Year 6 teaching guides
Practical guides to every grammar, spelling and maths topic in the Year 6 SATs: what to teach, what children get wrong, how it's tested, and free worksheets to go with each one.
Grammar
Every grammar and punctuation topic in the Year 6 SATs, with examples, common mistakes and teaching ideas.
- Word classesNouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, determiners and conjunctions.
- Clauses and conjunctionsClauses are the building blocks of every sentence, and conjunctions are what join them.
- Relative clauses and expanded noun phrasesBoth are ways of packing more information about a noun into a sentence.
- Fronted adverbialsA fronted adverbial is a word or phrase at the start of a sentence that tells you when, where, how or why something happens, followed by a comma.
- TensesBy Year 6, children need to recognise and use the simple, perfect and progressive forms in the past and present, and keep the tense consistent through a piece of writing.
- Modal verbs, the passive and the subjunctiveThese three topics are where the SATs reach furthest beyond everyday talk.
- Sentence forms, capital letters and end punctuationThese are the first punctuation skills children learn, and they are still on the SATs in Year 6.
- Commas, inverted commas and punctuating speechCommas are the punctuation mark children use most and get wrong most.
- ApostrophesAn apostrophe does one of two jobs: it shows that letters are missing, or it shows that something belongs to someone.
- Colons, semicolons, dashes and bracketsThis is the punctuation Year 6 adds on top of everything else: parenthesis, colons, semicolons, single dashes, hyphens, ellipses and bullet points.
- Prefixes, suffixes, Standard English and formalityThe vocabulary questions in the SATs check that children understand how words are built and how to choose the right word for the situation.
Spelling
Every Year 6 spelling pattern, with the rules behind it and word lists with dictation sentences.
- Teaching Year 6 spellingA practical overview of Year 6 spelling: what the SATs expect, how the free word lists are organised, a weekly routine that works, and a guide to every spelling pattern on the lists.
- The 'shun' endings: -tion, -sion, -ssion and -cianThe 'shun' sound at the end of a word has four common spellings, and choosing the right one is one of the most frequent spelling decisions in Year 6.
- -cious, -tious, -cial and -tialThese endings make the 'shus' sound in delicious and the 'shul' sound in special.
- -ture and -sure endingsThese two endings look almost identical but make different sounds: -ture says 'cher' as in picture, and -sure says 'zher' as in measure.
- -able or -ible? -ant or -ent? Endings that sound alikeThese suffix pairs sound identical in normal speech, so children can't hear which one to use.
- Adding suffixes: the spelling rulesFour rules cover almost every change to a root word when a suffix is added: double the consonant, drop the e, change y to i, or just add it.
- Double letters: accommodate, embarrass and friendsDouble consonants cause more Year 6 spelling errors than almost anything else, because you can't hear them.
- Silent letters and the many sounds of oughSilent letters and ough are where English spelling stops matching sounds.
- Long vowel sounds and their many spellingsEach long vowel sound in English can be spelt five or six different ways.
- Other vowel sounds: or, ur, ar, ow, ear, air and oyThese vowel sounds are mostly written with r-controlled spellings, digraphs and a few odd ones out.
- Spellings from Greek and French: ch, ph, -que, soft c and gSome of the oddest English spellings make perfect sense once you know where the word came from.
- Homophones, prefixes and tricky wordsThree groups that need different strategies.
Maths
Every strand of Year 6 maths, with worked examples, misconceptions and worksheets at three levels.
- Place value, rounding, negative numbers and Roman numeralsPlace value underpins every written method in Year 6 maths.
- Column addition and subtraction, estimating and checkingBy Year 6, children should be fluent with column addition and subtraction for large numbers and decimals.
- Multiplication and division: short and long methodsLong multiplication and long division are the heavyweight methods of Year 6, and they carry two marks each on the SATs arithmetic paper.
- Factors, multiples, primes, squares and cubesThese number properties come up again and again in the SATs reasoning papers, often in puzzle form.
- Word problems and remaindersMany children who can calculate perfectly well still lose marks on word problems.
- Fractions: equivalence, comparing, adding and subtractingAlmost every fraction skill in Year 6 depends on one idea: equivalent fractions.
- Multiplying and dividing fractions, and fractions of amountsMultiplying fractions surprises children because the answer gets smaller.
- Decimals and percentagesDecimals and percentages are fractions in disguise.
- Ratio, scale factor and sharingRatio is new to the Year 6 curriculum, and it builds on multiplication, division and fractions.
- Algebra: sequences, function machines and formulaeAlgebra is a new strand in Year 6, but it builds on things children already do: spotting patterns, using inverse operations and working out missing numbers.
- Measurement, money and timeMeasurement questions mix place value, decimals and problem solving with real-world units.
- Perimeter, area and volumePerimeter measures around a shape, area measures the surface it covers, and volume measures the space a 3-D shape takes up.
- Shape, angles, coordinates and statisticsGeometry and statistics questions make up a good share of the SATs reasoning papers.