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:

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.

7 happy ways time can help your child pass the 11+

Originally, I spoke about ‘using’ time. However, life and learning have moved on. Thanks to books like Oliver Burkeman’s incredible 4000 Weeks, I’m rethinking my relationship with time. Rather than seeing it as a resource to use and consume, it’s perhaps wiser to see it as an ally. Together, you and time can make a huge difference to your child’s learning path, and thus, massively increase their chances of success at your dream school.

Everything we do depends on time. Everything we do, we do in time.
Often, a task we don’t do or don’t complete is because we run out of time. As often, we run out of time not because the end was too far away to reach, but because we started late. The end was always there; the beginning was lost.
This is never more so than when preparing for and passing tests. What you are about to read – combined with the time you take to read it, make notes and DO it – DO time – is going to transform your child’s learning and results. Starting today.
Time is on your side, but it seems to have two opposing energies within it. Realise:
✓ How creative it can be;
✓ How perishable it is.
Every second is single-use; we can’t use yesterday’s time, today’s time, or tomorrow’s time, ever again. Like an apple, time doesn’t last, but like an apple, it doesn’t need to. The goodness comes from crunching on it while it is ripe.

HAPPY WARNING: Much of this is learning for you. It’s learning you will put into practice with the child you are brave enough and wonderful enough to be helping. Filter the information in a way that is playful, fun and stress free. Always make children believe they can do lots, learn lots and grow lots.

For they can and do.

A total growth mindset.
Instead of worrying about running out of time or having no time, or complaining of wasting time, you may frame time, personify it as a friend or teacher or special power – whichever model or metaphor speaks to your child. Embed what follows over the next 7 days of blogs (please come back to keep up) into a regular, happy learning routine. (John Lamerton’s amazing book, Routine Machine, changed my life on living routines.) Over time, each time skill should become a natural, background time-habit, a pattern of thinking and action that becomes instinctive for you both. Be playful and adapt the 7 ways for your own child. Some children pick up strategies and put them into practice quickly, while others need to rehearse the ideas and action several times. Both responses are fine. Each child is different. It’s why I absolutely love tutoring 1:1 – finding the path that works for each child is incredibly rewarding.

So, welcome to the 11plushappy School of Time! An 8 day blogfest that I hope helps you prepare yourself and your child for the path ahead.

Happy Classroom 1: The Superhero Moment of the 11 Plus

“They cannot stop me. I will get my education, if it is in the home, school, or any place.”
Malala Yousafzai

The 11 Plus may be your child’s first superhero moment. A first – and ongoing – task is to enthuse both you and your child into seeing this. To get 100% behind the adventure.
Encourage them to feel excited about the all-or-nothing opportunity that the preparation and entrance tests represent.

Yes, both the exam and the preparation are all-or-nothing opportunities. You can’t do one without the other. An exam without preparation is a car without wheels.

As a dad in the playground, I remember loving parents speaking about letting their child ‘just have a go’ at the 11+ on the day, without ‘all those boring months of doing papers’. Perhaps they felt either their child was smart enough, or else might be lucky enough on the day. They were also against forcing their children to do extra learning. I said nothing, but my feeling back then – as it is now – was that this approach just couldn’t be right.

After happy years of teaching, I am certain it isn’t right.

Of course, you should rightly consider your child bright, but it still doesn’t add up that you would ask your child to sit a test without preparing for a test. Your child may be a Ferrari, but a Ferrari without wheels is a Ferrari without wheels: it’s not going far. Which car would win a race? A 2020 Ferrari without wheels or a 2000 Yaris with wheels? Preparation=wheels! (I love my Yaris.)

You might wish to cut the following three sentences out and stick them where your
child will see them daily: next to your child’s bed, on the fridge (even in the fridge!),
perhaps the car dashboard if you drive to school.

“You can’t save the world when you feel like it –
you can only save the world when it needs saving!
You can’t sit the test when you feel like it –
you can only sit the test on the day it happens, at the time you’re given.
You can’t prepare for the test when you feel like it –
you can only prepare now!”

There is no later, there is now.

Better still, invite your child to copy the sentences with coloured pens or pencils and design their own poster to display. Write them inside a unicorn speech bubble or draw each word as if it has been built from Lego…whatever they love to look at is best.

