11 Plus English Masterclass Bundle

A huge hello to you as we move into autumn. How is your child’s eleven-plus learning? This is a very small post to let you know that this 4-book bundle deal is now available to help all children, parents, families, teachers and tutors. It replaces the summer learning bundle and contains the same thorough preparation pack, but at an even better price.

Please do visit and review to see how it suits your needs.

I’ll be back with my next proper post in the next few days. I’ve been busy helping students with final preparations for the Sutton Test which took place yesterday.

If your child was involved in that test, remember to keep the foot on the learning pedal and focus on creative writing this week. Don’t wait for the result of stage 1; you have to assume your child was successful and use this week to make crucial progress in creative writing skills. If you wait a week, you’ll never recover the time to learn.

The very best in effort and luck to all children.

Welcome to the 11 Plus English Masterclass Bundle.

One week of summer holiday 11+ learning left!

This is it, superhero – one week left. You have a gift of time to dedicate to your child’s grammar school preparation. Keep going, keep going! Are you continuing to find gaps in your child’s knowledge and skills? Are you continuing to focus on each one as you discover it, and explore all possible ways to help your child learn it? Are you smiling and loving the adventure?

Excellent.

In this last week, it’s time to take full advantage of time and put in four hours a day. Include a maths & English test, or a VR or non-VR test – anything your child will have to do on any one day. That will help them manage time, energy and focus, as well as giving their brains a chance to swap between the subjects they will be tested on on in the real exam. It may also be worth getting them to sit the tests on the morning and the afternoon to simulate the real thing – you are not normally given a choice of time, you will be allocated a time that could be a.m. or p.m. Best prepare.

Figuring this out as a parent, I spread my net wide as to where I found and used resources. I used as many as I could find and afford. I bought books: Bond, Ae, letts, CGP – I would have loved to have bought my own books on how to sit multiple choice tests, rather than just sit them, as well as the eleven plus centred writing manuals, but they didn’t exist at the time, which is why I ended up writing them, to fill the gaps that existed for me; practice tests from websites and amazon; used sites like TES and primary resources for amazing free teacher resources, trawled the web for challenging and different ways to learn; subscribed to maths sites like ixl, as well as using general websites like parentsintouch, theschoolrun and youtube (monitored).

So…over to you. What will you read and do with your child this week? What progress do they need to make? Remember, you don’t have to know everything deeply beforehand – you can learn together with the spirit of adventure. I used to say to my son and daughter that I wasn’t sure I knew everything or anything about percentages, algebra, how to emotionally move someone in writing, etc., but I was very excited to learn together how to figure it out and practise it until I did. Seeing it as a shared learning journey can sometimes help your child relax – if you’re willing to try, then they can be, too. There’s no problem with not knowing because you can learn it and then you will know it. The only danger is not knowing what you don’t know. This is why finding those gaps and celebrating them is so important.

Make the most of your last week of summer holidays – when it’s all over, you’ll know it was worth it. Education changes lives.

Stay learning, stay 11plushappy, Lee

11 Plus Happy! – 88 Essential Grammar School Steps you and your child MUST do Now is free for 5 days on kindle!

YES! YES! YES! It’s free! Please, if you are serious about helping your child to 11 plus success, read my first book for free for a very limited time. Amazon lets authors offer their books once for 5 days in every 90 days. Tomorrow, 15th August, to celebrate A-level results day – begin with the end in mind – those 5 days start. Please don’t wait, it’s never too early to have information – you just don’t want to be too late. Please share this news with anyone you think might benefit. I hope you find practical steps, practical value, that actually makes a difference to your daughter or son’s education.

If you’re a tutor, this is absolutely for you too. I wrote this and my other books as both a parent and a teacher/tutor, and would love this book and my others to serve as a useful bridge between you, your students and their families. Families – you are everything. Nothing happens without you, without your support, motivation, persistence and love.

The dream is to get your child into a grammar school, preferably their first choice. As I say in the book, the first step to making that dream come true is to stop seeing it as a dream and start seeing it as a goal, to be achieved with steps, lots of learning, time and lots of smiles.

When you’ve read it, please get in touch and let me know your favourite step, or if there’s a step that’s not clear. I look forward to helping you in your ~~dream~~ goal. Remember, you can get it free from 15th August for 5 days.

Start learning, stay learning, stay 11 plus happy!

Lee https://11plushappy.com/

Do you really, really believe your child will succeed in the 11 Plus exam?

Good morning, 11plus families and all those supporting them.

Quick question?

Are you visualising your child’s success in the entrance test?

Seriously, do you believe it can happen? It’s vital you do and here’s the most important reason why –

if you fully believe it can happen, even will happen, then you will DO MORE, TAKE MORE ACTIONS to make it happen. Which is, of course, the single best thing you can do to make it happen.

When I was teaching my daughter, a lot of me was quite worried. It was a horrible feeling, which I know led to tension and me picking at my daughter. I was thankfully able to catch myself doing that and I changed my approach completely.

