Making SATs MEANINGFUL

1. Making SATs MEANINGFUL When does SATs practice begin in your school? SATs – The expression says it all! How are they presented to the pupils?

2. Although in SATs there is no opportunity to provide pupils with a stimulus when preparing we need to provide pupils with as rich a experience in real life as we can so when it comes to the mundane SATs tests they have a vast wealth of experience they can draw upon for their writing. By looking at SATs papers we can help prepare children for the tests but they need inspiration – bring the SATs paper alive for the pupils and make it practical / a real life experience for them – they can then use this for their writing. Their writing will be of a better quality without additional teaching. The outcomes of this can be used as part of the APP process to substantiate teacher judgement – not just what a test produced. Find a balance between the stimulus for writing and test conditions.

3. In one of the SATs paper the children are asked to describe their favourite meal – the idea would be to include the smell of it cooking, how it looks and what it tastes like. To stretch some pupils you would be wanting them to link it to fond memories etc that they have. The normal scenario would be to pass out the papers – pupils plan and then write it whilst sat in a classroom. However this can be simply brought to life by having food cooking in the hall / kitchen / on a camp stove in class – take the pupils in there to write. They will be surrounded by the smells which will ignite their imagination and use of vocab. Show the pupils it cooking – they will describe the colours, the sounds etc and then finally let them taste it – again once they have experienced it they will have much more to write about. For those that will need stretching discuss memories etc that it conjures up e.g. a cold, wintry morning when my mum… etc When assessing pupils work do the cool wall of descriptions rather than giving each child a level – show what is uncool, cool, ice and sub-zero – this will model what is expected for higher marks – hold your discussion around this.

4. In one of the papers the children are asked to write an eyewitness account of an incident where a fox ran into the road, a car swerves and hits a tree – What experience will a Y6 child have had of this? When will they ever have seen this happen? Y6 (especially boys) would want to write about death! One possibility for this would be to use Curse of the Were-rabbit. In the opening scene an alarm goes off in a garden and Wallace and Gromit come to the rescue. Whilst they are capturing what ever it is we see a couple of people looking out of the window at what is happening and then the camera flicks back to the action again. Use this as a stimulus for the pupils writing – you are the people watching – report on what you see. Use drama to hot-seat, thought track and interview these people. Another stimulus could be using Madagascar where all the animals are on the underground.

5. In one of the SATs papers (Y5) the pupils are asked to write about Oran’s boots – he is an alien. Pupils need to write a set of instructions for them – When have pupils had the experience of these boots? Consider using Back to the Future as a stimulus – Marty puts on some boots – no need for shoe laces, they automatically adjust to his size; what else can they do? Get the pupils to design and make a pair (could be an old pair of boots decorated up) – make a remote control etc. Now we are going to make a promotional video / instructional video for them. To show it can walk up walls – decorate the floor as a wall and use the camera on its side – when played back the child will be walking up a wall etc. The pupils can then use this as a stimulus for their writing – instructions, safety advice etc. Pupils could put them into a context e.g. a sports star etc – what would they want to help them? This could then extend to adverts for the product – persuasive writing.

6. One of the papers is based on reviewing the ‘Pack it in bag’ – what opportunities do pupils have to review products like this and try to develop them? Buy a cheap back pack – what can we fit in it that we need for school? Think about books, P.E kit, pencil case etc. Then use ‘Pimp My Ride’ (video clips / computer game) as a stimulus – show what they do to cars – before and after shot – by the end there are lots of gadgets – TV’s, I-Pods etc put in – would any of this be useful in our back packs? Get the pupils to design them – this could lead to advertising them – persuasive writing.

7. One of the questions is to advertise / promote a local area to develop from a waste ground to a park area with a pond, vegetable patch, leisure area etc. How often have pupils had this experience of seeing the change occur and the benefits of it? Take pupils to a local piece of waste ground / car park / old field etc and film what is there – graffiti, rubbish etc. Interview the pupils about what they think of this and how the space is being used. Then take them (school trip?) to an environmental area – video it and interview pupils about their opinions on how the space is used and who can benefit from it / what they can do there. Have pupils in the various sections demonstrating how it can be used – relaxing, playing, gardening etc. When back in class get pupils to design a model to scale if possible of this wasteland and what they want to turn it in to. Get them to present it like Dragons Den – to get money for funding – show a clip of dragons den as an example. Use the Head etc as the Dragons and present the reasons why this should be developed.