The 11 Plus, handled right, is not pressure, it is adventure. It is not forcing, it is freeing. A chance for your child to influence their own future; a chance for you to influence your child’s future. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get involved with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
At its heart is the love and joy of learning.
It is a series of fizzy wow moments as your child figures something new out, which runs parallel to becoming more confident and empowered by rehearsing knowledge and skills they have already. Make it fun, give them lots of specific genuine praise, and be amazed by how much they grow and come to know. You are teaching your child that they can and should think big, that they are capable of giving everything.
Yes, true, heroes may not always win – but they are winners.
Giving everything to something that matters when it matters makes you a winner, doesn’t it? It’s always possible that in whatever you do, you may not get the result in the end, but it is certain you will not get the result if you do not try with everything you have.

As much as possible, you need to be willing to be your own guarantee.
Teach your child to see and believe this, and to work accordingly in order to make it true. When I was out jogging, around the time of helping my daughter prepare, for 6 months I visualised her getting the letter of admission into grammar school as I ran my last 300 metres. That visualisation helped me out so many times when my daughter and I hit learning blocks. It also prepared me to be calm and happy in the next learning session, even if the last one hadn’t gone too well, which it often didn’t.
By trying, by going for it, your child learns to hold their head up high. You are allowing them to build coping skills, passion skills and belief skills. Do not deny the truth of this message: the strongest way to make time work with you is to realise and accept now that this is a true superhero moment. Grab a book and dive in. Make five extra minutes to learn something together and you increase your child’s chances. Increase the minutes and you further increase those chances.

What will you start with?
Times tables? Why not declare your house a T.T.E.Z. (Times Tables Emergency Zone) until they’re all known? Tables help with fractions, division, percentages, word problems…and multiplication. Put up posters declaring the emergency and have quick, spontaneous meetings under the kitchen table to rehearse the 7 times table, or behind the sofa to rehearse the 12 times tables and their division facts.
How about spelling? For example, do they know the rules for turning reply into replies is:
Swap y for i, then and add -es on to words ending in a consonant + y? (Whereas, just add ‘s’ if it’s a vowel + y? Think key to keys.) Is there one spelling pattern that trips them up regularly? Focus on that with fun and encouragement. Be fascinated when you learn something.
Remember: you can only prepare now. Today. See you tomorrow for Happy Classroom 2.

Oh, and if you haven’t seen it yet, here’s a 9-step video guide to help you both prepare for Story Continuation Success in creative writing.

Lee, London, September 2022

11plus English 4-ebook bundle 70% off

Please find your 70% discount for the 4-bundle Ebook 11plus English Masterclass series here.

No voucher needed.

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

11plus English materials on 50% plus sale now!

Looking for #11plus English books that really make a difference? You’re in the right place at the right time.

Save up to £30 on these targeted creative writing and comprehension book bundles. You don’t need more papers, you need proven ways to teach your child to dazzle their 11plus marker and develop writing skills that last a lifetime.

Get ahead, get saving, get learning, get 11plushappy!

11 Plus English Masterclass 4-book Download Bundle

4 Weeks to the Sutton test – make sure you and your child re-read or read the 11 Plus English Masterclass Ebook Bundle

Fill this vital month with moments of high learning:

Search out and fill gaps in your child’s knowledge;
Have your child sit lots of timed tests to bring them into the zone;
Revise and be confident of the multiple choice tricks all comprehension tests play,
Plan for success in Stage 1 and prepare for the creative writing element of Stage 2.

It’s all in the English Masterclass.

Happy learning. The marathon is almost at the finishing line: finish strong, today and every day this month.

Best, Lee

London, 2020

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…

Councils have left up signs to admonish people who continually drop litter in the parks. (Main verb)
Mr Round, the head teacher, admonished Stephan for drawing only triangles in his maths book. (-ed past tense)
Carter’s ears drooped, his tail ceased wagging and his head dropped, looking like an admonished school boy. (Simile) (Admonished becomes an adjective here!)
The storm was an admonishment from Mother Earth for the farmer’s failure to gather her harvest in time. (Metaphor) (admonishment is a noun)
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)
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.

What is happening to the eleven plus exam? How to name and get rid of your worries about the 11+ . (The write way to worry!)

