Tag: 11plus
It’s okay to feel lost
You’re teaching your child nearly every day and it is working. You are making a difference. You are helping them. This is hopefully about adventure, not pressure. Challenge, not problem.
Sometimes, you will be lost. You must be lost. It’s required.
The brilliant author Seth Godin says it marvellously that true learning requires ‘tension and discomfort.’ Before change come moments of not knowing, not understanding, perhaps not even being aware of what you are supposed to know.
Learning an eleven plus curriculum means your child is engaged with at least eight forms of knowledge. It also means you are, too. Those forms are:
- Information they have already learned at school, so will be revising.
- Information they are familiar with, but purposefully repackaged into multistep problems they will not be familiar with, which are designed to test logic and a creative ability to use information.
- New skills and concepts they will not know. Eleven plus exams involve a Year 6 curriculum, but exams are sat at the start of Year 6 – before that curriculum may have been taught in your child’s school.
- Exam techniques: learning how to manage time; how to dive deeply into the parts of a question to make sure they understand what is being asked and which method they should use to solve it; how to not be fooled by incorrect answers; to do all of this as efficiently and carefully (yes, there’s a contradiction there) as possible.
- Learning to mistrust and test and not be tricked by multiple choice answers that are designed to trick children.
- To believe in and keep returning to a growth mindset that understands learning is not fixed, that new skills and information can be taught and learned and understood.
- Stamina and buoyancy to start learning, stay learning and continue to prepare for many months. This includes feeling lost and found many times, a cycle of discovering what you know, discovering and celebrating what you don’t know, and having the cool courage to begin learning each chunk of what you don’t know, so that in the end, your child runs out of nearly everything they don’t know in time for the exams.
- Doing all of this inside relationships: parent and child, grown-up and child, tuition, friends, clubs, grandparents, and so on. Finding a way for everyone to be on the same page, to trust, to be okay about asking for, and being given help, from different people, to understand and not blame frustrations. To know when a break is needed. To know when a smile and a hug is needed.
This is a huge set of tasks, and feeling lost is normal. If you can embrace feeling lost, accept that it means you are on the right path, you can stay happier, learn more, and surrender to the long-term process and path, the ‘journey’.
One step at a time – or one step ahead?
One of the most helpful methods that served me as a dad when teaching both my children, and which serves nearly every teacher on the planet, is to forget knowing everything, and focus on being one step ahead of your child. It’s such a simple process, but it can make the learning session so much easier for you both.
For example, feedback from a test shows your son or daughter doesn’t know about angles in quadrilaterals and triangles. Before you rush in to solve or give more questions, set aside an hour for you to learn about these. Books like Bond How to do 11plus Maths, CGP’s Year 6 Maths, are good introductions, as are youtube channels like Corbett maths and Khan academy, as well as the BBC teaching part of its website. You have the whole internet to help you. My go to book for learning about concepts, which I recommend to parents of the children I tutor, is Derek Haylock’s Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers.
You don’t need to know everything or visit all channels. Just knowing enough of the topic for you to understand the basic concepts ahead of your child will allow you to answer a few of their questions, possibly to recognise mistakes in their thinking, and to delve into the subject and some questions with them.
As a class teacher, I would always brush up on knowledge or skills ahead of teaching children. As a tutor, I do this continually.
Admitting you don’t know something is good for your child’s learning.
During a session, if you don’t understand something or can’t answer a question your child has asked (yet), it’s a wonderful moment to compliment your child’s curiosity and intelligence: “What a great question! I’m not sure, let’s explore and try and find out.”
This admission has three wonderful benefits you definitely want in your learning time together:
- Your child watches how you respond to not knowing, and when they see you respond positively and excitedly, it’s more likely he or she will learn to respond the same way.
- You give them permission to not know or understand something. In fact, you normalise not knowing and understanding something as a vital part of actually learning it!
- You create a mood of being willing to explore a topic. To open up, not shut down.
It’s okay to feel lost. You are helping your child. You are both learning. Enjoy your time being lost and exploring together.
Stay learning, stay happy, stay 11plushappy!
My best, Lee
It’s okay to feel lost
You’re teaching your child nearly every day and it is working. You are making a difference. You are helping them. This is hopefully about adventure, not pressure. Challenge, not problem.
Sometimes, you will be lost. You must be lost. It’s required.
The brilliant author Seth Godin says it marvellously that true learning requires ‘tension and discomfort.’ Before change come moments of not knowing, not understanding, perhaps not even being aware of what you are supposed to know.
Learning an eleven plus curriculum means your child is engaged with at least eight forms of knowledge. It also means you are, too. Those forms are:
- Information they have already learned at school, so will be revising.
