Tag: 11+

Go Backwards Technique – score higher in 11plus practice tests and writing

“You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

Dr Seuss

The Go Backwards technique is an ally of the Go Forwards technique.

Very simply, do the test until finished, no matter how long it takes.
How long did it take? As with yesterday’s Go Forwards Technique, celebrate this – you have a benchmark to start from. For the next test, issue a new challenge:

Can you knock a minute off your last time?

Example: Your child takes 68 minutes to finish a 40-minute test. Praise them for finishing it and agree you have a brilliant place to start. Enthuse them by letting them know they’re just 28 tiny steps away.

Next test, can you do it in 67?

Sometimes this cuts as much as five minutes off the first time you try it. Don’t worry if not, a minute is all we’re after. Whatever the new time – as long as it’s quicker than the last time – this now becomes the new time to beat by a minute. If they don’t beat it, then stick to the first time as the one to beat. (Avoid setting a slower time as the starting point.)
After twenty tests over a couple of months, your child should be on their way to finishing within, or very close to, the given time.

Your power in this step is to simply keep going – one minute less, one minute less, perhaps pacing this challenge to every 2-3 tests, until they are within the range. Mixing in with the Go Forwards technique may be a happy and helpful pattern for variety.

Key to the success of the Go Backwards technique is don’t try and take too much time off at once.

Don’t push your child to finish in half the time; this will likely lead to rushing and an increase in mistakes. It’s a balancing act and an adventure. You are promoting a gentle reduction.

A challenge is never – you must; it’s a fun experiment – Shall we see if we can?

Again, the Go Backwards Technique works well with creative story writing. Suppose your child writes 2 pages (see next page) and it takes them an hour and a half. By now, you know what we do: celebrate the pages and use the time as a benchmark. Next story, can you write 2 pages in 89 minutes? Continue in this way. Even if it takes takes three days to write 2 pages. Next story, two days, then one and a half days, and so on. Over the long term, they may well be at fifty minutes. The art of the possible. Just keep swimming, as Dory says. 49, 48, etc.

• For a 25-minute piece of writing, a page and a paragraph to a page and a half is an excellent amount to aim for. This turns out to be around 7-8 paragraphs with around 5 lines to a paragraph.


• For a 40-60-minute test, plan and practise writing between 2-2½ pages, around 10-12 paragraphs.


Any less and there may not be enough material to mark or show strength, nor will there be enough space to put in all the essential ingredients of a stand-out piece of writing; any more and your child may not have time to go back and check.

One of the easiest ways to win points can be for your child to go over things they’ve just written and check punctuation, spelling, grammar, and perhaps swap words for more exciting ones.

It’s likely for any of us that in a first draft (which a test piece of writing is) we will miss things, misspell homophones, leave out punctuation, or use a word that we would rather change for a better one, and so on.

Do you want to help your child’s writing better? The best it can be? Two further truths matter:
1) SPACED time. By which we mean, start early and give them the habit of writing regularly over a period of months, if not years. By starting early, you are not adding pressure, you are removing it.

2) Deliberate writing with a deliberate purpose for most pieces. For example, in one story, work on using all punctuation, while in the follow up, focus on similes or structure, while preserving the previous punctuation.

Fold in features like folding ingredients in a recipe one by one. You are baking a happy learning cake that will rise slowly and steadily.

Of course, we need to say that not all writing should be controlled. In some practice sessions, freedom to write is everything. Two absolute benefits of not worrying about time in some writing sessions is that creativity and imagination come out to play, while you will probably with more writing to assess, giving you a clearer view of what the next steps might be.

In rehearsal writing, feel free to jump up and down with real enthusiasm and appreciation for the words your child has written. I love this quote, it’s at the root of driving happy, successful learning:

“Nine tenths of education is encouragement.” – Anatole France.

I enjoy celebrating and finding out what students don’t know, as it means we can teach them the gaps and increasingly run out of things they don’t know or can’t yet do.

BUT…I love just as much taking every chance to appreciate and congratulate children for what they have written successfully in each story or essay. We grow more of what we want with specific praise and general and abundant love and encouragement.

Encouragement, enthusiasm and praise ARE teaching tools.