A conversation with a close friend, who is worrying about their daughter’s 11 plus in these difficult times, has prompted this post.

In truth, we don’t know exactly what is going to happen. We can predict, though, that something will happen. Either the tests will be rearranged, postponed, or a new system will be temporarily introduced. The first two of these are most likely; the third is not impossible to imagine. Schools could re-open earlier or later than we could predict, with the likelihood of some form of social distancing in place. It is, quite honestly, a horrible situation for our children, and for us, their carers and educators, who want to to do the best for them.

Simply, it is a reminder that we cannot control all events. We never have been able to. The current situation just makes this very, very obvious. Perhaps less obvious is the idea that this is okay, that not controlling all events does not mean we cannot control any events.

It is not, I think, about doing the right or wrong thing. No one knows enough. Instead of right or wrong, far better to think in terms of helpful or unhelpful. What is a helpful thing to do now? How can we help our children? This question opens up a world of opportunity and the realisation that there is so, so much we can do.

For me as a dad and as a teacher, two of the most helpful things we can do are:

Continue to allow them to study for the 11 plus. Continue to support them, continue to find resources and use them, over time, to make deliberate improvements in skills and knowledge, one by one, folding in new skills on top of practising old skills and knowledge.

Remember, this is helpful or unhelpful – not right or wrong. Although there are only around 4-5 months remaining before the typical 11plus entrance test season starts, your child possibly has a lot longer than that in terms of extra time through being at home and being able to spend more time focused on 11 plus learning. In effect, the extra time to spend on targeted learning each day means it is more as if they still had 6-8 months to prepare, simply because this time wouldn’t exist under normal conditions.

I’ve written before how holidays, particularly the summer holidays, are true gifts of learning for the time they create to learn undisturbed. I don’t mean your children should study 6-8 hours a day and do nothing else – that would be unhelpful! However, three hours a day, plus reading, leaves so much time for childhood, while also offering unrivalled moments of learning among the people they love most – you!

This is certainly no holiday. But if we are thinking helpful or unhelpful, then it is definitely a learning moment to seize.

2. If we must worry, and worry, it seems, we often must, then we can try and find a really helpful way of worrying, a way that actually leads to less worry and more learning. There is a way, it is very simple, and if you haven’t tried this already, I invite you 100% to try this. It is going to help a lot.

The ‘write way to worry’ means simply this: the right way to worry is to write.

Write down what YOU worry about, both in your own education, and in helping your child to get as ready as they can be for the entrance test.

Everything.

Do you have gaps in your own learning? Are you worried about verbal reasoning or non verbal reasoning, possibly because, like me, until you start out on the grammar school journey, you’ve never heard of them? Do you worry about the effect of ‘pressure’ on your child? Are you unsure of what is in your chosen school’s particular test? Are you comparing your child to others?

Maybe you fear your maths isn’t good enough, or maybe it’s just one area – division, or percentages, for example.

Is English your second language? Do you get spellings wrong? Would you worry about writing a letter?

Getting your worries – all of them – down in writing (and don’t judge yourself on HOW you are writing down your worries!) might take you half an hour, an hour at the most (trust me, you’ll run out!)

But…

it will save you and your child weeks of time on your 11+ journey.

Please – do this. Remember, this is about helpful or unhelpful. Grab a piece of paper and get going. Think-writing is amazing at bringing thoughts up you didn’t even know you had, including worries you might be pretending are not there but are nevertheless holding you back from helping your child right now. Enjoy a good worry-write. My worries about my education/What I think I don’t know/What are my gaps?/What do I think I can’t help my child with?/What are my barriers to helping my child?

Done?

How do you feel? Worse, or relieved?

However you feel, shake your own hand for what you’ve just done.

Why?

Because now you know that what you are worried about is what YOU are worried about.

Your child is not worried about the same things, and you don’t have to pass on your worries to them. None of them. At all.

Admit it, not knowing some things? It’s pretty normal. It applies to every human being on Earth, right?

Not knowing we don’t know, refusing to accept we don’t know, or pretending we do know, can be a bit more risky to your child’s success: because of superinfluence, there’s a risk they will absorb your worries, or learn to believe it doesn’t matter if you don’t know some things.