- Information they are familiar with, but purposefully repackaged into multistep problems they will not be familiar with, which are designed to test logic and a creative ability to use information.
- New skills and concepts they will not know. Eleven plus exams involve a Year 6 curriculum, but exams are sat at the start of Year 6 – before that curriculum may have been taught in your child’s school.
- Exam techniques: learning how to manage time; how to dive deeply into the parts of a question to make sure they understand what is being asked and which method they should use to solve it; how to not be fooled by incorrect answers; to do all of this as efficiently and carefully (yes, there’s a contradiction there) as possible.
- Learning to mistrust and test and not be tricked by multiple choice answers that are designed to trick children.
- To believe in and keep returning to a growth mindset that understands learning is not fixed, that new skills and information can be taught and learned and understood.
- Stamina and buoyancy to start learning, stay learning and continue to prepare for many months. This includes feeling lost and found many times, a cycle of discovering what you know, discovering and celebrating what you don’t know, and having the cool courage to begin learning each chunk of what you don’t know, so that in the end, your child runs out of nearly everything they don’t know in time for the exams.
- Doing all of this inside relationships: parent and child, grown-up and child, tuition, friends, clubs, grandparents, and so on. Finding a way for everyone to be on the same page, to trust, to be okay about asking for, and being given help, from different people, to understand and not blame frustrations. To know when a break is needed. To know when a smile and a hug is needed.
This is a huge set of tasks, and feeling lost is normal. If you can embrace feeling lost, accept that it means you are on the right path, you can stay happier, learn more, and surrender to the long-term process and path, the ‘journey’.
One step at a time – or one step ahead?
One of the most helpful methods that served me as a dad when teaching both my children, and which serves nearly every teacher on the planet, is to forget knowing everything, and focus on being one step ahead of your child. It’s such a simple process, but it can make the learning session so much easier for you both.
For example, feedback from a test shows your son or daughter doesn’t know about angles in quadrilaterals and triangles. Before you rush in to solve or give more questions, set aside an hour for you to learn about these. Books like Bond How to do 11plus Maths, CGP’s Year 6 Maths, are good introductions, as are youtube channels like Corbett maths and Khan academy, as well as the BBC teaching part of its website. You have the whole internet to help you. My go to book for learning about concepts, which I recommend to parents of the children I tutor, is Derek Haylock’s Mathematics Explained for Primary Teachers.
You don’t need to know everything or visit all channels. Just knowing enough of the topic for you to understand the basic concepts ahead of your child will allow you to answer a few of their questions, possibly to recognise mistakes in their thinking, and to delve into the subject and some questions with them.
As a class teacher, I would always brush up on knowledge or skills ahead of teaching children. As a tutor, I do this continually.
Admitting you don’t know something is good for your child’s learning.
During a session, if you don’t understand something or can’t answer a question your child has asked (yet), it’s a wonderful moment to compliment your child’s curiosity and intelligence: “What a great question! I’m not sure, let’s explore and try and find out.”
This admission has three wonderful benefits you definitely want in your learning time together:
- Your child watches how you respond to not knowing, and when they see you respond positively and excitedly, it’s more likely he or she will learn to respond the same way.
- You give them permission to not know or understand something. In fact, you normalise not knowing and understanding something as a vital part of actually learning it!
- You create a mood of being willing to explore a topic. To open up, not shut down.
It’s okay to feel lost. You are helping your child. You are both learning. Enjoy your time being lost and exploring together.
Stay learning, stay happy, stay 11plushappy!
My best, Lee
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:
- Note the time allocated to a given practice paper.
- Begin the test and stop exactly when the time says, whether you have
finished or not. - 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: - 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
This is what a good 11plus routine looks like (but yours will look better)
HAPPY CLASSROOM 2: Making Use of Daily Time
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
John Dewey
Hang on, in our first post in this series we were talking superheroes and inspiration…now we’re talking routine?
What does routine have to do with being a superhero? Help your child see this – everything.
No finer a philosopher than Roman emperor Marcus Aurelias pointed out everything is a series of steps. Superhero Iron Man checked his equipment before using it. In fact, nearly all
his downtime was spent checking and refining, building new equipment and skills!
In today’s classroom, we realise that to stay true to educator John Dewey’s quote above,
we are committing to making education a large, joyful part of our daily lives. So what does time look like to an 11plus superhero? The answer may be both smaller and larger than you imagine: 10% of your child’s week, around 8% of your week.
Really?
Really.
Let’s start by making one thing clear: your child will not be studying all the time.
Play is not an option – it is crucial. They need it. (And anyway, play is learning.)
Exercise is crucial.
Laughter and friends are crucial.
Life is important – it doesn’t disappear.
You prioritise.