Why do spectators cheer during the 100m? During marathons? What are they giving
to the athletes that the athletes don’t already have? Give the same feeling to your child. It’s wonderful.
To sum up, the Go Backwards Technique helps:

  1. Coach your child to work towards finishing the test in time by gradually
    reducing each test by a minute.
  2. Reduces the time taken to write an 11+ story or piece of non-fiction, while
    increasing the passion and quality of their writing because you value every
    sentence along the way while encouraging them to slowly blend in more ‘must-haves’ of dazzlingly brilliant creative writing.

I hope this post helps you. Please share and subscribe. Let’s help children reach their highest mark with a smile on their face.

Stay happy,

Lee, London

Go Forwards technique: How to use time to get better scores in 11plus practice tests

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”

T.S.Eliot

Happy Classroom 3 (Part 3 of a series on how time helps your child prepare and pass.)

The Go Forwards technique has one aim: increase the number of questions
your child can answer within the time set by the target school.


How long is each part of your child’s test? Check with your chosen schools.
Most tests look something like this:
• Stories/recount/creative writing tests: 25 minutes, or 40-60 minutes.
• English comprehension/grammar/multiple choice: 30-50 minutes.
• Maths papers multiple choice/written: 40-60 minutes
• Verbal and non-verbal reasoning papers: 30 to 50 minutes.
• Combined English/verbal reasoning: 45minutes
In weekly practice tests, both you and your child can use the following 4 steps:

  1. Note the time allocated to a given practice paper.
  2. Begin the test and stop exactly when the time says, whether you have
    finished or not.
  3. How many questions did your child leave out? Three, ten, fifteen? Regardless
    of the number, congratulations – your child now has a starting point that lets
    you both know what he or she can do within the time.
    Now comes the value. Set your child a fun challenge:
  4. Can you answer just 1 more question within the given time in the next test?
    Interestingly, by trying to beat a score by one, they may answer 2 or 3
    more, just by being aware of it.
    Next test after that, the same challenge – can they answer just one more question
    than in the previous test?
    You can work out that over a couple of months, it’s quite possible for your child to be
    answering all the questions within the given time.
    Just by increasing the number of questions they can confidently answer by 1 each
    time.
    The key is a GRADUAL INCREASE. It is the art of the possible. The art of
    happy. Better to first answer questions correctly, then answer quickly.

Eventually, a month before the test day at least, although it could be much sooner,
your child looks to finish practice tests with around 5 minutes to spare to use for
checking time.

Introduce speed slowly. (Oxymoron alert – speed slowly…hmm.)

(Musical instrument lessons follow a similar method.)
It is better to learn to recognise the tricks multiple choice tests play, better to learn
neat and effective ways to find the information and avoid the tricks played by the
answers; thereafter, turning up the speed will have a purpose. Is there any point in doing something wrong fast?


HAPPY TIP: The Go Forwards technique is also a fantastic booster for creative
writing practice.


If your child writes a couple of paragraphs in an initial session, praise them, then in
the next session, issue a relaxed challenge to write one more sentence next time.
Continue to issue fresh challenges to add extra sentences in the next piece of
writing.

You may wish to pace this challenge to every second or third piece of writing, so they are not always thinking of increasing quantity at the expense of quality.

I hope this is helpful advice. Please come back for classroom 4 in the next couple of days.

Lee, London

7 happy ways time can help your child pass the 11+

Originally, I spoke about ‘using’ time. However, life and learning have moved on. Thanks to books like Oliver Burkeman’s incredible 4000 Weeks, I’m rethinking my relationship with time. Rather than seeing it as a resource to use and consume, it’s perhaps wiser to see it as an ally. Together, you and time can make a huge difference to your child’s learning path, and thus, massively increase their chances of success at your dream school.

Everything we do depends on time. Everything we do, we do in time.
Often, a task we don’t do or don’t complete is because we run out of time. As often, we run out of time not because the end was too far away to reach, but because we started late. The end was always there; the beginning was lost.
This is never more so than when preparing for and passing tests. What you are about to read – combined with the time you take to read it, make notes and DO it – DO time – is going to transform your child’s learning and results. Starting today.
Time is on your side, but it seems to have two opposing energies within it. Realise:
✓ How creative it can be;
✓ How perishable it is.
Every second is single-use; we can’t use yesterday’s time, today’s time, or tomorrow’s time, ever again. Like an apple, time doesn’t last, but like an apple, it doesn’t need to. The goodness comes from crunching on it while it is ripe.