In superinfluence, we’re only passing on the helpful stuff that actually supports their 11+ success. Well, now you know your worries, you can leave them behind or keep them with you.

So not passing on your worries, that’s one great result of writing them down and exploring them. Two more things to think about.

A second benefit of getting your worries down is you’ll probably realise that a lot of the time, that’s all they are – worries.

Not facts.

One of my worries at the time my daughter was preparing was non-verbal reasoning. I had an almost superstitious doubt (in that I had no evidence to support the worry, it was just fear) about my ability to see patterns and work with pictures. Rather than help my daughter, I worried I would actually make things worse for her. It stopped me covering the topic. I was a primary teacher, yet nowhere in the curriculum at the time was anything about non-verbal reasoning.

Of course, it wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, it was that I hadn’t done it, so had never learned how to.

Going through various books and website resources,step by step, at a pace right for both of us, my daughter and I learned the various types of shapes and sequences. Over time, our score in tests reached the level they needed to be. That would not have happened without time, and time would not have happened if I hadn’t admitted my worry months before.

The point is this: knowing you don’t know something is a strength because you can now find about it and learn it to a level that will help support your child. This is the third benefit of worrying in this helpful way. We can look at each worry objectively and take steps to deal with each and any step that moves our child’s learning forward. Isn’t that amazing?

It might help to bear in mind, too, that whatever you do not know, you are not expected to know anything a curious, interested 11 year old is not capable of learning.

That’s a helpful perspective to keep in mind.

This doesn’t mean that you wait until everything you worried about is dealt with, that you must be ready before you start helping your child – this will lose you time. You are never ready, you become ready by doing. There are actions that you can do to help right now. Pick one and do it. My science teacher, when I was at school (Hello, Mr Jackson) taught me one of the most helpful quotes I’ve ever heard: “Don’t worry, work.”

Perhaps the most common worry is the ‘What if..?’ kind. What if they don’t get in? What if I miss something? What if they find it too hard? What if I ruin it for them? What if I show myself up and can’t understand the learning myself?

Nothing is guaranteed in life, but the possibility of things not working out is never an excuse for not striving for those things anyway. Better results often come when you believe in something as if it is already a fact, and then work backwards to map out the plan to get to that reality.

I began my son’s 11+ journey with the end in mind – I already saw him getting in to his grammar school, and then worked backwards to find all the ways needed to get him to that truth. Did I have proof that it would happen? Not a chance!

I didn’t know all the ways – I knew close to nothing. Instead, I believed that there were ways, and if there were ways, then I could find out what they were, learn them and follow them.

I invite you to do the same.

One helpful tip to stay one step ahead of your child’s learning is to read through the lesson or part of a book or resource you’re going to use by yourself before reading through it with your child. In Bond, How to do 11+ Maths, for example, read the chapter on ratio before you teach them it.

A week, an hour, even ten minutes is sometimes enough to grasp the general learning you’re about to cover. By the second or third time, as you read it with your child it will probably make sense. Even if you don’t understand a concept completely, you can lead the situation confidently and honestly by saying,

‘Well, it looks tricky, but so did the other things and we worked on them, and we can do them now.’

Another tip is to do some of the work they do with them. If you are asking your child to practise writing an extended metaphor paragraph, then have a go at writing one as well. If you are showing them long division, have them give you questions to solve, or do the same questions your child is doing, modelling a couple, then hiding your answers and turning it into a game.

Thank you for teaching and nurturing your child, you are making a difference to the world.

If you are looking for help in multiple choice English or creative writing, I invite you to a 50% discount on the 11 Plus English Masterclass 4-book Ebundle, with immediate downloads available to save even more time. Enter ‘stay at home’ in the cart. The discount is good for any book, any purchase, until our precious children return to school.

Wherever your child is in their eleven plus journey, I hope they are safe, always making progress and remain in love with learning as much as ever. Education is amazing!

My very best, Lee Mottram

50% off all 11plus English tuition books until our precious children are allowed to return to school

The headline says it all, so if you want to skip to the books, please do. Goodness knows how we make it through this, but we have to believe at some point that schools will reopen and your hoped-for grammar school will admit the next intake. It could be sooner than we think or later than we think, but it will happen.