For example, for my neighbour’s son and ours, instead of playing all day at
weekends, both children studied in the mornings when they were at their freshest
and, as importantly, before anything else could distract them. (After that, they would
throw apples or toys to each other over the garden fence and play all afternoon.)
This is why most schools teach English and Maths in the morning.
Why not hack the habit of the professionals?
Let’s begin to sculpt a possible routine. If your job is not 9-5 (is anyone’s now?), please keep reading, this is going to work. It is about the hours and the focus for each hour, not when those hours are.
WEEKDAYS
1. Commit to one written/multiple choice test at least 3 weekdays. Switch
between the subjects your child will be tested on, whether English, maths, verbal or
non-verbal reasoning.
Use a wide selection of web, pdf and print-out/paper resources. For example, Bond
Assessment books, Schofield & Sims Mental Arithmetic books, exampapersplus, maths practice from a reputable site like ixl or piacademy. TES is another free-to-sign up resource
website for teachers, which you can register and use to access hundreds of amazing
lessons uploaded by teachers. TIME: 30-60 minutes x 3-5 days.
2. Another week-day task would be to read through and mind-map a handful of
short chapters from Multiple-Choice English for Grammar School Success, to
allow your child to search for and beat specific traps hidden in English multiple choice questions and answers. When sitting a multiple-choice test, encourage your child to use the tips and hacks learned in the book to help them sit the test. Reading & mind-mapping: TIME: 30 mins.
3. A creative writing task, in which you deliberately choose to practise specific skills, is also an effective weekday learning behaviour. TIME: 20-60 mins.
4. Saturdays and Sundays: Two longer sessions in which you spend time on a couple of topics in depth, plus another writing exercise. (If your choice of school does not test creative writing, devote more time to the areas that will be tested.) My son and I used to go to a café, which we renamed as The Maths Café, where he would work through maths, comprehension and writing. Sometimes the café was the kitchen table; we even had it under the kitchen table. Make it fun: link it to pleasure and happiness. Your child will be glad to spend time with you. TIME: 2-3 hours each day with short breaks.
Shorter, weekly sessions give valuable practice at focusing and building the habit of learning.
This weekly routine also reveals:
✓ Topics not yet covered at school;
✓ Topics your child needs extra time and practice to understand.
Please note that first point above. Your child is going to be tested on areas
of maths and English that are often not taught until Y6, even though many tests
come at the start of Y6. Thus, another time truth is that your help and preparation
compresses time by introducing and teaching your child a handful of topics earlier
than the ordinary school calendar allows. The result is they learn more in less time.
By focusing on these gaps in your longer, weekend sessions together, in which you can share your fascination and confusion with a topic, as well as how much you are enjoying learning
it, what your child doesn’t know transforms into the next topic they are brilliant at! A
helpful attitude when blocks emerge is that yes, it’s tricky, and so was the last topic
we couldn’t do – and we can do that now.
An early challenge for my daughter was 2-step word problems; for my son it was
sorting out common homophones, particularly our/are and their/they’re. We identified
this during a week of assessments, then studied these areas in plenty of detail over
a month of weekends. We then repeated the weekly process to find more areas to
improve, while also checking to see if the topic we had just spent time on was now
easier to answer questions on.
Make sure you dip into more than one subject in your weekly sessions. Your child
needs to be developing across all 11+ subjects. It’s also vital to practise switching
between subjects because this is what happens in the real test, with a maths paper
followed by an English paper, or vice versa, on the same day.
Let’s look at a second example of a successful learning week, this time for Y5
children, perhaps from Spring 1 (January) onwards.
Monday: One or two long tests. Mark these on the day as part of the review; it will
help cement the learning and identify next-success focus areas. TIME: 45 minutes per
test, plus 15-20 minutes marking.
Tuesday: Choose one of the questions from last night’s test in which an error
happened. Now go through 2-3 books/websites and work only on that subject. Take
percentages as an example. Look at the percentages section of Bond – How To Do
11+ Maths, CGP KS2 Study Book & Question Book, CGP Year 6 Study Book for
New Curriculum, BBC Bitesize, TES, etc. TIME: 45-60 minutes.
Wednesday: Repeat this process for another question and another topic from
Monday’s test. TIME: 45-60 minutes.
Thursday: Choose another subject and do a long test. If you did English and maths
on Monday, do verbal or non-verbal today. Mark it on the same day, celebrate what
is known at the time, then note the tricky parts to focus on later. If you are mindful of
making your child feel happy for their effort and achievement, they are more likely to
agree to do more learning the next day. Feeling good feels good. TIME: 45-60 minutes.
Friday: Day off. (Really!)