HAPPY WARNING: Much of this is learning for you. It’s learning you will put into practice with the child you are brave enough and wonderful enough to be helping. Filter the information in a way that is playful, fun and stress free. Always make children believe they can do lots, learn lots and grow lots.

For they can and do.

A total growth mindset.
Instead of worrying about running out of time or having no time, or complaining of wasting time, you may frame time, personify it as a friend or teacher or special power – whichever model or metaphor speaks to your child. Embed what follows over the next 7 days of blogs (please come back to keep up) into a regular, happy learning routine. (John Lamerton’s amazing book, Routine Machine, changed my life on living routines.) Over time, each time skill should become a natural, background time-habit, a pattern of thinking and action that becomes instinctive for you both. Be playful and adapt the 7 ways for your own child. Some children pick up strategies and put them into practice quickly, while others need to rehearse the ideas and action several times. Both responses are fine. Each child is different. It’s why I absolutely love tutoring 1:1 – finding the path that works for each child is incredibly rewarding.

So, welcome to the 11plushappy School of Time! An 8 day blogfest that I hope helps you prepare yourself and your child for the path ahead.

Happy Classroom 1: The Superhero Moment of the 11 Plus

“They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or any place.”

Malala Yousafzai

The 11 Plus may be your child’s first superhero moment. A first – and ongoing – task is to enthuse both you and your child into seeing this. To get 100% behind the adventure.
Encourage them to feel excited about the all-or-nothing opportunity that the preparation and entrance tests represent.

Yes, both the exam and the preparation are all-or-nothing opportunities. You can’t do one without the other. An exam without preparation is a car without wheels.


As a dad in the playground, I remember loving parents speaking about letting their child ‘just have a go’ at the 11+ on the day, without ‘all those boring months of doing papers’. Perhaps they felt either their child was smart enough, or else might be lucky enough on the day. They were also against forcing their children to do extra learning. I said nothing, but my feeling back then – as it is now – was that this approach just couldn’t be right.

After happy years of teaching, I am certain it isn’t right.

Of course, you should rightly consider your child bright, but it still doesn’t add up that you would ask your child to sit a test without preparing for a test. Your child may be a Ferrari, but a Ferrari without wheels is a Ferrari without wheels: it’s not going far. Which car would win a race? A 2020 Ferrari without wheels or a 2000 Yaris with wheels? Preparation=wheels! (I love my Yaris.)

You might wish to cut the following three sentences out and stick them where your
child will see them daily: next to your child’s bed, on the fridge (even in the fridge!),
perhaps the car dashboard if you drive to school.

“You can’t save the world when you feel like it –
you can only save the world when it needs saving!
You can’t sit the test when you feel like it –
you can only sit the test on the day it happens, at the time you’re given.
You can’t prepare for the test when you feel like it –
you can only prepare now!”

There is no later, there is now.


Better still, invite your child to copy the sentences with coloured pens or pencils and design their own poster to display. Write them inside a unicorn speech bubble or draw each word as if it has been built from Lego…whatever they love to look at is best.


The 11 Plus, handled right, is not pressure, it is adventure. It is not forcing, it is freeing. A chance for your child to influence their own future; a chance for you to influence your child’s future. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get involved with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
At its heart is the love and joy of learning.
It is a series of fizzy wow moments as your child figures something new out, which runs parallel to becoming more confident and empowered by rehearsing knowledge and skills they have already. Make it fun, give them lots of specific genuine praise, and be amazed by how much they grow and come to know. You are teaching your child that they can and should think big, that they are capable of giving everything.
Yes, true, heroes may not always win – but they are winners.
Giving everything to something that matters when it matters makes you a winner, doesn’t it? It’s always possible that in whatever you do, you may not get the result in the end, but it is certain you will not get the result if you do not try with everything you have.

