Tag: 11plus

New for You! 15 top-level non-fiction models to help your child be the best writer in the exam room

A year in the writing, informed by hundreds of hours of teaching, and already helping people win success in dozens of 11plus entrance exams, please may I introduce an absolute must-have for your book-shelf or digital library in 2025:

In digital:

11 Plus Happy Creative Writing Models! Non-Fiction Edition: Instant Ebook Download

11 Plus Happy Creative Writing Models! Non-Fiction Edition: Instant Ebook Download

£25.00

For Parents, Children and Tutors. 11plus just got happier!  15 top-level models of the most common non-fiction exam questions. Matches exam time and word count. Expert lessons for every feature in every essay, with pages and pages of rich explanations, so that your child can emulate and own each skill.  From plan to punctuation to language and structure . Question prompts to teach focus. Model plans short enough to write in exams. VVV: Explode your child’s vocabulary! For all 11plus/13plus creative writing entrance exams. Perfect for Y4-Y7 Helps skyrocket Ks2 & KS3 creative writing. Empowers parents to get involved and…

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In paperback from Amazon:

Celebrate what they don’t know…

One highly effective and relaxing teaching and learning method you should use with your child is to high five them when a test shows they don’t know something.

Let me explain.

They sit a Maths paper and it shows they don’t know co-ordinates, or have forgotten how to do long division, or they come across a topic they haven’t covered yet. This is absolutely brilliant. Why? Because you have both just identified the next thing they’re going to be brilliant at. When you know you don’t know, you can then sit with them for a session or two dedicated to this unknown area.

Do this enough times and you come close to running out of things you don’t know in time for any real test.

If you’re critical of something they don’t know, they may be less likely to want to learn it, in case they get it wrong and disappoint you again. But if you frame learning as an adventure to actively seek out the unknowns and see it as finding treasure, it becomes less worrying and you make faster progress. Faster progress is what we want!

So celebrate what your child doesn’t know. You’ve found the valuable next step on their learning path. Yey!

Enjoy your back to school moment. Give them extra hugs and handshakes, it doesn’t last forever. Here’s to the preciousness of education and the preciousness of another chance to start again and move forward.

Best, Lee

Sutton Test 11 Plus Creative Writing Exam Approaching?

Harvest time is approaching. Hopefully, your young minds are ready and ripe for exam success. We know the Sutton grammars use a multiple choice format for stage 1. Usually, this means a lot of people are focusing rightly on this first stage. But don’t forget that your child has to dazzle all over again in stage 2 with a piece of creative writing.

So try and top up and rehearse these writing skills along the way. Expecting a last minute rush after Stage 1 to produce the result your child needs is asking a lot. Also, a mighty plea – once stage 1 is over, please don’t wait for the result before preparing for stage 2. You have to assume success and help your child learn, revise and rehearse the features of excellent writing. Let them write descriptions of people and places, write stories from scratch using prompts, practise persuasive letters, and perhaps diaries.

If you’re looking to make this month the best you can, please consider this excellent, exam-focused writing book: Teach Your Little Genius To Pass 11 Plus Creative Writing Exams. Pick up a paperback copy at Amazon:

 

Or download immediately as an ebook from 11plushappy.com here, if you'd prefer to have the option of printing off sections or photocopiables to help your child. 


Buy on Amazon


Buy ebook Here

It's written for parents or tutors to work through with their children, and will equip your young writer with the awareness and skillset needed to produce writing strong enough to dazzle any marker, guiding them to produce work that will stand out from the  thousands of other pieces. It contains select games and photocopiables intended to make sure your child makes progress every single session, as well as chapters on five-star punctuation, precise vocabulary, literary techniques that matter, super sentence variety, paragraph secrets, how to arrange and order texts, as well as rapid stand-out writing tips to put into practice swiftly. To write like an exam-passer, your child has to rehearse like an exam-passer. 

Teach Your Little Genius will help your child will know WHAT to write, HOW to write, and WHY they should write in this way. 

I wish you energy, focus, deliberate practice - and a super-successful stage 1. Let's get them ready for stage 2. 

Lee, London

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!

What are you teaching your child today?

