Grammar practice for Year 6

Grammar makes up the largest share of marks in SATs Paper 1. Children who lose marks here often understand the concept but struggle to identify it quickly under test conditions. Targeted practice on the right topics, using both papers and Kidfriendly together, closes that gap more reliably than broad revision.

High-impact grammar topics

These are the areas that appear most often and cost the most marks when children are underprepared:

• Verb tense consistency. Questions ask children to select or correct verb forms within a passage. Errors usually come from mixing past and present without noticing.
• Subordinate and relative clauses. Children need to identify, add, or punctuate these. The challenge is recognising where one clause ends and another begins.
• Modal verbs. Tested through sentence completion or identification. Children sometimes confuse modals with ordinary verbs.
• Word classes in context. A word like "light" can be a noun, verb, or adjective. SATs questions test whether children can identify the class a word belongs to in a specific sentence, not in isolation.
• Active and passive voice. Children must recognise and sometimes convert between the two. The passive often trips children who have not practised it explicitly.
• Subjunctive mood. Appears less frequently, but when it does, unprepared children rarely get it right.

If your child can handle these six areas confidently, most of the grammar section of Paper 1 will feel manageable.

Grammar practice with Kidfriendly

Kidfriendly works through grammar topics systematically, one concept at a time. Instead of mixing grammar, punctuation, and spelling together, it isolates grammar so your child can focus on whichever topic needs the most work.

Each session is designed to be short and specific:

• 5-to-10-minute sessions on a single grammar concept,
• immediate feedback so your child corrects mistakes in the moment,
• spaced repetition that revisits weaker topics after a gap.

Kidfriendly also tracks grammar progress separately from punctuation and spelling, so you can see whether grammar is the area holding your child back or whether their time is better spent elsewhere. An estimated SATs score and experimental SAT-day projection give you a sense of where things stand before the exam.

Start grammar practice with Kidfriendly →

Grammar practice on paper

Grammar is tested in Paper 1 of the SATs GPS assessment (45 minutes, 50 marks shared with punctuation). There is no standalone grammar paper. Questions range from single-word identification to rewriting whole sentences.

Official past papers are the best way to practise under realistic conditions. Use them to:

• learn the exact question formats SATs use for grammar,
• practise reading questions carefully (many grammar marks are lost to misreading, not misunderstanding),
• identify which grammar topics are genuinely weak versus which ones just need more familiarity with the test wording.

You do not need to complete a full paper every time. Working through just the grammar questions from a single paper is a focused and effective session. Sit with your child early on and discuss why an answer is right. Save full timed papers for later, once the format feels familiar.

Papers and mark schemes are available at KS2 SPaG papers.

How to use papers and Kidfriendly together

A practical routine that works well:

1. Use Kidfriendly for regular grammar sessions. Short daily practice keeps concepts fresh and helps your child build accuracy on their weakest topics.

2. Every 1 to 2 weeks, try a paper (or the grammar questions from one). This builds exam familiarity and gives you a realistic check on progress.

3. Use paper results to guide Kidfriendly focus. If a paper shows your child losing marks on relative clauses, focus Kidfriendly sessions there. Papers diagnose; Kidfriendly drills.