Common SATs Grammar & Punctuation Mistakes (and How to Fix Them)

What goes wrong: Asked what class a word is, your child decides by how it looks — "it ends in -ing, so it must be a verb" — instead of looking at the job the word is doing in that sentence.

Why it happens: Many words change class depending on how they are used. The same word can be a verb in one sentence and a noun or an adjective in another, so there is no shortcut from the spelling alone. The GPS paper deliberately tests this by asking for the word class of one word in a given sentence, where the answer depends entirely on its role.

The test is always the same: look at the job the word is doing in this sentence. The spelling on its own tells you nothing.

The fix: Teach your child to read the whole sentence and ask what the word is doing: naming something (noun), describing an action or state (verb), describing a noun (adjective), or describing a verb (adverb). The ending never decides it on its own. See more on our word classes topic page.

What goes wrong: Your child writes a fronted adverbial — a word or phrase at the start of the sentence that says when, where or how — but leaves out the comma that should follow it.

Why it happens: A fronted adverbial sets the scene before the main clause, and the taught convention at KS2 is to mark that pause with a comma. The same applies when a subordinate clause comes first. Children who never pause to check the opening of a sentence lose an easy punctuation mark.

A main clause makes sense on its own (“the postman delivers our letters”). A subordinate clause does not (“Although it was raining”) — and when it is fronted it needs a comma too: “Although it was raining, we walked to school.”

The fix: Teach the habit of checking the start of every sentence: if it opens with a when/where/how phrase or a subordinate clause before the main idea, put a comma after it. See more on our fronted adverbials topic page.

What goes wrong: Your child adds an apostrophe to “its” to show possession — writing “it’s tail” — because they have learnt that an apostrophe shows belonging (the dog’s bowl). With “it”, that rule is reversed.

Why it happens: Apostrophes do two jobs: they show a contraction (it’s = it is, or it has) or they show possession (the dog’s bowl). The word “it” is the one exception parents and children trip over: the possessive is “its” with no apostrophe, and “it’s” only ever means “it is” or “it has”.

The simple test: read it as “it is”. “The robin built it is nest” makes no sense, so it must be the possessive “its” with no apostrophe. (For ordinary nouns the possessive does take an apostrophe: the dog’s bowl, the children’s toys.)

The fix: Whenever your child writes “it’s”, have them expand it to “it is” (or “it has”) in their head. If the sentence still makes sense, the apostrophe stays; if it does not, it should be “its”. See more on our apostrophes topic page.

What goes wrong: In a hypothetical sentence your child writes “If I was…”, which is fine in everyday speech but is not the formal structure the GPS paper expects Year 6 to recognise.

Why it happens: For things that are imagined, wished for or not actually true, formal English uses the subjunctive “were” for every person — I were, he were, it were. By the end of Year 6 children are expected to recognise these formal structures and the difference between formal and informal writing, and the GPS paper tests it directly.

The same formal form appears after “wish”: “I wish I were taller,” not “I wish I was taller.” In casual speech “was” is common, but “were” is the form the test rewards.

The fix: Teach the cue words: when a sentence is imagined or wished for — often starting “If I…” or “I wish…” — the formal choice is “were”, not “was”.

What goes wrong: Your child writes what a character says but leaves out the inverted commas, or forgets the comma that separates the speech from who said it.

Why it happens: Punctuating direct speech has a clear set of rules: inverted commas go around the exact words spoken, the punctuation that ends those words sits inside the closing inverted comma, and a comma separates the speech from the reporting clause. Missing any one of these costs a mark on the GPS paper, where speech punctuation is regularly tested.

Notice where the comma goes — inside the closing inverted comma, before “said”. If the speech is a question or exclamation, that mark goes in the same place: “Are we nearly there?” asked Tom.

The fix: Teach the three checks for every line of speech: inverted commas around the spoken words, the right end mark inside them, and a comma (or ? or !) before the closing inverted comma when the sentence carries on. See more on our punctuation rules topic page.

What goes wrong: Your child writes the wrong spelling of a word that sounds the same as another — most often there, their and they’re — because the ear cannot tell them apart.

Why it happens: Homophones sound identical but are spelt differently and mean different things, so the ear is no help and your child has to choose by meaning. They are a common source of lost spelling marks, and the statutory Year 5 and 6 word list adds a set of tricky words (such as necessary, separate and definite) that children are expected to spell by the end of Year 6.

Three different words: there = a place, or “there is”; their = belonging to them; they’re = they are. Swap in the long form to check — if “they are” fits, write they’re.

The fix: For each tricky homophone, teach the one-line meaning and a quick test (they’re → “they are”; their → belonging; there → a place). For the Year 5/6 list, little-and-often look-cover-write-check beats last-minute cramming. See more on our statutory Year 5/6 spelling word list.