Tag: 11plus creative writing

Quick…A sneak peak inside my Creative Writing Models Non-Fiction Guide!

With a new Non-Fiction Models book issued fresh for 2025, I’m dying to show you an extract from a persuasive letter, so you can see exactly how the guide will transform your child’s writing. Remember, each model in the book gives you:

  • A Question Prompt.
  • A short plan – the kind your child can actually put together in a couple of minutes.
  • The full model – Show your child what finished exam writing looks like to help them imagine it clearly. It’s like seeing a picture of a cake in a recipe book. Your child needs to know what they’re aiming for. Each model has all the must-write ingredients of exam-passing writing to super-boost your child’s mark.
  • A full, line by line or paragraph by paragraph lesson of every writing technique and structure point in the model, so your child can see what, how and why the writing works.
  • A vocabulary section with definitions of stretching, dazzling words for your child to use in their writing, to build eloquence and wow any marker!

It’s a guide to make your parent-and-child and tutor-and-child learning moments easy, valuable, and most importantly, to guarantee your child KNOWS how to make progress in every creative writing lesson and session. Yes, if you’d care to leap ahead in learning straight away, you can order your copy of the book on these links:

From Monday through to Friday, I’ll serialise extracts from the model and lessons – the full model and lesson taken from the book is 13 pages! We’re talking mountains of help and guidance!

My parents and children love this guide because it works: students progress quickly in all areas of exam-passing creative writing. Remember, I wrote the guide as a teaching tool, which use continually with my young writing legends – because it works. It’s your turn! Please come back to my 11plushappy.com blog on Monday. Here’s the sneak preview of what’s coming… Why not ask your child how many features they can spot in the opening paragraphs below?

Extract

Question: Your favourite playing fields are to be closed and replaced by a refuse (rubbish) and recycling centre to handle the town’s waste. Please write a letter to your local council to persuade them NOT to go ahead with this plan. You must give reasons for your viewpoint. What will you lose? You will be given marks for interesting vocabulary, persuasive writing techniques, punctuation and following the structure of a letter.

Time: 45 mins

(HAPPY TIP: Don’t be tricked into thinking you can write any letter you want. Although a question might not ask you to write a formal letter, persuasive letters should mostly use formal language.)

Freshly Cottage Flats

17 Goodview Court

Sutton

SM6 3PP

Dept of Planning

London Borough of Sutton                      20th September, 2026

Dear Sir/Madam

From the address above, you may be alerted to the fact I’m one of the many concerned, frightened and – to be frank – livid residents whose lives will be ruined by the proposed building of the Refuse and Recycling centre on the site of Goodview Playing Fields.

My name is Laney, and as an 11-year-old beginning her life in the area, I stand to be affected more adversely and for far longer than the misguided grown-ups who came up with this nightmarish idea. A refuse centre instead of a park? Thus, I write for an immediate end to this ‘rubbish’ idea. There are three clear reasons to maintain the fields, with both urgent and long-term implications: the high levels of use the park has; the serious harm to children’s health; and a shock reduction in your council’s finances.

First, grasp Goodview as it is. You will know, as the local planning team, that there are 15 – yes, 15 – primary schools in the area, along with 2 secondary schools. Statistics on your own website (truthful facts, we presume) confirm approximately 8000 children study at these schools (7,873 to be exact).

Let’s go! If you’d like to know what features are in here and why they work, please bookmark or add Monday 19th May to your calendar. I hope next week’s blog adds ease, smooth-tempers and happy learning to your week.

Oh, by the way, I’m deliriously excited about launching a podcast soon, to help you if you’re an on-the-go thinker and learner. I’ll share more details soon. Season 1 is almost finished recording!

Again, here are the book links, the digital bookshelves, if you want to dive in and make progress straight away.

Stay happy, stay learning.

Any questions? leemottram@11plushappy.com

Lee, London. May 25

Eleven plus Non-fiction Models offer a fast track to your child’s writing success.

Why models?

  • Because models work. Ever followed a how-to guide on YouTube? You’ve learned from modelling. It can be a very rapid way of achieving excellent results.
  • Because models are fair. As a teacher, I think it’s very unfair we ask children to write an excellent piece of non-fiction, unless they first see, read, learn and practise what ‘excellent’ looks like.

