Tag: 11plusexams

Sneak Peak Week Day 2: Step Inside My Non-Fiction Creative Writing Book

Hello! All this week, Monday-Friday, there’s a fantastically happy chance to see extracts of an eleven-plus exam-winning model of a persuasive letter, taken from my sensational book of non-fiction creative writing models.

Yesterday, we looked at the opening of the letter and the question prompt.

Today, we’ll explore in fully majestic learning depth the next two paragraphs. We’ll follow a similar path to yesterday:

  • The next 2 paragraphs of the letter.
  • Extracts from the What, How, Why lesson that will guide you and your child through the writing features used in the model. You’ll be able to SHOW your child or student what successful writing looks like. (Each model in the book is always partnered with pages and pages of this in-deep learning, so you can squeeze maximum learning value from each model.)
  • The sentences from the original letter are in bold to help you see what writing the lesson is referring to.
  • VVV: Each essay showcases Very Varied Vocabulary that your child can use in their own work. In the book, each word also comes with a definition to help your child understand and use the word swiftly in their own work.

Time to learn!

Extract continued

How many of these children do you think use the park at some point in their week?

Even the most conservative estimate must be over half. Indeed, 23 sports clubs currently use the fields (statistics again taken from your website, Sports Provision page), along with hundreds of mums, dads and grandparents, all keeping themselves and these thousands of children happy and healthy. Imagine these clubs, these family exercise sessions, wiped out overnight.

This brings me to reason No.2: what comes in place of our healthy, connected community? The disease-bringing stench of burning fumes; the rotting of rubbish and badly-designed, unrecyclable materials that children like me had no say in making. The centre will be a monster unleashed by one generation on another – a clumsy, grown-up footprint stamping on the future of youth. To be clear, a devastating, direct consequence of the refuse centre will be that you send 4000 children indoors to be addicts of T.V. screens, addicts of computer screens, addicts of smartphone screens; you will be creating a community of tablet junkies.

WHAT, HOW AND WHY

How many of these children do you think use the park at some point in their week?

  • A one-sentence paragraph and a question combined. I give the question space so that the reader can pause and think about it. Add a couple of one-sentence paragraphs to your writing to highlight important information – it will impress. It shows you can control the structure of your writing.
  • I pivot the argument away from the playing fields to the more emotional subject of children, to make the reader feel my argument. This is not about the park, it’s really about children.

Even the most conservative estimate must be over half this number. Indeed, twenty-three sports clubs currently use the fields (statistics again taken from your website, on the Sports Provision page), along with hundreds of mums, dads and grandparents,

  • Indeed: An emphasising connective for variety and persuasion.
  • Brackets for my punctuation sprinkle. I can tuck this info in brackets since in the opening of the letter, I had already mentioned the council’s website.
  • Power of 3: ‘Mums, dads and grandparents’ feels larger and more personal than ‘people’.
  • VVV: conservative, currently.

all keeping themselves and these thousands of children happy and healthy. Imagine these clubs, these family exercise sessions, wiped out overnight.

  • Contrast: A short sentence with a bossy verb (imagine) after the long previous sentence focuses on the sudden end to the activity of the clubs and families. Contrast is placing two different qualities or images next to each other. Each makes the other stand out.

This brings me to reason number two: what comes in place of our healthy, connected community?

  • A formal linking sentence moves the argument to a new focus.
  • Alliteration emphasises how the park keeps the community together.
  • A direct question to the reader to involve them and hold their attention.

The disease-bringing

  • A compound adjective made from joining a noun to the front of an adjective with a hyphen. Designing your own compound adjectives shows a great control of language and gives you a chance to come up with something original.
  • The hyphen helps my punctuation sprinkle.

stench of burning fumes; the rotting of rubbish and badly-designed unrecyclable materials that we children had no say in making.

  • Emotional imagery: Children are suffering because of adults. I hint that the planner I am writing to is one of these harming adults if they close the park.
  • Alliteration: ‘Rotting of rubbish’ accentuates the unhealthiness.
  • A semicolon shows the reader the two sentences either side have a strong relationship. Here, I use it to replace the conjunction ‘and’. The information on each side teams up with the other and increases the overall power of the sentence.
  • VVV: stench, fumes.