As much as possible, you need to be willing to be your own guarantee.
Teach your child to see and believe this, and to work accordingly in order to make it true. When I was out jogging, around the time of helping my daughter prepare, for 6 months I visualised her getting the letter of admission into grammar school as I ran my last 300 metres. That visualisation helped me out so many times when my daughter and I hit learning blocks. It also prepared me to be calm and happy in the next learning session, even if the last one hadn’t gone too well, which it often didn’t.
By trying, by going for it, your child learns to hold their head up high. You are allowing them to build coping skills, passion skills and belief skills. Do not deny the truth of this message: the strongest way to make time work with you is to realise and accept now that this is a true superhero moment. Grab a book and dive in. Make five extra minutes to learn something together and you increase your child’s chances. Increase the minutes and you further increase those chances.

What will you start with?
Times tables? Why not declare your house a T.T.E.Z. (Times Tables Emergency Zone) until they’re all known? Tables help with fractions, division, percentages, word problems…and multiplication. Put up posters declaring the emergency and have quick, spontaneous meetings under the kitchen table to rehearse the 7 times table, or behind the sofa to rehearse the 12 times tables and their division facts.
How about spelling? For example, do they know the rules for turning reply into replies is:
Swap y for i, then and add -es on to words ending in a consonant + y? (Whereas, just add ‘s’ if it’s a vowel + y? Think key to keys.) Is there one spelling pattern that trips them up regularly? Focus on that with fun and encouragement. Be fascinated when you learn something.
Remember: you can only prepare now. Today. See you tomorrow for Happy Classroom 2.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a 9-step video guide to help you both prepare for Story Continuation Success in creative writing.

Lee, London, September 2022

11plus English 4-ebook bundle 70% off

Please find your 70% discount for the 4-bundle Ebook 11plus English Masterclass series here.

No voucher needed.

I know, know, know these books can help you and your child as you prepare for 11plus success. Blessed to hear today that students have passed not only grammar school tests, but top, independent London schools. However small a role the thoughts, plans and actions in the books may have contributed, we are often only looking for the smallest of margins.

Please take a look and get copies of these books now.

I’m cutting prices as low as I can to keep living – I am a one-person microbusiness and passionately committed tutor and writer – to push you to take action and include these in your child’s learning journey. I love teaching, I love being a parent…please let me help you.

Whether you are a parent or tutor, take 70% off the cost of your investment in your children. Spend the rest on them as a reward for their efforts.My best to you and the children in your educational care.

Lee, London, 2022

What are you looking for in English as an 11 plus parent?

Good evening. A very quick one to help you get to the point. I can talk a lot, but what’s the point if I don’t know who I’m talking to? Blogs are strange; I would never talk and talk to someone I met. I love to listen. I gain a better understanding and I grow as a person. Yet the blogging I find myself doing, perhaps the blogging architecture itself, seems to be more about talking than listening.

It’s not sitting comfortably this evening. I started blogging as a parent before a tutor. I grew into a tutor from being a parent convinced and convicted by the wish…the belief…the hunch…the vision…whatever you call it, that grammar schools in my area were the right fit for my children. My son was obsessed with learning, my daughter was obsessed with questioning and demanding answers I was at times unable to give. I felt, after visiting, after discussing, after watching our neighbour’s child love his experience, that it was worth finding out everything about, doing everything I could to make it happen, and most important of all, believing that it could happen.

Back to you. You are, I imagine, a parent or carer of a young child, and you are thinking of, or planning for grammar school. If you are a tutor reading this, then all I can say is thank you for looking after your students – we each have the privilege of changing lives wherever we can. We are, child by child, parent by parent, striving to help the world.

As a parent or carer, then, what would you like to know about 11 Plus English? What do you worry about? What would you like to open a blog post about and find the answer to?

Do you have a question?

You can contact me here at lee@11plushappy.com or comment on this blog.

I wish your child success.

Lee, London

June 2021

11plus English materials on 50% plus sale now!

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Save up to £30 on these targeted creative writing and comprehension book bundles. You don’t need more papers, you need proven ways to teach your child to dazzle their 11plus marker and develop writing skills that last a lifetime.

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11 Plus English Masterclass 4-book Download Bundle

Part 2 of seriously un-serious* ways to help your child remember serious words

You know your child, you know what they like. The single rule might be: “Many ways for different brains.”

Here is a happy handful of word-learning games. Feel free to use these as springboards to get into the activity of designing or improvising games with your child as co-inventor.