It’s all very well people telling you to write a great persuasive letter or recount or description, but what does that really mean? How much do you write? How do you start? How do you end? What techniques and structure should you include?

Children need to know what success looks like, so they can aim for it. Success leaves clues.  Lego toys come with pictures and instructions for a reason.

My promise in writing this brand new guide, 11 Plus Happy Creative Writing Models: Non-Fiction Edition is to maximise your child’s learning, to help them score the highest mark they possibly can. My vision is that anyone who reads, learns and follows the steps in this book will become some of the best writers in the room – perhaps the best writer in the room. With this in mind, I also promise that this guide is about MUCH MORE than the models.

Our shared commitment is we want your child to pass their 11 Plus creative writing with a very, very high mark. Our shared commitment is we’ll work and write a lot of deliberate practice writing along the way, using the tools in this guide. Our shared aim is to dazzle the marker with writing that stands out from the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others. Our shared aim is that your children feel confident, equipped and ready to rock any exam. To make this a reality, each non-fiction model comes with the following:

  • A question prompt, so your young writer understands what each essay is trying to answer.
  • A model of a short plan – the kind you can actually write at the start of a time-pressured exam. Even the shortest plan will help you write the correct amount and make sure you stick to answering the question. You’d be surprised how often children write something completely different to what the question asks for. Or, they start by answering the question correctly, but then drift onto another topic or style of writing half way through.
  • The full model essay.
  • A huge and powerful lesson chapter: WHAT, HOW, WHY. We’ll zoom in to the micro-details, the many parts that make up a whole piece. The aim is clear: your child (that’s YOU if you’re the child!) will know what to write, how to write, and understand why they should write in this way.
  • VVV: A Very Varied Vocabulary section. Throughout the essays, we’ll collect dazzling and interesting words that I think you should use.
  • A list of the very varied vocabulary used in each piece of writing comes at the end of each chapter.
  • A definition for each word (as it’s used in the text) to help you write quickly with this jaw-dropping vocabulary.

This is the book I needed as a teacher. This is the book children deserve to read in order to help them see what finished exam-passing writing looks like, as well as understanding how that writing is put together. This is the book for the superhero parents who are actively involved in helping their child learn and prepare for 11plus success. This is a book that will support tutors in teaching creative writing.

But it’s not about the book; it’s about your child’s writing improving in each session. It’s about your child’s enjoyment and understanding of creative writing. It’s about your child feeling confident and skill-equipped to write a wide range of non-fiction essays.

Growing up, my mum and dad used to say often: “Children come first, second, third and last.” Before anything, consider the children. I know it’s why I became a teacher, I know it’s why I adored and continue to love being a dad. This book is part of that belief system.

Order your copy and let’s help your child reach their highest mark. Yes!

Eleven plus Non-fiction Models offer a fast track to your child’s writing success.

Why models?

  • Because models work. Ever followed a how-to guide on YouTube? You’ve learned from modelling. It can be a very rapid way of achieving excellent results.
  • Because models are fair. As a teacher, I think it’s very unfair we ask children to write an excellent piece of non-fiction, unless they first see, read, learn and practise what ‘excellent’ looks like.

It’s all very well people telling you to write a great persuasive letter or recount or description, but what does that really mean? How much do you write? How do you start? How do you end? What techniques and structure should you include?

Children need to know what success looks like, so they can aim for it. Success leaves clues.  Lego toys come with pictures and instructions for a reason.

My promise in writing this brand new guide, 11 Plus Happy Creative Writing Models: Non-Fiction Edition is to maximise your child’s learning, to help them score the highest mark they possibly can. My vision is that anyone who reads, learns and follows the steps in this book will become some of the best writers in the room – perhaps the best writer in the room. With this in mind, I also promise that this guide is about MUCH MORE than the models.

