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A free English check for children in Year 3 at British-curriculum schools in Dubai. Your child answers short questions on reading, spelling, grammar and vocabulary, over two short sittings. Then a grown-up opens the report: what went well, what to practise next, and activities to try at home.
A short check that gives you a starting point. It is not a standardised test and does not compare your child with other children.
Choose your child's year.
Your child takes the check in two short sittings. You can stop between them or continue straight away.
A grown-up opens the report: what went well first, then what to practise and ideas for home.
The English check is for children in Year 3.
When your child finishes, a grown-up opens the report. It opens with what went well. Then it gives at most two places to start — never a long list, because a long list does not get done.
Each part is based on 6 to 10 answers, so treat this as a starting point. Tiredness, hunger, a busy room, help with the questions, or still getting used to English can change the picture.
Each part that was checked gets one of four words, and each word means something exact:
There is no overall mark and no total for the check. Each part card says how many questions were counted and how many were right — for example "10 counted, 9 right" — so you can see what each word rests on.
"Let's practise" needs all four of these: the questions were on skills usually learnt before this year; there were at least five answers on them that we could count; no more than 4 in 10 were right; and the same kind of mistake came up at least twice. One mistake is never enough. With too few answers we could count, a part usually says "Not enough to tell yet". Otherwise it says "Building" or "Going strong".
After what went well, the places to start come first. If reading the words is the place to start, one line above the part cards says so, and the reading part shows "Not yet checked".
Schools teach these things during the year, in their own order. Early in the year, something marked as new may simply not have been taught yet, and the report says so where it applies.
The check has five short parts. Four of them get their own card in your report. The first, reading words, is a short check that gives one line above the cards.
Your child reads single words and very short sentences on their own. Only the instructions are read aloud.
Reading the words comes first. If many of the words are tricky for your child to read, a reading question mixes reading the words with understanding them. So the report says "Reading words is the place to start", and marks the reading part "Not yet checked".
Your child sees one word — chain — with three pictures to choose from: a chain, a crane, a drain. They tap the picture that matches the word. Later in this part, a sentence comes first and your child taps the word that fits it.
Your child reads two short texts — one story and one that gives information — and answers questions about them. They can return to the text at any time, so nothing depends on remembering it. If the first part shows that reading the words is the place to start, the texts are not given, and the report says so.
By Years 3 and 4, finding a fact is only the start. Your child is also asked what a word means here, why someone did what they did, and what the writer is getting at. These are separate skills. A child can be strong at one and still working on another.
A made-up line: "She pushed her bike up the slope. At the top she stood still, and the whole harbour lay below her." Question: What could she see from the top? The slope · The harbour · Her bike
What words mean, including words met inside a sentence rather than on their own, and how the beginning or end of a word changes its meaning.
In Years 3 and 4, children start working out a new word from the sentence around it and from its parts. Many children in Dubai speak another language at home and meet some English words for the first time in a book. That is ordinary. If it comes up here, your report gives ideas to try at home.
A made-up line: "The kitchen shelf was spotless." Question: Which word means nearly the same as spotless? clean · crowded · muddy
How sentences are put together and punctuated: where one sentence ends and the next begins, the punctuation used inside a sentence, and the words that join two ideas.
This is the part you see most in your child's own writing. A child can have plenty to say and still be difficult to follow because the punctuation is missing. It is also something you can work on at home.
A made-up pair that differs by one punctuation mark: "The painters brushes were dry." and "The painters' brushes were dry." Question: Which one is right?
Your child hears a word, hears it inside a sentence, then hears the word again, and can replay it as many times as they want. Then they build the word by tapping letters on an a–z letter board. There is no text box, so autocorrect and word suggestions cannot finish the word for them. On a computer, the letter keys type into the same board.
By Years 3 and 4, spelling adds patterns and word endings to the single sounds, and the words that have to be learnt because they are not written as they sound. The report separates a word your child nearly had from a pattern that is not there yet.
Your child hears: "pancake". Then: "Grandma cooked a pancake on Saturday." Then "pancake" again. Your child taps out the letters.
None of the examples above is a real question from the check.
Our guides cover each part in more depth: reading words, reading, words and meanings, spelling, and sentences and punctuation.
Each part card in your report comes with three ideas, each about 10 minutes. They need no printing and nothing to buy. Three of the kind you will find:
Small things to do together, away from the device. Pick one to try this week.
There is also a free Maths assessment, for Years 1 to 10.
Our English tutors teach in your home across Dubai. If you would like one to work on what your report shows, ask us about a home tutor and we will discuss it with you.