is happening)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I always walk to work . (Tells us how often something is happening)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The kids raced inside. (Tells us where something is happening)⠀⠀⠀

Adverbs can also tell us the possibility of something happening:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I definitely placed my keys on the table.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Mikey never misses a chance to go for a walk.

It will probably snow tomorrow.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Maybe she dances when no-one is looking.

And yes, the cat really did poop in my shoes this morning. Thanks, Spangle!

Trust me, adverbials really aren’t scary at all. They are just a small group of words that do the same job as an adverb – they give us more information about the action that is happening in the sentence.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
They are usually about place:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The cat pooped in my shoes. (I’m not getting over that any time soon, you know.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Or they can be when something happened:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
I walked a mile early this morning.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Or they can be how something happened:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
My husband drank his coffee as quickly as possible.⠀⠀

A fronted adverbial is just an adverbial at the front of a sentence:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Almost instantly, I remembered I hadn’t fed the cat this morning.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
After today, I work three shifts a week.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Below the apple tree, the children ate a picnic.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Fronted adverbials are ALWAYS followed by a comma!⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀
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Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

Nothin’ Happens Without a Verb!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

Verbs are really important!  If there isn’t a verb in a sentence, it’s NOT a sentence! They are the action word – they tell us what something or someone is doing or being in a sentence.  For example:

The cat stretched.

Put your jacket on!

I swam to the edge of the pool.

Ella is drawing a picture.

As you can see from that last example, you can have two verbs together in a sentence.

One of the tricky verbs to spot is the different forms of the verb ‘to be’ – I am, he is, she is, we are, I was, you were, he was, they were.  Sometimes they can be on their own: Mikey was late.  Sometimes they will be together with another verb:  I am typing this post!

Verbs are the words that change to show WHEN something happened – in the past, in the present, or in the future.  Don’t worry about tenses, we’ll have a look at those another day!

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

Amazing Adjectives!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

Adjectives are words that describe nouns, giving us more information about what the noun looks like, feels like, smells like, tastes like etc. They let us build up a picture in our minds! For example:

I saw a cat.

Let’s add in an adjective!

I saw a ginger cat.

We can add more than one adjective, to make the picture even clearer:

I saw an enormous, ginger cat.

✔ COMPARATIVE ADJECTIVES compare the noun to something else and they often end in -er.

I had the bigger slice of cake.

Be careful – you can use ‘more’ or ‘less’ with an adjective to make it a comparative one:

My dinner was less tasty than the cat’s.

✔ SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVES show us that the noun is the least, most, worst or best.  They often end in -est, like smallest, biggest, loudest, quietest.

We can also use ‘most’ or ‘least’ with an adjective, to make a superlative adjective:

Monday is my least favourite day of the week!

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Posted in SATs, SPaG, Year 6

Nouns and Pronouns revealed!

Posted on by Sharon Grimshaw

Here we go!  This is the first part of our SPaG series of blog posts and it’s all about nouns and pronouns!

Nouns name things.  There are four different types of nouns that your child needs to know and be able to spot them in a sentence.  These are:

✔ Common nouns – everyday words like cup, phone, elephant, box, strawberry.  These can be singular (one of them) or plural (two or more – cups, phones, elephants, boxes, strawberries)

✔ Proper Nouns – these are names for individuals, places or things, including days of the week and months of the year – for example Monday, February, Crewe Street, Leeds, Niagra Falls.  They ALWAYS have a capital letter to start them!

✔ Collective nouns – these are names for groups of things – a flock of birds, a group of people, a herd of cows, a murder of crows.

✔ Abstract nouns – these are the names of things you can’t see, hear, smell, touch or taste.  They are names of concepts or ideas. These include: intelligence, love, friendship, idea, happiness.

Pronouns are words we use in place of a noun, or a noun phrase. There are three types:

✔ Personal pronouns – these are used to replace a name, generally to avoid repetition in a sentence and to make it sound less clunky (which is not a technical term, but it should be, right?!)

For example: Mikey enjoys the IT lesson and Mikey looks forward to the IT lesson every week.  Yep, clunky!  We could replace some of the proper nouns (Mikey) and noun phrases (IT lesson) with pronouns and make it much better:

Mikey enjoys the IT lesson and HE looks forward to IT every week.

These are the personal pronouns – I, you, she, he, it, they, me, him, her and them.

✔ Possessive pronouns show who something belongs to: mine, your, our, their,  his, hers, its, yours, ours and theirs. For example:

This book belongs to Mikey. It is his book.

And finally we have:

✔ Relative pronouns – these are used to add more information about a noun in a sentence: that, who, where, when and which.  For example: Mikey went to visit his aunt, who lives in London. (Did ya see I slipped a little possessive pronoun in that sentence too? I’m sneaky like that!)

And there we go! All you need to know about nouns and pronouns for the Year 6 SATs!

Top photo by PNG Design on Unsplash