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Ash Hill Primary School

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What is SPAG?

Wondering what SPAG means? Unsure where to start to help your child? You've come to the right place!

 

What is SPAG?

SPAG stands for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar. SPAG was introduced a few years ago, in the 2014 remodelling of the National Curriculum. It is something schools must teach, and your child will sit a SPAG test at the end of year 6.

 

Is it difficult?

At Ash Hill, our pupils do find the Year 6 SPAG test very tricky, although nationally pupils perform well in this test (see the data on this here). However, our pupils are excellent writers and make exceptional progress in writing, so why is the test a challenge for them?

 

Why is it tricky?

The SPAG curriculum is full of new terminology and technical vocabulary that you or your child might not have seen before. For example, do you know what an expanded noun phrase is? Unless you have looked into SPAG before, you probably don't, but we bet you use them all the time!

Expanded noun phrases are small groups of words that contain a noun plus other words to describe it to add description or specification e.g. lots of yummy, cold ice-cream

Pupils use SPAG well all the time, but they might find it difficult to use and understand the technical language of SPAG.

 

How do I know what my child should know?

This year we are working on reviewing the curriculum we offer. This has included looking at how and when we teach the SPAG content from the National Curriculum. To help us, and you, we have created some documents that show what content is covered in each year group and when it is introduced. You can access them here.

If you would like to brush up on your SPAG knowledge, the National Curriculum has a helpful glossary, which you can access here (provided by Twinkl). There are lots of websites that help too, such as The School Run and Oxford Owl.

 

How can I help my child?

Practice makes perfect! The more children are exposed to the technical vocabulary in the curriculum, the more they will recognise and be able to use it. We are using resources like MC Grammar to familiarise children with the language and to help them remember the meaning of it. Using the coverage documents, you can see what your child has already learned and then use the videos to help them remember the definitions of the vocabulary.

Pupils who read lots find SPAG much easier. This is because they are used to seeing lots of examples of grammar and punctuation, so when we name it for them they have examples to 'hook' their understanding on to. Continue to encourage your child to read every day. If you can read with them, perhaps you would like to try spotting SPAG in their book?

 

Let us know how useful you found this post and what you get up to at home to help your child improve their SPAG skills and knowledge.