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Free Key Stage 1 SATS Math papers to download?

33 replies

Strix · 22/02/2010 09:29

Does anyone know where to get practise papers for free? Allegedly there are are free downloads. But all I can find is books to purchase, and then I have to wait for them to arrive in the post. Something I could download andf print would be great if such a thing exists.

Does anyone have a link they could share?

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Honeybarbara · 22/02/2010 09:39

Brightminds have some

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Devexity · 22/02/2010 13:37
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Strix · 22/02/2010 16:57

Thank you.

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IAmTheEasterBunny · 22/02/2010 18:19

Errrr......why would you want to?

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PlumBumMum · 22/02/2010 18:24

oh I printed some for dd1 will go see if it is the same link as above

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PlumBumMum · 22/02/2010 18:26

yeap same as devexity

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IAmTheEasterBunny · 22/02/2010 19:56

Same question - why would you want to?

SATs papers at KS1 are really really unimportant and not worth spending money on. All levels at KS1 are teacher assessments, not test results.

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PlumBumMum · 22/02/2010 20:08

IAm I actually printed off key stage 2 for my dd1 she is always asking me to make up work for her so I print off free worksheets

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Strix · 22/02/2010 20:29

Why would I want to? Because math is fun.

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roisin · 22/02/2010 20:46

SATs aren't fun though. SATs are dull and dire and boring. They belong in school.

If your children want to do maths at home there are loads of fun things to do rather than practice SATs papers.

This is one of the most depressing threads I've read in a long time.

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Strix · 22/02/2010 20:54

It depends what you do with the paper. I just use them to guide me through what they study at school. If DD struggles with the problem I offer help. (I am not allowed to help before she asks for help or she gets really annoyed with me).

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Devexity · 22/02/2010 22:45

Why would I want to?

I have no idea what the curriculum actually looks like at the arbitrary, not-very-meaningful testing of skills end of it. I used the test papers to understand what my kid is expected to try and do and the methods he is expected to use while doing so.

Like Strix said, it's a guide for me, not my son.

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OneMoreCupofCoffee · 22/02/2010 22:51

I was having a sneaky peek at the Sats papers on this thread, my dd (2) was passing and recognised it from stuff they are doing at school - she asked if I could print it out so she could colour it in and make the maths look pretty - see there is a way to make this stuff fun!

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IAmTheEasterBunny · 23/02/2010 00:14

Why don't you ask your child's teacher? Don't they give you info at school about what is expected in Y2? Also the primary framework for numeracy will spell out what is expected in Y2. A SATs paper gives a tiny snapshot.

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NoahAndTheWhale · 23/02/2010 00:21

Looking at the link, the most recent papers are from 2004. It seems likely some things will have changed in the 6 years since then.

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Devexity · 23/02/2010 06:36

Even if I did drop off and pick up my kid, I severely doubt his teacher would be willing to sit down and discuss the minutiae of the primary framework with me. And sweet Jesus the primary framework is enormous and exhausting. Spending 60 seconds scrolling through an old paper is a nice - if extremely facile - clarification of applied KS1 numeracy skills.

FWIW, I read all the EYFS profile stuff too. Am interested in education and all things pedagogical. Am caught in an ongoing and rather torrid love affair with late eighteenth-century curricula for home educated children. And, indeed, with parenthood. Why wouldn't I want to know about the often demented, governenmentally mandated criteria that shape my kid's experience of school?

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equisetum · 23/02/2010 06:58

I think the reason why people do practice papers is to saitsify themselves that their child is actually progressing.

Many a time the 5 minute parent consultation is all about how popular, lovely, kind child you have and not so much about their progress. I know this from experience and then found that my child was very much behind in his work, and needed me to help bring him on as it were.

As for the end of year copy and paste school reports.......

Saying this, I cetainly do not believe in testing testing testing for a child. But, do think we need to actively see for ourselves where our child is.

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mummyindisguise · 23/02/2010 08:07

devexity - oooh!! That sounds interesting...any links to the 18th century home ed stuff?

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Strix · 23/02/2010 09:49

"Why don't you ask your child's teacher?"

Because it appears that only parents who stand at the gate can talk to her.

"Don't they give you info at school about what is expected in Y2? "

I get a very very very brief summary of topics once a term. Nowhere near enough. Notes come home that say things like "We will be studying nets next week. Please send in a variety boxes to support this activity." which left me thinking "what the heck is a net?!"