8. One of the tasks is to persuade people to recycle and water resourcefully – how do pupils know the impact of this? Where can they see it? Use clips from Wall-e to show the state of the Earth due to the amount of waste produced. Also use the junkyard scene from The Iron Giant to show the waste. Take the pupils to a rubbish dump and look at how much can be recycled etc – use this as a stimulus for their writing so they can see the effects of not caring for the environment. Invite the local council into school to talk about this issue – interview them and record this. Produce this like a news report – play clips from the films on the IWB behind the pupils – have them sat in front at the ‘news desk’ reporting on the state of the earth.

9. One of the tasks was for pupils to produce a diary from a brother and sister about their time on an outdoor adventure weekend – they needed to show the contrast in their thoughts – How many children have been on something like this to use as a reference when writing? Take pupils on a visit to an outward bound centre or do tree climbing, team games, orienteering, blind folded activities, trim trail, obstacle course, nature trail, nature collection etc – a range of activities that will appeal to boys and some that will appeal to girls. Interview them on camera prior to the activity – thoughts / feelings etc and then afterward – again thoughts, feelings etc. Video all of the activities as well and use the interviews and footage of the activities as a stimulus for writing.

10. Another SATs activity for the pupil was to produce an information report about a new species of animal that has been found – not many pupils have ever experienced this. Use The Curse of the Were-rabbit as a stimulus where they are in the church looking at the book of monsters – it refers to The Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot – Ask the pupils to complete a KWL grid for each of these as they should have heard of these ‘creatures’ – research them and create a report. Explain that it’s the same theory for The Were-rabbit – complete a KWL grid and make up the information. This could be extended for narrative – stories / legends, also eye-witness reports / newspapers of sightings of the monster, link it to science with phases of the moon – when is the next full moon – plot on a calendar. Create traps to catch it and advertise -persuasive writing.

11. Pupils have had to produce a bi / autobiography of a famous character – who they had never heard of or had any reason to. Think about putting it into a context they are interested in – sports, superheroes etc. Think about superheroes e.g. Superman – use a KWL grid and plan some questions. Watch clips of the clip to track his life – leaving Krypton, life with the Clarks and his school life (being bullied), joining the daily mail as Clark and then as Superman. This could also be linked to Christopher Reeve and produce the same for him. Use clips from ‘This is your Life’ – do the same for Superman.

12. If pupils need to produce a news report on an event consider how often they realistically have to do this or know about events to produce news reports. Show pupils clips from e.g. Superman – the helicopter crash. There is a film crew at the bottom of the building recording. Get the pupils stood by the IWB acting as though they are there on scene reporting and interviewing bystanders. Flick back to ‘the studio’ – have a table sat in front of the board like a news desk etc. Use clips from something like Newsround or another early news programme as a stimulus so pupils can hear the vocab and see the structure. News reports could be produced on anything – severe weather (if we have any e.g. snow), something missing, big events in the local area etc.

13. In one of the SATs paper pupils had to produce a play script about asking to stay up late to watch television. On the whole pupils probably wouldn’t use a range of vocab and sentence structure. This is probably very relevant to their personal experinece but if we think about what children say in this scenario they would use fairly simple language and short sentences – generally winging till they get what they want – without the need for many stage directions. Use a stimulus such as Charlie and the Chocolate factory where the characters are very animated. Watch clips such as where they enter the factory and rush to eat things on mute – what would the stage direction / speech be. Then progress to turning the image off but having the voice -based on tone of voice what would the stage direction be? This would progress to what happened next – e.g. in one of the sweet invention rooms. Pupils benefit from hearing and seeing how this would work – obviously acting it out as well – give the children different roles. Hot seat them to establish characteristics etc then these can be portrayed through their role-play and then will feed in to their writing.