Whatever you are doing to stay safe and occupied, we must keep our children learning.

The good habits you and schools have established to help your children learn are crucial at this moment. Learning provides much more than a distraction from worry – it paves the way for tomorrow’s generation of heroes and humans who will shape and build and grow the best future possible. It sets your child on their best path.

11 plus exams will at some point be a normal reality again. Please – little by little – stay learning with precision and purpose. We need our children to be progressing and prepared, not in a spirit of competition or worry, but in a happy spirit of continuing the love of learning and the happiness and stimulation that come from achievement and focus. It is good that our highest goals as humans remain at the core of what we do. It is not easy, but it is good.

I’m now running a 50% off coupon on all books in the 11plushappy range, including the bundle. (From an already low bundle price of ~~£47~~, you now invest just £23.50 for the 4-book 11 Plus English Masterclass Bundle, giving you months of targeted learning).

Use the voucher code ‘stay at home’ in the cart.

Please have a look at the books. I believe so strongly they can help you and your child continue learning together.

I’m sorry I am not in a position to offer them for free. With social distancing in place, all my tuition students can, of course, no longer come, so my own income and ability to keep my family food coming is under pressure. I hope that 50% off everything can help everyone survive and thrive. Please share the coupon with anyone you feel might benefit – there are no restrictions. The creative writing guides are also very suitable for upper KS2 and KS3 children. Included in the purchase is an opportunity to send a piece of your child’s written work for free, so that I can read and suggest some next steps for your child to take. This is specific to your child, not generic.

Simply add your books to the cart and write ‘stay at home’ in the voucher code box. Your 50% discount will be applied immediately.

Stay learning, stay safe, love your children, be patient, be caring, be funny, strive to be happy. In dark times, we must be the extra light.

Thank you for caring for and teaching your children. I hope that as you stay at home, your 50% off voucher code helps you and your child on their path to eventual eleven plus success.

Children, keep creating, keep learning and keep laughing. Every smile, every word, every number, every picture is worth it.

My best, Lee

London

Superinfluence Part 2: Deciding what and how starts with where

Okay, decision time. This level of superinfluence happens either before, or in the early stages of, helping your child be superhero prepared and happy.

Your child can’t do this because they don’t know the choices. They can’t see over the fence of the next hour without your help. That’s how children are; totally immersed in the moment. You are the strategic thinker, it’s your plan. Create the learning moments and your child will live them.

Here’s what you need to think about.

Deciding what and how starts with deciding where.

Why? Three reasons.

1. Each school tests slightly differently: don’t waste a minute on something your child isn’t going to be tested on.

By example, the three schools we chose for our son at the time tested English, Maths and verbal reasoning, but not non-verbal reasoning, so we ditched non-vr completely and devoted all study time on the first three areas. This freed up a lot of time, as we had been trying to learn everything. For our final school choice, only English and Maths were tested; knowing this allowed us an even sharper focus.

2. You need to know the catchment areas for schools you are interested in and how they work. Often, grammar schools have no geographical bias – getting in is based on ability in the test and that’s it. Nevertheless, some grammars may favour local children, at least for a percentage of admissions.

For example, if all children applying passed with the same high mark, the first 50-80 children (out of an average intake of 150) might be chosen from the nearby area, with the rest going to outliers. This may or may not influence your decision, but you need to know.

3.Travel time. How long will your child spend travelling to and from school? I drew the line at an hour, but there are children at my son’s school for whom two hours each way is the norm. It’s up to you and your child. Also, how will they get there? Is there public transport from where you live?

Finding out where the schools are is easy.

Visit www.ngsa.org.uk the home of the National Grammar Schools Association and do a geographical search across England or Northern Ireland. There are no grammar schools in Scotland or Wales. A google search will also throw up results quickly.

Ask at your child’s school and speak to other parents in the playground. (As complete newbies to both the area and secondary education, we found out about the local school – Wilson’s – from a neighbour who lived half way down our street and who we’d only ever had a couple of chats with. How thankful are we for that conversation and that lady’s generous information and encouragement to apply?) Parents and families may have inside and up-to-date information – an elder child who goes to a nearby grammar, for example. Your local education authority (LEA) will also advise you of any grammar schools in the area.