1. Does your child sing? Have him sing the word, the whole list, or just sing-spell a word. It can be turned into a full impromptu kitchen concert! Try singing a well-known song, but replacing your target word for one of the chorus words, or adding a target word in to rehearse it:

“You’ve got a gregarious friend in me, you’ve got a gregarious friend in me.”

She might write a nonsense (or sensible) song using some of the words.

The extra pattern boost from melody can be powerful. It may get to the point that when she remembers, she’ll sing the word. (I once taught a very musical Y5 student to sing the formula for the area of a triangle; 3 years later, he could still sing the formula!)

2. Allocate words to numbers on a dice. However it lands, the next sentence in a story has to try and use the word in any way possible. It really helps for your child to know and apply; use the serious words in their creative writing. Words are democratic; they belong to us all. Rehearsing them helps solidify spelling, meaning and the confidence to use them again and again. Over time, your child could be encouraged to settle on a handful of lovely, adventurous words to use in more than one story, perhaps saving them for the real writing exam.

3. Use the target words when rehearsing and writing other features.

Inventing a bank of new, favourite similes (fresh, original ones), favourite adjectives (perhaps a couple of compound adjectives), favourite verbs for key actions (e.g. interesting synonyms for walking, running, eating, going, seeing, saying) and moods (happy, sad, angry, frightened, uncertain, euphoric, livid, etc.) is a great way to build options which can be used in all kinds of writing.

You could use a different target word for different features, or…

4. Take a word for a walk. Choose a word each and have a time-controlled, short game of adding the word into as many different techniques as possible. If the word has to change form to make the grammar correct, or so it can be used as a different type of word, even better. Give extra points for handling that!

For example:

Admonish (verb)

Meaning: to warn against doing something, (or in some cases, to do something, but perhaps there may be better words, like advise, for this positive purpose); to disprove of something, but in sort of a kind way. Hmm, this word is looking quite slippery already, but let’s have some fun with it.

Start a countdown timer. Give enough time to write a few different features, but not so long that you lose time to learn something else, and definitely not until your child falls asleep because they’ve written a hundred sentences! Either side of 4/5 minutes should work, but in the moment, you’ll know what’s best. Here’s my shot…

  1. Councils have left up signs to admonish people who continually drop litter in the parks. (Main verb)
  2. Mr Round, the head teacher, admonished Stephan for drawing only triangles in his maths book. (-ed past tense)
  3. Carter’s ears drooped, his tail ceased wagging and his head dropped, looking like an admonished school boy. (Simile) (Admonished becomes an adjective here!)
  4. The storm was an admonishment from Mother Earth for the farmer’s failure to gather her harvest in time. (Metaphor) (admonishment is a noun)
  5. Deeper and deeper, the wind forced its way into the forest, moaning and shrieking through the branches as if it were admonishing the trees for standing too close together. (Personification)
  6. Caring and graceful, kind and thoughtful, Marjory Duck quacked an admonishment at her ducklings to waste no time in entering the water, in case the clever, winter-starved fox had left its den in search of a delicate, youth-flavoured dinner! (With a paired adjective sentence.)

I definitely know the word admonish better than I did before writing that.

5. Collect challenging words alphabetically. You could supply a list and your child can see if there is a word that starts with each letter of the alphabet.

6. Similar to above, but use another prompt: the letters of your child’s name, or their favourite food, etc.

7. Rhyme as many words as you can with your target word in 30 seconds.

8. Draw quick pictures or diagrams around a word to illustrate what the word means: imagine you are translating the word for a person who doesn’t speak any language apart from pictures.

9. Have your child host a quick quiz for you and another grown up. You have to supply the meaning to words she gives from a challenging list. If you don’t know them, she gets a point; if you know them, you get a point.

Occasionally giving a wrong meaning on purpose can help your child learn a word by giving you the correct meaning. It is okay if you don’t know the meaning of a word. We need to let our children feel relaxed about not knowing something and share an excitement for moments when we do learn something.

10. Draw a word tower from the top, starting with the 1st letter, then 2 letters, 3 letters, etc., until the whole word is at the bottom.

It looks cool and can make syllables and suffixes clearer. The last, full word could be drawn in a different colour to help it stand out. Let your child discover that the last letter of each row also spells the word! These designs can be put up around the house – an un-serious exhibition of serious words.