Our shared commitment is we want your child to pass their 11 Plus creative writing with a very, very high mark. Our shared commitment is we’ll work and write a lot of deliberate practice writing along the way, using the tools in this guide. Our shared aim is to dazzle the marker with writing that stands out from the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others. Our shared aim is that your children feel confident, equipped and ready to rock any exam. To make this a reality, each non-fiction model comes with the following:

  • A question prompt, so your young writer understands what each essay is trying to answer.
  • A model of a short plan – the kind you can actually write at the start of a time-pressured exam. Even the shortest plan will help you write the correct amount and make sure you stick to answering the question. You’d be surprised how often children write something completely different to what the question asks for. Or, they start by answering the question correctly, but then drift onto another topic or style of writing half way through.
  • The full model essay.
  • A huge and powerful lesson chapter: WHAT, HOW, WHY. We’ll zoom in to the micro-details, the many parts that make up a whole piece. The aim is clear: your child (that’s YOU if you’re the child!) will know what to write, how to write, and understand why they should write in this way.
  • VVV: A Very Varied Vocabulary section. Throughout the essays, we’ll collect dazzling and interesting words that I think you should use.
  • A list of the very varied vocabulary used in each piece of writing comes at the end of each chapter.
  • A definition for each word (as it’s used in the text) to help you write quickly with this jaw-dropping vocabulary.

This is the book I needed as a teacher. This is the book children deserve to read in order to help them see what finished exam-passing writing looks like, as well as understanding how that writing is put together. This is the book for the superhero parents who are actively involved in helping their child learn and prepare for 11plus success. This is a book that will support tutors in teaching creative writing.

But it’s not about the book; it’s about your child’s writing improving in each session. It’s about your child’s enjoyment and understanding of creative writing. It’s about your child feeling confident and skill-equipped to write a wide range of non-fiction essays.

Growing up, my mum and dad used to say often: “Children come first, second, third and last.” Before anything, consider the children. I know it’s why I became a teacher, I know it’s why I adored and continue to love being a dad. This book is part of that belief system.

Order your copy and let’s help your child reach their highest mark. Yes!

11-a-side 11-plus-a-side: will your child be on the winning team in this year’s exams?

As we gather and grow excited for Sunday’s shot at history, are you also growing excited for your child’s equivalent Euro finals – their upcoming 11plus exam? If so, make a note of this book – it’s the single-most important creative writing book you will read. It will show you every must-write final exam-winning feature to include. It also gives you the strategies to practise in the months of preparation that come before any final, before any tournament, before any exam. Make sure your child is on the starting 11(plus) this season.

Good luck everyone. Please bookmark, buy and prepare to celebrate.

Order Teach Your Little Genius 11plus Creative Writing NOW!

You and your child will LOVE this model of an 11plus-level story – AND the full explanations of EVERY feature

Hi, Dear Parent,

Okay, so this is a large, educational, 11plus super-booster of a video packed, crammed and brimming with writing techniques your child can start using now! SHOW them an example of what successful writing looks like.

Huge buzzing announcement that this will soon be part of a full video course on creative writing, but right now, it’s here, free and available to watch, learn and succeed with.

This will help you think ahead for your next shared learning session together.

From Kingston Grammar to St Paul’s Girls, children are doing their superhero magic and being offered places using these ideas. Join them now!

Stay learning, stay 11plushappy! Your child can do this!

Happy teaching and learning,

Lee, London

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

Who what where when why how: Does 11plus learning ever change?

6 questions every child is taught in KS2. 5WH (5 whats, 1 how). 6 questions we probably ask ourselves a lot right now. 6 questions that perhaps we can use as guides when planning 11+ learning. Think of this as a thought exercise that might bring calm and clarity amid the chaos.

I don’t know how to write about COVID-19 and its many horrible consequences. I know many reading this will have expertise and experience that I could never match. Notwithstanding this, our 6 KS2 questions have helped many societies and individuals for centuries. They are helpful tools to investigate the moment. The moment close to our hearts on this site is helping your child be as ready and as happy as they can be for their 11plus, whether the exam is this year, next year or later.

I offer the 6 questions as a way to to explore whether the answers ever change much, even if the circumstances in which we ask them change greatly.

Focusing in, we may ask:

  1. Who will help my child learn and prepare for the 11plus?
  2. What is to be done to help my child be ready for the 11plus?
  3. Where will this learning and help take place?
  4. When is the learning and preparation for the 11plus going to happen?
  5. Why are we guiding our children towards sitting the 11plus? What reasons?
  6. How does my child prepare for the 11plus?

I could probably stop writing at this point and give you space to think about each question, to reflect on where each one of the 5WHs takes you, and to consider how you might answer each one.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do.

I need more time to think about these myself; but I didn’t want to wait to share the questions with you.

This being the case, please read the questions again. Perhaps ask your family, your child, for their thoughts as well.

I’ll write again tomorrow.

Best, Lee

London 2021

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.