Are you half-term happy? Holidays are fantastic 11plus learning gifts!

A huge motivational entrance test hello and a very short burst of happiness to remind you the half-term is gifting you time to plan and weave in happy hours of intentional eleven-plus learning.

Your child can make huge progress during these long days, as well as having a fun break. Please find two to three hours a day to go over difficult subjects, to rehearse different writing essays, or to focus in on a handful of test strategies and techniques to blast your child’s score and progress. You can do it, your child can do it – you have to do it. As someone who teaches during the holiday – and as a parent who took both his children through the 11plus journey – I vow with everything I can that holidays are superboosts of learning. Whatever you are doing, do lots of it this week!

Looking for help? Consider the 11 Plus English Masterclass Bundl e as part of your toolbox. Targeted, specialised help is yours for less than half-price. You’ll find everything I’ve learned as a father, tutor, teacher and writer to help your child thrive.

If you haven’t yet, remember to sign up for your free course on why time is such a superhero of the 11plus. Just look at the box to the right of this post (assuming you’re reading this online). I’d love you to sign up to the blog to make sure you catch all other posts. (There have been some important ones recently, so make sure to visit and read over previous posts.)

Stay half-term happy! My best, Lee

Reason 4 of “5 Reasons NOT to wait until Year 5 to start preparing your child for 11plus entrance tests”

Straight in today; your time is short and after 3 days of our mini-series blog/mini-blog series, I know you’re ready for the reason.

Reason 4 has two sides to it, both of which offer true superboosts to your child’s learning and enjoyment of 11plus prep.

Reason 4: Start early – Y4, Y3, Y2 – and your child will begin with easier, age related material. (Bond, for example, has books for 5-6, 7-8, etc.) Easier material at the start allows two magical things to happen:

You give your child important early wins in their work, exposing them to the happy feelings of getting questions right, which can be enormously motivational. Securing early wins at a time when your main aim is building regular learning habits and a real enthusiasm and love for learning is turning the sails in your child’s favour.

Few children – or grown ups – like to get things wrong, especially in front of the person who cares for us. At least, not at the start. Working on harder material straight away – which is a real risk if starting from scratch in Y5 – can make some children worry. Even worse, if they consistently get a lot of things wrong in early sessions, the habit that can be created is a reluctance to work, a tendency to avoid the regular hours of home learning that make the difference.

However, if you are simply trying to introduce or supplement the knowledge they are learning at school through extra home learning, using materials for a younger age group, it is more likely that initial scores will be higher.

In effect, their first impression of extra learning is success.

Another recommended way you can play this as their teacher is to start with easier material regardless of their age. Again, what you want them to experience is the thrill of getting things right. It can lift self-esteem and build resilience for later, harder material. You want your child to think: Well, I got it right before, so I can get it right again (you can say this to them to encourage); you don’t want them to think, Well, I got it wrong before, so I can get it wrong again.

I would say always start them on easier material. If your child is in Y4, let them work through a Y3 age-related book or two. You don’t have to tell them it’s easier material. Let them tell you proudly that they find it easy, then simply move through the difficulty levels without labelling them as such. For non-verbal and verbal reasoning, this can be especially helpful, as much of the material will be brand new.

KEY TRUTH: When you start early, you give yourself and your child time to go through these different levels.

Okay, so we’re learning that kicking off the 11plus journey with easier, younger material helps secure early wins and allows your child’s first impression of learning to be success, which should:

boost motivation,
supply your child with lots of good learning feelings (children are often more emotional than rational at this early stage, so switching on good emotion could support the development of rational, question-based thinking and stamina),
help build the crucial superhero habit of regular learning.

So that’s superboost 1. I said at the start there were two huge benefits to setting off on the 11plus journey by passing through easier, lower-levelled material.

Ready for superboost 2?

Come back tomorrow and we’ll go through that. I want each superboost to stand alone, framed in its own mini-blog, to give you time to think about each one, to help you grasp their power and inspire you to start teaching your amazing child now!

Thank you for reading and for nurturing your child’s learning opportunities. Visit 11plushappy.com to read the rest of the posts in the series. Why not sign up to the blog to make sure you receive the posts straight to your inbox?

Start learning, stay learning, stay happy. Lee

Are you thinking about the 11plus? Think multiple choice! Here’s why…

Half term has been full of teaching and tuition, which I absolutely love, and here’s the one urgent lesson that’s come out of every lesson, from Y3to Y5, and from every chat with parents after each lesson:

Multiple choice. Multiple choice. Multiple Choice. To put it another way –

Q: Which of the following is absolutely the gatekeeper to nearly all good grammar schools, and thus must form a huge part of you and your child’s 11 plus learning journey?

A) Multiple choice

B) Multiple choice

C) Multiple choice

D) Multiple choice

E) All of the above

Of course, it’s E. This is a big, big deal. Nearly all grammar school tests use multiple choice tests as either the only test your child sits, or as a Stage 1 test which acts as a very real gatekeeper to a school’s Stage 2 test, which will be written, full answers and not multiple choice. Your child HAS to pass the multiple choice test to be invited to the Stage 2 test.

So, if your child is a brilliant writer of stories, persuasive letters, descriptions and full written comprehension answers that give brilliant explanations and answers, they may never get the chance to show their glory! Unless, until, they pass the multiple choice tests.

The solution? Patience, action and practice – but don’t just let them sit the papers. Teach them how to sit the papers. How do you do that? By exploring how they are laid out, by exploring the tricks and kinds of questions multiple choice tests are made up of.

For example, your child has to answer on a separate piece of paper by marking a series of lines like this:

Teach your child to beware of 3 dangers!

Don’t think it’s easier because you don’t have to write anything. It’s a reading test, not a writing test. I’ll come back to this point in my next blog post.
You can identify the correct answers on the question paper, perhaps by circling or underlining them, but forget to transfer the answer straight onto the answer sheet. Suppose your child finds the correct answers to the last five questions, but runs out of time to transfer them onto the sheet – they lose the five marks, even though they found the right answers. It’s best to transfer one answer at a time as soon as the correct answer is discovered.
It’s very easy to mark the right answer in the wrong box. Suppose your child misses out a question that is taking too long. Suppose also that the next question turns out be easy to answer and they mark the correct letter on their sheet – but accidentally put it in the box that belonged to the previous question. Again, a mark missed. How often does this happen? Very often. Children sometimes don’t realise until they reach the end of their paper and find that either they have spare rows of answer boxes at the end, or else there is not enough space to answer the question they are on. Dangerously, if this isn’t realised until the end, there may not be enough time to figure out the first place they skipped or wrote in the right answer to the wrong question. This means lots of questions which they have answered correctly are all in the wrong place, so lots of points are lost. From one mistake comes wipe-out.

Encourage your child to dot or put a very small mark on the answer sheet next to the numbers of any questions they are leaving out, so they know a) to skip over that row of boxes, and b) can quickly return to any questions they missed out when they have finished the test. (They should have spare time left if they are using the 7 Superhero Powers of Time, which you can sign up to learn about for free on this website. The sign up form should be to the right of this post.)

Encourage them to do the simple repetitive step of checking that each question number matches the number on the answer sheet. Small step, huge difference.

So, wherever and however you are learning, remember: multiple choice, multiple choice, multiple choice.

Good energy and luck for today’s learning.

Stay 11 plus happy, Lee