Top Ten Tips For SATS Revision

Helping your child revise or prepare for SATS needn’t be a time consuming job if you get the basics right.  These tips will hopefully help you to do that:

1/ Your attitude and consistency will define how well things go:

• Children will pick up on everything you do.
• If you set a plan and don’t stick to it things won’t work, if you are grumpy or rushed they may well be too, if you don’t help them properly they won’t give of their best.

2/ Schedule time:

• It’s a good idea to have a set time for work to happen.
• In some cases parents will just be creating clear time for the enhanced homework that some schools give to be done properly.
• In other cases parents will be actively helping their children.  In both cases setting a convenient time for work to happen is the first essential step.

3/Reward attitude and effort not results:

• Children who are ready to start work at the appointed time, without having to be ‘encouraged’ and who give of their best during the work period will end up doing as well as they can in the test.
• Attitude and effort leads directly to children doing themselves justice.
• We recommend you reward the building blocks of success (attitude and effort) and not focus on results.

4/ Be Patient:

• Parents lead busy lives but whatever stress you bring to the table will infect the session.
• If you need ten minutes to breathe and organise yourself before the appointed hour then make sure you allow for that.
• Remember children will learn more, become more confident and do better with patient help.
• If you find yourself getting annoyed because your child has forgotten something you thought they would know then find a patient way of expressing yourself- it’ll yield better results.

5/ Be positive, smile, have fun:

• If you have got the rewards element right then the chances are you are both sitting down ready to work which is more than half the battle.
• Now ensure you make it fun and a major step in achieving that is to smile.
• Having fun means being light-hearted with their mistakes and your own, you may find you don’t know the answer to something or doubt yourself – have fun looking it up.
• If you can make sessions as light-hearted as possible then learning will be more effective.

6/ Create a good environment:

• Make sure you are in a quiet room away from distractions.
• If a ‘mock’ test is being done this is especially important.

7/ Be well equipped:

• The last thing you need having sat down at the right time with a smile on both your faces is to then find you don’t have paper or pens or whatever items you need for the work at hand.
• A trip to the stationery shop before the revision starts is often a good idea.

8/ Bed Times:

• It is very important that children have enough sleep before exams and we’d suggest they will cope better with the increased workloads beforehand if special attention is paid to this.
• Every family is different but some will naturally know that bed times could be tightened up on.
• A child who has slept properly and isn’t tired will do much better and is much more likely to deliver their best work on the day.

9/ A good start in the morning:

• This isn’t just about eating and drinking properly first thing but also about not being in a rush ( with the raised stress levels that go with that), it’s about being prepared and organised.
• In the run up to the exam it’s a good idea to get to school early each day. Your child will feel more in control as a result.

10/ Screen time adjustments:

• Every family will have their own rules over screens and will be aware already if screens have become a problem.
• If they have become a problem then you have a harder task ahead of you making sure that a ‘learning time’ is created in the day when work can happen.
• It’s also important to remember that relaxing through exercise is very important.
• Children will benefit from having learning time, screen time and exercise time, but if they overly focussed on screen time then they are likely to not do as well as they could have done.

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