11. Do you have a licence to use that word? If there are words she loves and would like to use, then you could do a spontaneous spelling permit game at odd times in the week. Stop what you are both doing, and say something like: Excuse Me miss, Pedantic Permit Police Patrol, can I see your license to use this word? She has to spell or write it out and show you. You could be given the list at the start of the week and use that to check the licences for each word.

12. Who needs Wimbledon? Word tennis is fun as well. You don’t even need a bat or ball, although you could do it with the real thing in a garden, or a paper ball in your hands. Take a list of anything – connectives, adverbs, etc, that you want to focus on.

Speak out a sentence either beginning with a word/word type, or else use the word somewhere in a sentence. Your opponent can’t hit back until they use another word. If you want, each have a list or a single umpire list that you can run to if you can’t remember the word. Give a time-limit to how long the person has to speak a sentence. Award tennis points however you want.

P.S. No word is too serious. You can have fun with anything. Be playful and listen to the sounds of words, the look of words. Fastidious is not a better word than fussy, or even the phrase incredibly clean, or spotless. If your child knows them all and can use them with their slightly different meanings, it gives him options for creating similes, alliteration, etc., that sparkle. A fastidious flower arranger is a beautiful phrase, but then a gardener who was fussy could also be described as being a fusspot for flowerpots, which has a different sound and feel and contains a pun on words as alliteration.

True, VVV (Very Varied Vocabulary) is a powerful tool with which to dazzle the exam marker, but it is also simply more fun to use!

Hope these help.

*Big disclaimer: Before you tell me off, before you admonish me against using incorrect prefixes, un-serious is not really a word, I just like the sound of it! The preferred prefix is non-serious, so perhaps teach your child that one, although possibly hold onto the hyphen to be safe, rather than nonserious.

50% off all 11plus English tuition books until our precious children are allowed to return to school

The headline says it all, so if you want to skip to the books, please do. Goodness knows how we make it through this, but we have to believe at some point that schools will reopen and your hoped-for grammar school will admit the next intake. It could be sooner than we think or later than we think, but it will happen.

Whatever you are doing to stay safe and occupied, we must keep our children learning.

The good habits you and schools have established to help your children learn are crucial at this moment. Learning provides much more than a distraction from worry – it paves the way for tomorrow’s generation of heroes and humans who will shape and build and grow the best future possible. It sets your child on their best path.

11 plus exams will at some point be a normal reality again. Please – little by little – stay learning with precision and purpose. We need our children to be progressing and prepared, not in a spirit of competition or worry, but in a happy spirit of continuing the love of learning and the happiness and stimulation that come from achievement and focus. It is good that our highest goals as humans remain at the core of what we do. It is not easy, but it is good.

I’m now running a 50% off coupon on all books in the 11plushappy range, including the bundle. (From an already low bundle price of £47, you now invest just £23.50 for the 4-book 11 Plus English Masterclass Bundle, giving you months of targeted learning).

Use the voucher code ‘stay at home’ in the cart.

Please have a look at the books. I believe so strongly they can help you and your child continue learning together.

I’m sorry I am not in a position to offer them for free. With social distancing in place, all my tuition students can, of course, no longer come, so my own income and ability to keep my family food coming is under pressure. I hope that 50% off everything can help everyone survive and thrive. Please share the coupon with anyone you feel might benefit – there are no restrictions. The creative writing guides are also very suitable for upper KS2 and KS3 children. Included in the purchase is an opportunity to send a piece of your child’s written work for free, so that I can read and suggest some next steps for your child to take. This is specific to your child, not generic.

Simply add your books to the cart and write ‘stay at home’ in the voucher code box. Your 50% discount will be applied immediately.

Stay learning, stay safe, love your children, be patient, be caring, be funny, strive to be happy. In dark times, we must be the extra light.

Thank you for caring for and teaching your children. I hope that as you stay at home, your 50% off voucher code helps you and your child on their path to eventual eleven plus success.

Children, keep creating, keep learning and keep laughing. Every smile, every word, every number, every picture is worth it.

My best, Lee

London

Superinfluence Part 2 continued: What’s in the 11+ test?

