Year 6 SATS Resources

By Year 6, the positive habits developed throughout Key Stage 2 continue to matter.

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Reading widely, discussing books, discovering ambitious vocabulary, listening to audiobooks and podcasts, and engaging with interesting ideas beyond the classroom all contribute to confident, capable English.

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Take a look back at our Year 3, Year 4 and Year 5 English pages for ideas that remain just as valuable. In Year 6, the focus moves towards secure application, deeper thinking, independence and precision. Children should increasingly understand their own strengths, recognise where they need further practice and know which strategies help them improve.

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With SATs taking place during Year 6, there is naturally an additional focus on assessment. Good preparation does not need to mean endless test papers. Strong knowledge, purposeful practice and confident exam technique work together to help children show what they are truly capable of.

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• Keep reading widely. Encourage a rich mixture of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, newspapers and magazines. Increasing the level of challenge gradually exposes children to more sophisticated vocabulary, sentence structures, themes and ideas.

• Expect deeper thinking. Move beyond “What happened?” and encourage children to explore why. Why did a character behave that way? What might the author be suggesting? How has a particular atmosphere been created? What evidence supports that interpretation?

• Ask, “Why that word?” When an interesting word or description appears, encourage your child to think about why the author chose that particular language. What does the word suggest? What picture does it create? What feeling does it evoke? Would a different word have created the same effect?

• Explore the impact on the reader. Ask questions such as “How does that description make you feel?”, “What does the author want us to imagine?” or “What impression does this give us of the character?” Children are moving beyond spotting a technique towards understanding what the author is trying to achieve with it.

• Make evidence a habit. Encourage your child to return to the text rather than relying on memory or guesswork. Ask, “Where is your evidence?”, “Which words tell you that?” or “Can you prove that from the text?”

• Develop inference deliberately. Inference requires children to combine clues within the text with what they already understand. Encourage them to explain not only what they think, but how they reached that conclusion.

• Keep vocabulary growing. Continue exploring unfamiliar and ambitious words through context, synonyms, antonyms and word families. Discuss subtle differences between similar words and why one might be more effective than another. A broad and precise vocabulary supports reading, comprehension and writing.

• Keep building their personal Writer's Bank. The collections begun in Year 5 can continue to grow. Favourite words, phrases, similes, metaphors, descriptions and themed vocabulary banks can all become valuable sources of inspiration. In Year 6, take this a step further: alongside a favourite piece of language, consider why it works, the effect it creates and how the technique might inspire something original.

• Read like a writer. Look closely at the craft behind writing your child admires. Has the author chosen a particularly powerful verb? Used an unexpected metaphor? Personified the weather? Varied sentence length to build tension? Repeated something deliberately? The question becomes not simply “What has the author done?” but “Why have they done it, and what impact does it have?”

• Apply the technique, not the words. If your child admires something an author has done, encourage them to experiment with the same technique in their own writing. If an author uses personification to make a storm feel threatening, could your child use personification to make a forest feel welcoming? If a precise verb reveals a character's nervousness, what verb could they choose to reveal a completely different emotion? This is how reading can begin to actively strengthen writing.

• Write with purpose and audience in mind. A persuasive argument, newspaper report, formal letter, explanation and narrative should not all sound the same. Encourage children to think about who they are writing for, why they are writing and the vocabulary, tone and structure most appropriate for the task.

• Edit with high expectations. By Year 6, editing should go well beyond correcting spelling mistakes. Encourage children to refine vocabulary, remove unnecessary repetition, improve sentence structures, strengthen cohesion and consider whether their writing achieves the effect they intended.

• Know the gaps and tackle them. There is little value in repeatedly practising something that is already secure while avoiding something difficult. If inference is weak, target inference. If punctuation is inconsistent, focus on punctuation. If spelling patterns are causing difficulty, revisit them. Identify it, practise it, strengthen it and move forward.

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Developing Strong Exam Technique

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By Year 6, children are preparing to apply their English knowledge confidently under assessment conditions. SATs should not define the year, but becoming familiar with the demands of an assessment can remove uncertainty and help children perform at their best.

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• Know what the question is asking. Encourage children to identify the important words before answering. Explain, find, give two, using evidence from the text — small details can make an important difference.

• Match the answer to the marks available. A one-mark retrieval question does not require a paragraph, while a higher-mark inference question may need a more developed answer supported by evidence.

• Return to the text. Even when children think they remember the answer, encourage them to locate the relevant section. The evidence they need may lie in one carefully chosen word or phrase.

• Answer precisely. More writing does not automatically mean a better answer. Encourage children to answer the question that has actually been asked and provide the information needed clearly and concisely.

• Develop pace without sacrificing accuracy. Once the underlying skills are secure, timed practice can help children become comfortable managing a complete paper. The aim is efficient, thoughtful working rather than rushing.

• Don't get stuck. If a question is taking too long, encourage children to move on and return to it later. One difficult question should not prevent them from collecting marks elsewhere.

• Check strategically. If time remains, return first to unanswered questions and those that caused uncertainty. Check that every part of the question has been addressed and that evidence has been included where needed.

• Use mistakes intelligently. Rather than simply recording a score, investigate why marks were lost. Was there a gap in knowledge? Was an unfamiliar word misunderstood? Was the question misread? Was the evidence too vague? Did rushing cause an avoidable mistake? Find the reason, then target the solution.