I used to run daily before tutoring, sometimes out at 5 a.m. to make sure I had time to teach the hours I knew she needed. Here’s the thing – at the end of every run, the last half mile, I played the same scene over and over again of the head teacher of the grammar school we were aiming for shaking my daughter’s hand and saying: “Well done, welcome to Nonsuch.” ( Both my children did the sutton test.)
Every run. I know it inspired me to do more, to work harder to find things in English and Maths that she didn’t know, so we could learn them together. The picture became a promise – I had the successful outcome so clearly that it was as if I gave myself no wiggle room, no possibility of not doing everything I could. I couldn’t let down my own vision.
The funny thing is we did a lot more learning, but with less tension and more fun. This is when I started really thinking about the idea of 11plushappy! as a way to help both my daughter and I enjoy the process and enjoy being excited about the idea of achieving the goal. It was the approach that led me to write the 11 plus books on my website. It was much less to do with fear-based “What if she doesn’t?” scenarios and much more to do with “How amazing would it be if she did/will it be when she does?”

I encourage anyone reading this who has embraced the 11 plus challenge to really see it happening for your child, and let the vision motivate you to add in the extra learning time required to give the best chance of that outcome.

All in is the only way to be.
I say this a lot, but someone else probably said it first!

Have an amazing day of learning. Best, Lee

What should I do with my 11 plus child during the summer holidays before the test?

(Part 3 of a 4-blog mini-series.)

It’s getting serious now, right?

A week remains until the summer holidays. After this, a long stretch of time lies between your child and their 11 plus exam in September, or the months that follow shortly after. You, or your child at least, are going to have a lot of time to spend. With hand on heart as a dad and teacher, how your child spends this summer time is going to make a huge difference to their chances of 11 plus success. Do nothing, do little, or do unfocused learning here and there, and it is going to shrink their opportunity. Meanwhile, put a plan into action that targets test-sitting combined with constantly being on the look out for things your child can’t do, then addressing those areas until they can do the things they couldn’t do, and you are adding jet engines and super-boosting your child’s chances of success.

In brief, that really is your summer holiday learning routine. Combine test experience, text skills, subject skills, reinforce strengths, hunt out and be happy about discovering problem areas, and deal with those areas with love, humour, belief and a marathon runner’s approach to one mile at a time, one problem at a time.

The holiday gifts your child 6 weeks of time – a half term of learning, that you can dedicate to 11 plus subjects. My daughter was running away in English at this point, but would only score around 50% in 11 plus maths tests. Within six weeks, it had all changed and she made it to her first choice grammar. We were learning until the minute she stepped out of the car for her test. #useyourtimewell.

Your first consideration is probably work and child care arrangements. If there are moments of time you cannot move, then block them out and feel fine about this. You are living, you are alive, and being alive takes up the majority of our lives!

Now, look at your free time, or look at the time that can be created in the place and with the people looking after your child, supposing this isn’t you. You are going to find fifteen hours or so in a week for their learning. That is still going to leave a huge amount of time for play – an essential non-negotiable – and the rest of life. But fifteen hours is an effective amount of time to commit to 11 plus learning.

Monday to Friday – 2/3 hrs in the morning, leaving their afternoons and evenings free, is a very intelligent approach to try. Why? Your child does their learning before anything else, so arguments about “Can we do this first?” don’t need to happen. They will quickly understand the routine. Equally, they will be generally fresher, not worn out by summer heat and activities, so may focus better. Perhaps most importantly, if your child learns on a morning, then for the rest of the day, at some level, their brain is considering or processing the information, so in a way, twice the learning time is achieved. Do it the other way round, and your child may be thinking about their morning play session during their learning. They don’t get the same background processing opportunity.

Having said that, in a lot of circumstances, a quality morning routine may not be an option. There are benefits to to starting later in the day. If your child does a sport, or has a couple of hours in the park, then their brain could benefit from the positive effects of exercise on education. They may be less restless because they have shaken out all their sillies, their brain is lovely and oxygenated. In this case, they could be better focused.

Perhaps a truly wise routine might change things occasionally and blend morning and afternoon sessions. It is recommended that when sitting mock multiple choice or written papers, your child has experience of 9 a.m. and 1.30 pm starts. In the real test, they could be asked to sit at either time – you can’t choose – so asking your child to be aware of how they are working/feeling/thinking at different times of the day during a test could help them manage either situation on the test day. If your child struggles to get going on a morning, for example, getting up earlier and waking their brain up with some pre-test sums or spelling could help them be alert by the time 9 a.m. comes around.

Okay, 15 hours a week. Join me in my next blog, which I’ll try and do tomorrow, for a zoomed-in look at specific subject/strategy/test routines.

Have an amazing day of learning. Please consider the happy hacks learning series of English books at www.11plushappy.com as resources for you. They are 110% focused on 11 plus exam techniques and content your child is going to need on the day.

Let’s speak again tomorrow. Found this blog helpful, or have more questions? Please leave a comment or get in touch lee@11plushappy.com @11plushappy