Yesterday’s blog hopefully sent you off on a hunt for dates of application for the grammar schools you are interested in. Today, we deal with the holy grail of knowing what is in the test. That would make all the difference, right? If we could see how it was laid out, what the question types were, we could really target our learning.

Interestingly, the truth is we never absolutely know, but we sort of do. The first big mistake would be to do what I deliberately did above and use the wrong article in front of ’11+ test’.

THE 11+ test does not exist. An 11+ test exists. Lots of them.

Schools, perhaps more precisely the schools in a borough, develop different formats, albeit they are testing similar knowledge. Broadly, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning is becoming less of a thing, while English and Maths are more of a thing.

Children are tested on English and maths knowledge and skills taught in primary schools, with one big exception, which is that they are tested on knowledge and skills that include and sometimes go beyond that learned in Y6, at a time and age when they have only completed Y5, or pehaps recently started Y6.

Returning to the fact that the 11plus test does not exist, but rather lots of similar, but different, tests exist, on the one hand, this is incredibly annoying and frustrating. After all, we know what the KS2 SATs look like. Indeed, children do lots of practice tests for these, so they are familiar with the format.

Similarly, in GCSE English, we know the format and the types of question that will be asked. Students can do lots of past papers to rehearse their answers, even following mark schemes that tell students the difference between low and high mark answers.

So why not the 11plus? No one really knows. Other than the fact that the number of places is small and there would not be enough capacity to take in every child who was in line to perform brilliantly at the SATs, it remains a bit of a mystery.

On the other hand, other providers, websites and publishers do provide the test models. Precise books like mine, which teach skills to help your child know how to sit the tests, can be used alongside the excellent resources and practice papers elsewhere that show your child WHAT an approximation of a paper looks and feels like. Thankfully, there is a lot of information and resources within education to help you.

It is worth asking the schools you are interested in if they do have an example paper or sample questions to look at. The response is variable – some do, many don’t.

With this in mind, it becomes really important to know the schools you are interested in. There are many excellent sites that try and gather test information for various grammar schools. Test information is sometimes vague, but as we’ve mentioned, some schools don’t publish the precise content and format of tests.

Below, then, are three sites I want to share with you to help you find that information. As well as having gathered information regarding different grammar schools, the providers produce brilliant learning resources. I use practice papers from all three sites to complement my own books and techniques, to provide a really thorough grounding and preparation in both what and how.

My own passion and belief as a teacher is not enough skills, techniques and child-friendly hacks are taught that help children know HOW to pass the tests. Practice papers are essential, they are the WHAT, but they are far from enough on their own. Every child I’ve ever taught, starting with my own children, has needed help to learn how they are being tested or tricked in each test. With multiple choice in particular, there are dozens of tricks in both English and maths. Remember that Stage 1 multiple choice tests are often there to sift out students. What’s really surprising is some schools do not even use the Stage 1 results towards a child’s final mark! Stage 1 acts as a gatekeeper to Stage 2, school specific, tests. It is this Stage 2,written test, that provides the final assessed mark in some schools.

Yesterday, I decided to split this superinfluence episode into two. It might be better if I split it into three or even four parts. Remember that all this searching for information, all this understanding of the how and the what of your child’s test, is your job, your responsibility. It is the superinfluence in the background. If you create the learning moments, your child will live them. Make sure they are the right learning moments.

Have a good look around the websites below for information relating to the school/s you’re thinking about. Obviously, if your school in question is not covered, then the school is your direct port of urgent call, as we mentioned yesterday. The first link is from exampapersplus.co.uk. Below I’ve linked to a sample page for Wilson’s school.

Wilson’s Grammar School 11 Plus (11+) Exam Information

Also try https://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schools for an excellent overview of schools up and down the country.

Lastly, https://www.rsleducational.co.uk/blog has clear information on different schools.

I’ll see you in the next post as we continue to dive deep into the superinfluence you have as a parent or carer of your child. There is so much I want to cover and help you be super prepared, for, in order that your child is super prepared and ready with a smile on their face.

I was you a few years ago. My children were your children!

If I can help make the journey successful and pass on knowledge and skills that can help, I’m doing the right thing. My children thrived in grammar school, so can yours! See you in our next post.

Start 11 plus learning, stay 11 plus learning and stay 11plushappy!

Best, Lee