Grammar, punctuation and spelling Implications for learning 2017

Paper 1: short answer questions A combined question and answer booklet Paper 1: short answer questions A combined question and answer booklet. There are no contextual items in the test. Pupils will have 45 minutes to answer the questions which are worth 50 marks in total (usually consisting of around 49 questions) Paper 2: spelling A test transcript to be read by the test administrator and an answer booklet for pupils to complete 20 missing words. The test is expected to take approximately 15 minutes, but is not strictly timed. The questions are worth 20 marks in total. Scaled scores The separate scores for these two papers will be totalled to give a raw score for grammar, punctuation and spelling. The raw score is then converted into a scaled score> 100 is the ‘expected standard’. Currently, anything below 100 is considered to be ‘working towards the expected standard’ and anything above 110 is considered to be a high/exceptional score.

Scores explained

Paper 1: short answer questions 32% of the marks available in the 2017 paper were from key stage 1 curriculum Just 20% of the marks in the 2017 paper assessed Year 6 content!

Useful techniques and strategies: Accuracy is extremely important- capital letters, punctuation and formation. Reading instructions correctly- must be clear and unambiguous. The use of an ‘exclamation sentence’ must start with either a ‘how’ or ‘what’ and must be a full sentence – including a verb. So, ‘What a delightful home yours is!’ is fine; ‘Awesome!’ is not. Hyphens, possessive apostrophes and contractions won’t be tested in the spelling paper, but may be tested in paper 1.

Paper 2: spelling Revision of both the Y3/4 and the Y5/6 lists is essential. Additionally, spelling rules may be assessed too, including: -prefixes -suffixes -verb forms -plurals -homophones See pages 86 & 87 in planners

Correct terminology In recent years, grammatical terminology has changed. Pupils must be aware of the most recent terminology.

How does this link to their writing? Writing is teacher assessed using a set list of criteria Consequently, there will not be a test result. Instead, we will report whether your child is ‘working towards the expected standard,’ ‘working at the expected standard, or ‘working at greater depth’. In previous years, children have had to ‘tick off’ everything on this list to reach a particular grading. This year will be a ‘best fit’ model. The pupils red books become a portfolio of writing evidence Pupils must show that they can achieve each criterion independently