The centre will be a monster unleashed by one generation on another –

  • Metaphor, exaggeration and a dash before a conclusion – blending writing features in a sentence is such a lovely way to treat your reader and dazzle your marker.

a clumsy, grown-up footprint stamping on the future of youth.

  • Extended metaphor: The monster is now clumsy and stamping on things.

To be clear, (a link connective to keep the argument flowing and connected) a devastating, direct (exaggeration and alliteration) consequence of the refuse centre will be that you send four thousand children indoors to be addicts of T.V. screens, addicts of computer screens, addicts of smartphone screens – you will be creating a community of tablet junkies.

  • More exaggeration to emphasise the negative impact of the decision.
  • Repetition of the same “addicts…” as a sentence starter is memorably persuasive and powerful. The repetition makes it seem really serious and really true.
  • Pun: We know a ‘tablet’ is an electronic device, but it is also another name for a pill, so I add to the sad, emotional idea of an addict.
  • A single dash creates a dramatic pause and introduces an equally dramatic conclusion. It helps your punctuation sprinkle – you want a sprinkle of all punctuation.
  • VVV: devastating, unleashed.

Day 2 is done…Now, go and have some writing fun! What did you learn from today’s extract and lesson? What will you show your child in your next session? Encourage your young writer to play with these features in their next practice-write. A spirit of fun and adventure. Investigate like a scientist. Please bear in mind that you don’t have to include everything at once. You might focus on the punctuation, or perhaps the extended metaphor, then fold the next feature into the next essay, while keeping the feature/s that your child learned previously. Slowly, you can fold in all the features into a delicious cake mix…and then bake that writing!

A reminder, here’s the gloriously helpful book this extract comes from. Please do dive in here

or click on the happy pic!

You can also visit the books and downloads page at www.11plushappy.com to see this and other good stuff to help your child pass with a smile.

Please do join me tomorrow (Wednesday) for Day 3 of Sneak Peak Week. Thank you for reading, I truly hope it helps ignite your child’s writing in a very practical way.

Please let me know any thoughts, or if something has helped you at leemottram@11plushappy.com.

Have a beautiful day of learning.

Lee, London

It’s Sneak Peak Week: Step Inside My Non-Fiction Creative Writing Book

Hello! All this week, Monday-Friday, there’s a fantastically happy chance to see extracts of an eleven-plus exam-winning model of a persuasive letter, taken from my sensational book of non-fiction creative writing models.

Today, we’re going to look at:

  • The question prompt
  • The first 3 paragraphs of the letter.
  • Extracts from the What, How, Why lesson that comes with each essay. This guides you and your child through the writing features used in the model. Showing your child or student what successful writing looks like has never been easier! The sentences from the letter are in bold to help you see what writing the lesson is referring to.
  • VVV: Each essay showcases Very Varied Vocabulary that your child can use in their own work. In the book, each word comes with a definition to help your child understand and use the word swiftly in their own work.

Let’s start learning, let’s stay learning!

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).

WHAT, HOW AND WHY

Freshly Cottage Flats

17 Goodview Court

Sutton

SM63PP

Dept of Planning

London Borough of Sutton                                   20th September, 2040

Dear Sir/Madam

  • For fun and pun, I make up an address linked to nature to hint at which side I’m on. YOU DON’T NEED THIS, but it does show confidence and may help the work stand out.
  • I show the marker I understand the letter genre by putting the address at the top right of the page.
  • Alliteration in the address is an early sign I want to play with words.              
  • In formal letters, you could put the address of the person you are writing to on the left of the page, above the letter, but starting a line or two beneath your address. Again, it suggests confidence with the structure of a letter.
  • I write the month in words to show I can spell months. Take opportunities to showcase your learning.
  • Put the date of the test in your letter.

Dear Sir/Madam

  • The formal way to start when you don’t know the name of the person to write to. You could also use ‘To whom it may concern’. If you’re given a real name in the test, then use this. The greeting at the start changes the goodbyes at the end, as you’ll see later.