Saturday: A longer session using books and websites on problem areas, plus one or
two long multiple choice or written tests. The aim? To close in on further weaknesses
so they become new strengths, show the learning achieved in the week, and
build stamina and speed for the real test. TIME: 3 hours with short breaks.
You may find previously difficult questions are now answered correctly with
understanding. If not, repeat the process, or log it and return to the subject in a
couple of weeks.
Sunday: Two long multiple choice or standard written papers, plus marking together,
plus a short teaching session on one identified topic. TIME: 2-3 hours with short
breaks.
EXTRA LEARNING SAUCE – SPACED LEARNING MINI-BITES.
Having to return to a subject a day or two later uses a different part of the brain than when we spend a long time on one subject, and can help with long term memory of concepts. SO, to mix it up, take a topic you learned, but instead of spending an hour on it, spend half an hour on helping your child understand the concept, then have them complete just 3-4 questions on this topic each day over four or five days, with perhaps a day off as part of this. E.g. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. This method gets round what psychologists call the ‘recency’ effect, whereby you think you will always remember what you are working on right now because it is familiar. In truth, we often forget. So having to remember the idea a day later, having to call up what we studied, makes that learning stronger. By the end of the 5 day period, your child’s learning could be so much stronger in that topic. Also, your child will be happy to only do 4 questions a day!
IMPORTANT: Does your child’s target school test creative writing? If so, encourage
and support your child to write 2-3 times a week during the summer holiday before
Y6. The more they write, both fiction and non-fiction, the more information you will have to help them improve and the more they will have a feel for how long it takes to write the correct amount.
TIME: 40-60 minutes.
In terms of resources, I find it’s helpful to use as wide a variety as possible from different providers. You can’t be sure which explanation is going to hit home with your child, nor do you
know what the exact layout of a question will be, so exposure to multiple formats just
makes sense. Of course, if your school uses one provider for the tests, such as GL
or CEM, then you can use these formats in a lot of your rehearsal. Still, don’t rely on these exclusively.
HAPPY AND SECRET MEGA-SUCCESSFUL LEARNING TIP…
Make time at the end of a focus-lesson for your child to write one or two
questions in a topic they have been studying. For example, design their own
averages question for you to work out mean, mode, median and range.
Why does this help?
✓ It shines a light on what your child understands. It also shows you what you
know. Remember, it is okay to be learning with our children.
✓ It’s creative and fun. You can find the average number of spiders that fall in
school custard – anything.
✓ Creativity and fun will help your child engage and stay learning.
✓ It builds your personal and learning relationship.
✓ In thinking how questions are put together, your child learns what to look for in
a question. Where are the keywords? Which information is irrelevant? How
can the mathematical units be changed (e.g. mm to m) to trick a person?
✓ It’s double learning. Not only are they solving the questions you write, they
must also work out answers to their own questions to check if you are correct.
It’s buy-one-get-one free learning.
As a prompt, let your child know you are going to write one or more incorrect answers on purpose to see if they can find them. Equally, you could have your child play the same trick on you. I hope you see just how fantastic a teaching tool children’s own questions can be.
This routine is all very well, but what if you work weekends or nights?
Remember our picture from the beginning?
Relax.
To be clear, a successful routine is about three things:
- The hours needed to embrace all topics successfully.
- The regularity and good habit-building helps rocket-boost learning by using
spaced-time, by exposing your child to more moments of thinking about the
topics, as well as by reducing time available for non-learning poor habits like
purposeless internet browsing. - A crucial balance between practice/gap-finding sessions and longer sessions on a single subject.
Swap days and times as you need to.
Build a routine honestly around your life and there’s more chance of it working.
If you work weekends, but are around during the week, then do longer sessions after
school.
It adds up to approximately 10 hours a week. In the summer holiday, expand this to
3 hrs a day, around 18 hrs a week, with a day off. 18 out of 168 hours in a week is just north of 10%.
Over to you. Take time to digest this post. You may wish to mindmap the ideas and reflect on your version of a routine that works for you. Do note that it is quite likely you will have to make some adjustments to your ‘normal’ family routine, but then you know that, because you already know education is life – it is why you are committing to the 11plus adventure for your child in the first place. Please share your alternative routines and let me know if I have missed anything you feel should be included.
See you next time for the third post in our series on how time can help your child get the most of their 11 plus learning.
Start learning, stay learning, stay 11plushappy!
Lee, London.
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
70% off 11plus English 4-ebook Masterclass bundle
The Masterclass Ebook 11plus English Masterclass series gives you immediate access to all 4 books in the series at a 70% saving
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 grab your bundle 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 – in the hope the saving will inspire you to allow these books to start helping your child today.
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
thttps://11plushappy.com/product/11plus-english-masterclass-bundle/
11plus English 4-ebook bundle 70% off
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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
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