Seriously. Let me know. Have you planned it?

It’s the most important question to know the answer to make sure they make progress each day.

It might be five minutes on a times table, silent letter spellings, or something longer like a piece of creative writing. you need to know to make it happen.

Repeat for tomorrow, but first today.

You might change what they learn tomorrow based on how they do today.

You can do it. They can do it. Your child can learn the next part of their 11 plus journey.

My learning today was to write this blog on a phone, a new skill for me. My wife has been diagnosed with cancer, so we are spending a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms waiting for our medical miracles, and I wanted to figure out a way to keep writing the blog. One app download later, here we are, waiting for an echocardiograph.

So, what are you teaching your child today?

They will love the time together with you.

Best Lee,

Stay learning, stay happy.

This book really improves your child’s 11plus creative writing

If you're spending time helping your child's eleven-plus creative writing reach the grade for secondary school entrance exams, make sure you make progress - i.e. something changes about the writing itself or the understanding of the techniques and ideas - in every session. This book helps you do just that.

I wrote it for parents or tutors working with children. The ideas inside help children pass entrance exams every year. In last year’s season, it helped children pass the Sutton Test, Surbiton, Kingston Grammar, Tiffin, Ibstock, Queen Elizabeth, Highgate, Freemans and Dame Alice. They’re the ones I know about.

In my own cohort of personally taught children, 8 out of 9 made it to their school of choice.

Teach Your Little Genius will help you make the most of your precious time together, making sure everything you do is about learning, happiness, confidence and success. Along the way, your child will see the miracle of their own writing. Y5/6 children may be able to work through much of it alone, but it is not designed for that. There are plenty of books that do that. This book is to help the most powerful part of 11plus success, the learning relationship and time between parents and their child, or a child and their tutor.

It really helps. It may be the missing link that causes a shift in progress, and be the difference between good and “Wow!” I love this book so much for the help it brings and for the difference it is making to parents and children’s lives.

 

If you prefer a digital copy, look in the ebooks section on this website, 11plushappy.com

Start reading, start learning, start writing. Stay 11plushappy.

Lee

What has 6 faces and is an amazing teacher?

Quick 11+ game of the day. Grab a dice, grab a targeted vocabulary list from the net, print it out, and BOOM, you have a game board. Write a sentence with each word you land on. Don't know the meaning of the word? Excellent. Look it up and you're both learning new words that can be a part of your child's next story.

DICE

A pair of fantastic teachers!

Who can reach the end of the list first?

Who can reach the furthest in 11 minutes? 

Play with one or two dice. Throw a double? Make up a rule: go backwards, steal your opponent's word, write a sentence with two words from the list...anything you can think of. 

In short bursts, in cafes, under the table, between sessions when your child is tiring...dice turn learning into fun. A bonus? They're not electronic! Just you, your child, the dice, fun and learning. 

Please share how your game turned out at leemottram@11plushappy.com

You'll find a whole chapter dedicated to dice in the brand new parent and child guide, Teach Your Little Genius to Pass 11 Plus Creative Writing Exams. Yey!

Learn Out Loud – please read with your voice turned up!

Because the week is about fun,

I thought – how can I show ‘em?

Then some words raced into the room

And yelled: “Just write a poem!”

Mums and dads – they need fun too

They might have grumpy faces

Just speak in an unusual way

And take them to fun places

It might go right, it might go wrong

That’s not the point because

Our playful purpose is to pass

Our child’s 11 plus.

Perhaps you’ll say: “Today,

Our lesson starts under the table.”

Then with a preposition, move it

Everywhere you’re able

Splashing through a puddle,

Sprinkling water on your face,

You’ll say, “This ‘ain’t no lesson, child,

This is a Maths Café!”

A milk shake and some paper and a pencil and a jug

Turn milk to millimetres and then finish with a hug

I could go on forever, but I better stop today

So you can go and have some fun in your English Café.

This last verse has adverbs of time, this poem has showed you how

Your child learns longer with a laugh…so go and teach them NOW!

Happy learning. Let me know if you enjoyed today’s learning snack.

Lee, with a smile on his face, London

November 2nd, 2023