If your child is in Year 6, you’ve probably heard the term “SPaG” thrown around at parents’ evenings. It stands for Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar — and it’s one of the three KS2 SATs papers your child will sit in May 2026.
Unlike reading or maths, SPaG often gets overlooked in home revision. Many parents assume grammar is either something you “just know” or something too technical to help with. Neither is true. The SPaG paper tests specific, learnable skills — and with the right approach, your child can pick up marks quickly.
What the KS2 SPaG Test Actually Involves
The SPaG assessment is split into two papers, both sat on the same day during SATs week (Monday 12th May 2026):
- Paper 1: Grammar and Punctuation — 45 minutes, worth 50 marks. Your child answers short questions about sentence structure, word classes, punctuation rules, and grammatical terms.
- Paper 2: Spelling — approximately 15 minutes, worth 20 marks. A teacher reads out 20 sentences, each with a missing word. Your child writes the correct spelling in their answer booklet.
Together, these two papers contribute to your child’s overall English score. The total of 70 marks is converted to a scaled score, with 100 being the “expected standard.”
The Grammar Topics Your Child Needs to Know
The grammar paper covers content taught across both KS1 and KS2. That’s a lot of ground — but certain topics come up repeatedly. Here are the areas worth focusing on:
Word Classes
Your child should be able to identify and explain nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, determiners, pronouns, and conjunctions. Questions might ask them to circle the adjective in a sentence or replace a noun with a pronoun.
Quick home practice: Pick a sentence from a book and ask your child to label each word’s class. Start simple — “The big dog ran quickly” — and build up.
Sentence Types and Clauses
Children need to know the difference between main clauses and subordinate clauses, and how to use subordinating conjunctions (because, although, when, if) and coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, so, yet).
They should also recognise the four sentence types: statements, questions, commands, and exclamations.
Quick home practice: Give your child a main clause — “The cat sat on the mat” — and ask them to add a subordinate clause. Then swap it around: start with the subordinate clause and see if they remember the comma rule.
Verb Tenses and Forms
The test regularly asks about present perfect (“I have eaten”) vs simple past (“I ate”), progressive forms (“I was running”), and subject-verb agreement. Modal verbs (could, should, might, will) also appear frequently.
Quick home practice: Write a short paragraph in the wrong tense and ask your child to correct it. This is surprisingly fun and builds awareness fast.
Active and Passive Voice
This is a Year 6 topic that trips up many children. “The dog chased the cat” (active) vs “The cat was chased by the dog” (passive). Children need to identify which is which and sometimes rewrite one as the other.
Quick home practice: Take turns converting sentences between active and passive. Make it silly — “The sandwich was eaten by the alien” — and it becomes a game rather than a chore.
Punctuation: Where Easy Marks Live
Punctuation questions are often the most straightforward on the paper, yet children still lose marks through carelessness or gaps in knowledge. Key areas include:
- Commas — in lists, after fronted adverbials (“Later that evening, she returned”), and to separate clauses
- Apostrophes — for contraction (don’t, I’m) and possession (the dog’s bone, the children’s playground). Plural possession is the tricky one: “the teachers’ staffroom”
- Inverted commas — correct use of speech marks, including punctuation inside them
- Colons and semicolons — introduced in Year 6. Colons to introduce a list or explanation; semicolons to join two related main clauses
- Brackets, dashes, and commas for parenthesis — your child should know all three and when each is appropriate
Quick home practice: Write out a paragraph with all the punctuation removed and ask your child to add it back. Compare their version with the original. Discuss any differences — there’s often more than one correct answer, which builds confidence.
Spelling: The Paper Parents Forget About
The spelling paper is worth 20 marks — that’s nearly a third of the total SPaG score. Yet many families focus almost entirely on grammar revision and neglect spelling practice.
The spelling test targets specific patterns and rules from the Year 3/4 and Year 5/6 word lists, including:
- Words with prefixes (un-, dis-, mis-, re-, pre-, anti-)
- Words with suffixes (-tion, -sion, -ious, -cious, -ably, -ibly)
- Homophones (their/there/they’re, affect/effect, practice/practise)
- Silent letters (knight, doubt, solemn)
- Words from the statutory word lists (accommodate, correspond, immediately, necessary)
What works at home:
- Look, cover, write, check — the classic method still works. Five words a day is enough.
- Break words into syllables — “sep-a-rate” not “seprate”. This single strategy prevents dozens of common errors.
- Spot patterns — learn “-ough” words together (though, through, thorough, thought). Grouping by pattern is far more effective than random lists.
- Use the words in sentences — spelling in isolation is harder than spelling in context. If your child can use “necessary” correctly in a sentence, they’ll remember how to spell it.
Common Mistakes to Watch For
After years of SATs results, certain mistakes appear again and again:
- Confusing “its” and “it’s” — “it’s” always means “it is” or “it has”. The possessive has no apostrophe.
- Forgetting commas after fronted adverbials — “Yesterday we went to the park” needs a comma after “Yesterday”.
- Mixing up homophones — especially their/there/they’re and your/you’re.
- Not reading questions carefully — “Circle the two adverbs” means two, not one.
- Rushing the spelling paper — children get each word read aloud twice. Using both readings matters.
How to Practise Without the Pressure
The most effective SPaG revision doesn’t feel like revision at all. Here are approaches that work:
- Grammar treasure hunts: Challenge your child to find five examples of a grammatical feature in a book they’re reading. Subordinate clauses in Harry Potter? Passive voice in a newspaper article?
- Editing games: Write a deliberately terrible paragraph full of errors and let your child be the teacher. Red pen and all.
- Daily spelling snap: Five words at breakfast. Quick, painless, consistent. Consistency beats intensity every time.
- Past paper questions: Work through individual questions together rather than full papers. Discuss why each answer is correct — understanding the rule matters more than getting it right by instinct.
How Smarty Panthers Can Help
Our KS2 learning platform includes focused grammar and spelling activities mapped to the SATs content. Children practise specific skills with instant feedback that explains the underlying rule — not just whether they got the answer right.
It’s designed for short, regular sessions — 15 to 20 minutes a day — which is exactly how SPaG skills stick. Try it free and give your child a confidence boost before SATs week arrives.
Your SPaG Revision Checklist
- Can your child name the main word classes and spot them in sentences?
- Do they understand the difference between main and subordinate clauses?
- Can they use apostrophes correctly — both for contraction and possession?
- Are they practising spelling patterns, not just random word lists?
- Do they read SPaG questions carefully, including how many answers are needed?
- Have they practised with the spelling paper format (words read aloud in sentences)?
If you can tick most of those boxes, your child is well prepared. The SPaG paper rewards knowledge of specific rules and patterns — and those are exactly the things you can practise together at home. A few minutes a day between now and May can make a real difference.