From the address above, you may be alerted to the fact I’m one of the many concerned, frightened and – to be frank – livid

  • Power of 3 and emotional language: three linked adjectives make a strong, emotionally persuasive opening. A list is a great place to show off your synonyms.
  • A double dash around my last adjective stresses that being livid (very angry) is how I really feel about closing the park. It’s a strong emotion reflecting the seriousness of the issue. Exaggeration can be persuasive.
  • Double dashes in paragraph 1 quickly let the marker see advanced punctuation.
  • Overall, I front-load my first paragraph (which is the first time my marker sees my writing) with a range of writing techniques to make a good first impression. I’m hoping that my marker may already be making their mind up that I’m a serious contender for a high mark. Obviously, don’t just throw anything in – it has to work properly to help your argument.
  • VVV: concerned, 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.

  • The plural ‘residents’ makes me part of a group, lending social proof to my letter. It’s not just me making it up – there are lots of us who feel the same, so my letter must be taken seriously.
  • I remember capital letters for the proper noun name of the playing fields and the centre.
  • VVV: residents, proposed.

My name is Laney, and as an eleven-year-old beginning her life in the area, I stand to be affected more adversely and for far longer

  • In the first paragraph, explain who you are, why you’re writing and why the reader should listen to you. It shows the marker you’ve understood the question and purpose of writing. It also helps you stay focused on the topic.
  • An embedded clause with commas helps my punctuation sprinkle and lets me vary my sentences.
  • Hyphens help clarify ages written in words and add to my punctuation sprinkle.
  • VVV: affected, adversely.

than the misguided grown-ups

  • Repetition of hard ‘g’ sound. (This is called consonance. It sounds angry, like a growl.)
  • Re-naming grown-ups with an adjective that is negative, but not rude – ‘misguided’ – suggests they have simply been guided away from the truth, rather than deliberately avoiding it. I’m being nice and giving them a chance to change. Being kind can be persuasive, as it suggests you are not personally attacking the reader, you just want the solution.
  • I show I can use the prefix ‘mis-’

who came up with this nightmarish idea.

  • My emotional adjective re-labels something neutral – an idea – as something negative (nightmarish).

A refuse centre instead of a park?

  • A first rhetorical question to address my audience. Note that I don’t accuse the council of having this idea, I just present it in a short sentence as a simple choice between two ideas. I do this so whoever is reading the letter doesn’t get defensive and stop listening. The contrast hints at which one is the right idea.

Thus, I write to ask for an immediate end to this ‘rubbish’ idea.

  • A lovely link connective – Thus. It’s a quick way to say – “This means we can say that…”. ‘Thus’ is short enough to remember, but eloquent and effective. Thus, use it!
  • A pun on the double meaning of rubbish as a noun and an adjective. I use inverted commas to point out the pun.

There are three clear reasons to maintain the fields, with both urgent and long-term implications:

  • Power of 3: I tell the reader clearly to expect three ideas. A part of their mind now waits for these ideas, encouraging them to keep reading.
  • Colon: A colon introduces the list and helps me build my punctuation sprinkle early in the first couple of paragraphs.
  • Pretend your opinion is fact: I didn’t write ‘I think that’, I wrote ‘There are’. In truth, there may be more or less than three reasons, but I choose to claim that there ‘are’ three important reasons, suggesting my three are true facts, not opinions. This is sneaky persuasion, as it’s easier to argue with opinions, but harder to argue against facts.
  • VVV: maintain, 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.

  • Power of 3: I present 3 reasons, which do two jobs. 1.) My reader anticipate all three reasons, so a part of their brain will not be satisfied until they hear the third reason. This will encourage them to keep reading. 2.) It helps you structure your letter, since you lay out at the start what you are going to write about. This will help you write faster, and write more, as you know in advance what you want to say.
  • Semicolon list: Separating the list items with semicolons is a fantastic way to split up longer phrases and sentences (e.g. the serious harm to children’s health). It helps your reader know which information belongs to which reason.
  • Punctuation sprinkle: Adding semicolons to your list of reasons in the first couple of paragraphs lets you show off advanced punctuation and make a strong first impression. Your marker will be impressed. It also means that if you forget to use a semicolon again, it doesn’t matter, since you have already done it!

First, grasp Goodview as it is.

  • Blender: A link connective combined with alliteration.