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Devexity · 23/02/2010 09:55

Here's Practical Education, written by novelist Maria Edgeworth with her father, Richard in 1798:

tinyurl.com/yffkgzx

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Cortina · 23/02/2010 11:01

Devexity I share your interests and thanks for the link, sounds very interesting

I've been reading about how things were educationally in the nineteenth century and before. Largely it seems Latin and leadership were taught to the bright young people who were going to run the Parliament, Army and Church and needlework and diligence sums and obedience to the rest. School as 'monastery' v school as 'factory' (it doesn't seem that it has moved that far away from being factory- like in the main - even the architecture is similar -from what I can see/read). As on the production line, quality control is essential, so the 'products' are regularly tested and graded to make sure the operation has been successful. Claxton says:

If they are found to be faulty it is usually because they are intrinsically so ' 'low ability' or 'lazy' or, more rarely because the assembly-line worker, the teacher, is found not to be performing their operation properly. Occasionally revised operating instructions are issued centrally, telling the assembly-line worker that new, more efficient methods have been discovered and should be implemented - 'synthetic phonics' or the 'three part lesson' for example.

The work force itself cannot be entirely trusted to be effective and responsible, so every so often external, national forms of quality control are imposed and teams of inspectors visit the production line to make sure everything is being carried out as ordered. If not, the teacher technicians are told to pull their socks up, and in the last resort the management can be sacked and replaced. Though many of the operatives see themselves and their students in quite different terms.

As in the factory, the teacher-workers are supposed to be punctual, meticulous, and respectful of authority - and these qualities are also expected to be cultivated in the student-products. As they get nearer the end of the process, the students are encouraged to think, within reason, about what they are learning. Those who attend grammar school factories are allowed to think about what they were doing a bit more than those whose basic mental material is presumed to be lower quality, and who were sorted out and sent to less prestigious factories. Quality control requires considerable numbers of students to be graded as 'seconds' and 'rejects', but recently it has been thought that the workers shouldn't use that language for fear of damaging students self esteem so confusing forms of language have been developed that mask the continuing quality control operation.

A slightly different version of this assembly line metaphor would describe teachers as 'managers' and students as 'workers'. The classroom is a 'work-place' where students do 'work' which they sometimes have to continue or elaborate as 'homework'. They are told to 'get on with their work' and asked how their 'work' is coming on. As in a factory, work involves the completion of a task or the creation of a product that passes 'quality control'. If you continually produce such work you are classified as a 'good worker'.

The point is not to think about what you are doing, or develop any particular ability or understanding from doing it but the point is to get the job done and complete the work satisfactorily.

(I could go on but I'll spare you) Claxton is very interesting in his analogies. I think things have improved since he wrote this and his tone is deliberately amusing .

I am very curious to see what Maria Edgeworth 'valued' and suggested.

Joseph Payne in 1856 had some revolutionary ideas that children should be taught the arts of 'perception, reflection, judgment, ..reasoning'. They should be taught 'thinking' skills.

This went against the grain with the more prevalent Gradgrind type of education/views of time.

Payne criticised the educational reforms of 1862 and apparently his views chimed with those that criticised the National Curriculum in 2008:

We need no hesitation in pronouncing it to be mechanical in conception, mechanical in means, mechanical in results.

You can compare what Payne was driving at to what Harvard educationalist Ron Ritchart said in 2002:

We've come to mistake curricula, textbooks, standards, objectives, and tests as ends in themselves, rather than as a means to an end. Where are these standards and objectives taking us? What is the vision they are pointing towards? What purpose do they serve? What ideals guide us? Without ideals, we have nothing to aim for. Unlike standards, ideals can't be tested. But they can do something that standards cannot: they can motivate, inspire and direct our work.

(as quoted in Guy Claxton's book What's The Point of School).

Sorry if I derail thread a bit off to look at 'Practical Education'.

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NoahAndTheWhale · 23/02/2010 11:54

Strix I have realised who you used to be now (it was the nets that did it ).

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Strix · 23/02/2010 12:01

Sorry. 'tis not meant to be a secret.

resident American Owl

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NoahAndTheWhale · 23/02/2010 13:57

I wondered if that silly recent article might have prompted it.

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debs40 · 23/02/2010 14:22

Cortina, what a fascinating post.

"We've come to mistake curricula, textbooks, standards, objectives, and tests as ends in themselves, rather than as a means to an end. Where are these standards and objectives taking us? What is the vision they are pointing towards? What purpose do they serve? What ideals guide us?"

How true indeed. This mechanical view of education and its purpose sits so well with the functionnaires who often end up as heads these days. Fairly competent bureaucrats rule the world.

Have you seen the Ken Robinson piece on schools killing creativity?

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