Year 6 SATs Revision Tips

If your child is approaching their Year 6 SATs, then doing revision with them is one of the most effective ways you can help them improve their skills. After all, not only is your knowledge invaluable, but you can also provide emotional support that will help them perform at their best and to feel confident about their SATs. With this in mind, here are our 5 favourite tips so you can help your child with their SATs revision.

Adopt a positive mental attitude

Children love taking cues from their parents. So, if you’re positive, upbeat and treat revision like a fun activity, your child is more likely to engage and enjoy it too.

Never treat SATs revision like it’s a chore. Whilst revising, always focus on the positive elements of what your child is learning. For example, if you’re doing some revision for your child’s SATs English papers and they get a spelling wrong, focus on what they did correctly and how much progress they’ve made, rather than focusing on their mistakes.

Make a schedule… and stick to it

One way you can really help your child is to bring structure to their learning. The best way of doing this is by making a revision chart for your child (they can help you to create this) that shows what your child is aiming to learn, and when.

Once you’ve made this, it’s important to try and stick to it. This will then show your child how committed to their learning you are and means they’re much more likely to take it seriously.

When creating your plan, it’s a good idea to work backwards from the Year 6 SATs dates and first work out how many weeks you have left until the test. Then you can make sure you’re covering everything you need to in the required time.

As you’re devising your timetable, try and split each session into manageable chunks. So rather than blocking out a two-hour chunk for revision purposes, try to schedule short, focused sessions that allow you to revise little and often. 15 minutes of focused learning is much more productive than a one hour session where a child feels restless or distracted.

Create the right environment

Any time you spend revising with your child will be useful. But, if you can create the right revision environment, then the time you spend revising is likely to have the greatest success.

Make sure there are no distractions in the room (such as a television or radio) and try to make the environment mimic the classroom. This means no phones, no snacks and water only; if your revision sessions are short, it won’t be long until the session is over and snacks can be enjoyed then!

Keep the room quiet so your child can focus. It’s best to try and talk only about the subject you’re revising, so that the session remains short and focused. Any other talking and chatting can wait until after the revision session, much like it would in a classroom!

Use practice papers & online revision tools

A revision platform like Year 6 Buddy is a great idea to get children familiar with the typical format of SATs papers. The advantage of an online platform is that a child can get through more practise than they can using paper versions of the tests. Also, with SATs Boot Camp the tests are marked instantly, so areas that need more practise can quickly be identified.

Once children have a significant amount of SATs revision and practise under their belt, another good way of helping your child is to start working through some Year 6 SATs practice papers, which can be done on Year 6 Buddy. This way, you’ll both be able to familiarise yourself with the style of the questions presented in the exam, and your child will be able to learn more about what the exam actually looks like. The exams will also seem much less scary when it comes to exam week if your child is really familiar with the types of questions that come up in the papers.

On our website you can also find past SATs papers for KS2 that you can download for free and work through together.

Do a mock exam… then debrief

Once you’ve completed enough revision together that your child is feeling more confident, it’s time to test their knowledge by getting them to do a paper by themselves in a timed environment that mimics the actual exam.

So, download Year 6 Maths SATs papers or English Papers and ask your child to complete a paper. Then, once you’ve marked the paper with them, we advise that you go through the paper together. In this debrief, focus both on what they’ve done well and areas where they could improve. Crucially, as well as showing them the questions they got wrong, show them how and why they got the answer wrong (in a constructive manner) and what needs to be done to arrive at a correct answer for those questions.

Not only will this improve your child’s knowledge before the exam, but it will also show you any gaps in their knowledge that you can then focus on together.