Teach Primary 18.8

www.teachwire.net | 65 T he KS2 Mathematics suite of papers covers knowledge and skills taken from the whole KS2 curriculum, with arithmetic and reasoning skills equally tested. But, in order to be successful, is this all a Year 6 child needs to be confident with, or is there more to the maths SAT than just maths itself? So many words! The role of reading skills within these tests, and their impact on children’s maths SAT outcomes, is often underestimated. Picture yourself as an 11-year-old with the reasoning paper in front of you; the arithmetic paper is under your belt. You’ve got your mirror, pencil and ruler, and you open up the page, only to be confronted by a sheet full of words. “This is the maths SAT paper, not the reading one!” you say to yourself. It’s okay though – you’re up to the task, as you have a Year 6 teacher who has prepared you for this moment. You’ve been taught that knowing your times tables, how to multiply and divide fractions and interpret pie charts isn’t enough. Going the extra mile The KS2 maths SATs require a high level of reading ability. A child needs to be able to read problems that are worded in a complicated way, with a significant word count. They must be able to read these at a reasonable pace – while maintaining their understanding – to finish the paper in the given time. They need to discard information within the question that isn’t essential and locate the information that is, identifying key words and phrases in just the same way they would in the reading SAT paper. Skills in how to unpick questions and identify essential information are transferrable across the reading and reasoning papers and should be taught in a similar way. There are many acronyms out there which teach children to do this. To some extent it doesn’t matter which you use, it’s the skill that’s important. Reading skills for maths success What about the children who find these skills tricky? Something that many children with less confidence in maths may find extremely useful is the storyboard method. Why not turn your reasoning problem into a story board? Break it down into a set of pictures, each containing key information. Over the years, I've sent so many SAT papers away, in those dreaded envelopes, with mini story boards drawn throughout them, and they’ve resulted in great things! The accepted need to focus on developing vocabulary knowledge for success in the reading paper should also be applied to maths. Knowing synonyms for mathematical vocabulary is a key tool children can use to unlock meaning within maths questions. Can pupils, for example, find and copy a word that means ‘multiply’? To do this, they will need to be able to skim and scan the text for key words efficiently. The children should also be able to identify common question stems, and know what is being asked of them. Thinking logically One of the main exam techniques I teach children when tackling multiple-choice questions for the reading SAT is learning the process of elimination: referring back to the text throughout to decide whether each available answer is possible, definitely possible or impossible. Pupils soon see that transferring this skill to the mathematic reasoning papers also leads them to success. Finally, when one of those dreaded explanation maths questions raises its head, I've found nothing more effective than teaching children to answer them just as they would a three-mark question in the reading SAT paper. Make sure pupils are confident in unpicking a question to make a point, can provide an explanation using the information in the question or text, and explain the answer with a strong grasp of sentence stems. TP Not just NUMBERS Ruth Astley is a former assistant headteacher, SLE for assessment and English, and former LA moderation manager. Don’t overlook reading comprehension when prepping for maths SATs, says Ruth Astley “The KS2 maths SATs require a high level of reading ability” T EACH PR I MARY SAT S SPEC I A L I N AS SOC I A T I ON W I TH nature-makers.co.uk/coventry