Top 5 most common year 6 grammar mistakes
Discover the five most common year 6 grammar mistakes and how to fix them. Boost children’s confidence and SATs results ahead of the year 6 GPS test.
Do you have your year 6 grammar long term plan sorted yet? Whether you’re teaching grammar discretely, through your writing lessons, or a mixture of both, make sure you put emphasis on these five topics in particular to prepare children adequately for the year 6 GPS test.
LbQ’s Year 6 National Curriculum Test Practice (SATs): Set 1 English Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling has been completed nearly 145,000 times now, meaning it has produced some juicy data for us to analyse! Here are the top five weakest errors amongst pupils.
Verbs
Questions like the one below often crop up in SATs, where children have to identify all of a particular word class. In these, there is almost always at least one word that the children are likely to miss.
Question 64
Percentage answered correctly: 20%
Correct answer: b, f, j, o
Most common incorrect answer: lots of children identified begin, picked and throwing, but not was; instead, they picked nearly, journey or into
The verb was is a tricky verb to spot! It’s worth emphasising with your class that words such as is, am, are, was, were, had and have are all verbs. They are often used as ‘helper’ verbs (formally known as auxiliary verbs) - the children should recognise this from their learning about progressive and perfect tenses.
Resources to revise:
Revision of Year 1/2/3/4/5/6 Verbs
Present progressive
Children need a strong understanding of verbs (particularly auxiliary verbs) to be able to conjugate into different tenses.
Question 65
Percentage answered correctly: 30%
Correct answer: am building
Most common incorrect answer: building
Most children have understood the ‘present tense’ aspect of this question, but have forgotten the auxiliary verb.
Resources to revise:
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Subordinate clauses
Teach children that a subordinate clause always starts with a subordinating conjunction, and that this can come at the start of a sentence, in the middle, or at the end!
Question 66
Percentage answered correctly: 32%
Correct answer: because we are taking cake
Most common incorrect answer: they are going to be happy because we are taking cake; closely followed by they are going to be happy
The structure of the sentence here (main clause, main clause, subordinate clause) has clearly caught children out. Some have clearly spotted the first main clause, but then incorrectly labelled the second half of the sentence as the subordinate clause.
Resources to revise:
Commas
Year 6 children are expected to know a number of ways in which commas are used: in a list, between phrases or clauses, as parenthesis, and within dialogue.
Question 7
Percentage answered correctly: 34%
Correct answer: 5 and 6
Most common incorrect answer: lots of children identified 6, but not 5; instead, they chose either 4 and 6, 7 and 6, or just one number (4, 5, 6 or 7)
One obvious mistake here is not reading the question clearly when it states to Tick two numbers - seasoned year 6 teachers know that this is the most frustrating mistake that seems to happen every year! It also says to make it clear that Sam has four favourite things; of course, by only putting a comma in position 6, Sam only has three favourite things: walking dogs, football and reading.
Resources to revise:
Relative clauses
Teach children that:
relative clauses always begin with a relative pronoun (the most common of which are who, which, that and where. A relative clause without a relative pronoun is known as an appositive)
they add extra information to a noun
they are sometimes surrounded by parenthesis - but not always
they can come in the middle of the sentence or the end.
Question 49
Percentage answered correctly: 37%
Correct answer: that had the most memory
Most common incorrect answer: that
Many children identified the relative pronoun - but not the relative clause.
Resources to revise:
When teaching grammar in year 6, it’s crucial to focus on the areas that consistently trip them up. From identifying all types of verbs (including those sneaky auxiliary ones) to mastering complex sentence structures like subordinate and relative clauses, these common pitfalls highlight where pupils need the most support.
Prioritise these five key topics in your grammar planning to give your class the best chance of success in the GPS test.
SATs Springboard from LbQ has targeted interactive resources that provide a valuable tool for reinforcing these tricky areas, offering structured, data-informed practice that helps pupils build confidence and accuracy.