You will know,

  • Direct Address: The second person ‘you’ suggests a fact in my argument is a truth the planner may already know about. Speaking directly to your reader is an important feature in persuasive writing. The pronouns ‘you’ and ‘your’ will help.

as the local planning team,

  • An embedded clause for sentence variation.

that there are fifteen – yes, fifteen –

  • Repetition for emphasis.
  • Dashes work like spotlights, highlighting the large number.
  • Punctuation sprinkle.

primary schools in the area, along with two secondary schools. Statistics on your own website (truthful facts, we presume)

  • I use the planners’ own facts against them! They can’t deny their own words.
  • Brackets help my punctuation sprinkle.
  • The pronoun ‘we’ unites reader and writer, as well as reminding the reader I am one of many who feel upset about the decision. I’m suggesting we all know the truth about the high number of children using the park.
  • VVV: presume.

confirm approximately eight thousand children study at these schools (7,873 pupils to be exact).

  • Brackets let me include an exact figure without interrupting my argument. Precision makes them appear believable.

Boom! That’s it for today. How was that? I hope iso much that it’s helpful in getting you started. The semicolon list of reasons at the start of a persuasive letter is an absolute winner that your child can rely on to start with dazzle! Why not go and teach them this is they are not doing so already. We’ll continue the letter and lesson tomorrow (Tuesday).

If you’re ready for your full copy, then please do dive in here:

or click on the happy pic!

You can also visit the books and downloads page at www.11plushappy.com to see this and other good stuff to help your child pass with a smile.

Please let me know any thoughts, or if something has helped you at leemottram@11plushappy.com.

Have a beautiful day of learning. See you tomorrow, and please do share this with a parent or tutor if you think it may be of help.

Lee, London

Eleven Plus Parents – You CAN do this!

Well, another week means another opportunity to help your child as they prepare for their 11plus. How is it going? Two very simple messages today. One is up there in the title. You CAN do this. Thousands of children do pass each year, these schools do exist, they do accept children, and you have an equal chance to any other parent-and-child partnership of making it.

The second message is vast in its smallness: you, as a guide, only have to be one step ahead of your child when it comes to teaching them a particular skill. You don’t need to be a teacher, you really don’t. You don’t have to know the whole curriculum. You really don’t. You’ll end up knowing the whole curriculum, but you do not need to know everything to start.

Rather, spend the day or evening before a session with your child learning the one topic you are planning to cover. With the online world, you are never far from finding dozens of resources and lessons and free videos to get going. Choose 2-3 resources ( I think it’s useful to have different approaches to a topic, to help you take a broader view) and spend an hour looking at the information.

As long as you’re prepared to be a beginner, and as long as you don’t worry yourself about what you don’t know, you’ll make great progress, and you’ll help your child make progress.

It’s not about what you know now, it’s not about your own educational background. Honestly, it’s not. When I was helping my first child, I realised there was so much maths I hadn’t learned or remembered from school. Even at teacher training college, several tutors brought up again and again that there was a belief among many student and professional teachers they were not ‘good’ at Maths, which was totally false, and based on either old-school learning or the fact that as we hadn’t used it daily in our lives, it wasn’t in our working memory. I actually fell in love with maths only at teaching college; at school…well, I hardly remember anything from my own primary lessons. Yet I learned it along the way, or rather re-learned it, and now I teach it with a real fascination and passion, alongside my relentless passion for English and the spoken and written word. My first helpful book was the original Bond How to do 11 Plus Maths books, which had short, but so incredibly helpful, introductions to many of the subjects. Each step takes you onto the next step.

We are grown ups and we can help our children and we can feel good, not bad, about teaching ourselves just enough to guide them. These are tests for children, so please remember that. They are designed to be tricky, they are designed to catch people out, but they are also designed to be passed!

So please, breathe out, smile, and remember:

  • You can do this.
  • You are not alone.
  • You only have to be one step ahead in one subject.
  • It is definitely okay to learn along with your child.
  • It’s okay to say, “Ooh, I don’t know about this yet, let’s go and find out.” Admitting you don’t know everything will often make your child feel better about learning, as they realise it’s natural to not know things!

Okay, 11plus parent, okay 11plus tutor, okay, 11plus child-superhero – have an incredible week. Time is our greatest tool. Smiling and relaxing might be our second greatest tool. Now, you can go to the subject at hand and learn your way through the week.

Start learning, stay learning, stay happy. Lee

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!

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!

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

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?

Does teh idea of finding a regular 11-lus learning routine for your child look like this?

Relax.
To be clear, a successful routine is about three things:

  1. The hours needed to embrace all topics successfully.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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.