When you find a school that interests you, here are five questions you absolutely need the answers to, either from their website or from a telephone call to the ADMISSIONS department. Ideally, do both – check a website first, then follow up with a phone call to get things totally clear.

1. When and how do I apply to your school?

2. What’s in the entrance exam? What subjects will my child be tested on?

3. HOW do you test each subject? Is the test format

A full sentence/calculation answer sheet, with working out shown for maths question?
Multiple choice?
A combination of both? If so, which parts use which format?

4. Does your school offer a sit-down ‘mock’ or practice test’? Do you provide sample questions or a sample paper?

5. When are the dates of any open days so we can visit your school?

It might help to zoom in a little on each of these points. Remember, your child cannot do any of this without you. Nor is it your primary school’s role. You alone are the power here.

Usually, you apply in the Spring term when your child is in Y5, around Easter time, April. The cut-off date may be early July, or sometimes as late as September of Y6 if the testing takes place later in the year. There are, however, some tests which take place closer to July, and which may have earlier cut-off dates. PLEASE DO THIS STEP ASAP!

Make sure you know this date well in advance.

In fact, if you are in a position to, stop reading this and find the date and as much of the information as you can now. It’s that important. Don’t miss it.

You must fill in a separate form for each school.

Depending on the school, you apply online, but may be able to apply by post. If you apply online, you need to upload a photograph of your child, but the process is easy, with full instructions given.

Later, in October of Y6, after you have applied separately to the school, and in some cases, after your child has sat the test for a grammar school, you fill the local authority shared Common Entry Form. On this form, you list all your school choices in order of preference. This form goes to the local authority, not the schools. Your child’s primary school will give out, and may help in submitting, this form. Do ask them.

If you have visited possible schools earlier in the year, choosing the order of preference may be easier. Note, I say easier, not easy.

A lot of thought and worry goes into choosing which school to put first, second, etc. Some people argue that if there is more than one grammar in the borough, it is risky to put 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd choice as grammars, simply because the pass rate for first choices is high enough to make it very hard to get a grammar as a second or third choice. Some parents put a grammar 1^st, then choose the best secondary comprehensive they find. I can’t advise you on this, it’s your decision.

Personally, as my son had passed two tests before we filled the form, we risked it all and put the three grammars as our first three choices. I know we were not alone in doing this, and we also heard from one grammar school Head that several children had come to his school as a second choice.

Remember, each school does not know how you have listed your preferences. If your child passes with a high enough mark to be offered a place, they will be offered a place. The offer is submitted to the local authority, not you, and it is the council who look at 1^st choice 2^nd choice, etc.

If your child has sat an entrance test in September, and you know the result, this can help either way.

If your child hasn’t passed the entrance test, DO NOT continue to put that school down on as a preferred school – it will not be considered, and you waste a chance to put a good second choice as a new first choice. I know this is an obvious point, but each year people make this mistake.

It’s also worth repeating, so you are very clear on this, that you cannot list grammar schools, or many other state schools, on the CEF unless you have first filled out the individual school form and applied for the test earlier in the year.

Don’t miss the opportunity – fill in the school’s separate form. Even if you change your mind later, it’s better to have the option to put a school down on the CEF. It happens every year that parents leave this too late: you are not going to be one of them.

After you have submitted the individual school application, the school will confirm receipt, then write to you with the date and time your child will sit the test. Tests happen from as early as September in your child’s Y6 year (just a few weeks after they start Y6), to as late as January. You are given a morning or afternoon time – they choose, not you.

When you are given the date, congratulations! You’ve handled the paperwork that makes it possible; the opportunity to get into the school is now a reality.

I’m splitting this post into two, maybe three parts, as there is so much information to share with you. We’ll continue to zoom in on the above points tomorrow, starting with answering the question: what’s in the test? What will your child be tested on?

Have a happy day of learning, Lee

P.S. Do you know the 21 must-haves of creative writing your child needs to show in every piece of creative writing? Are you prepared for the multiple choice tricks all English tests play to try and catch your child out as schools reduce the number of applicants down to the most alert and prepared? Click here to get started or find out more now. (Do it before you run out of time to prepare.)

SUPERINFLUENCE: “I am the single most important factor in my child’s 11+ success.”

I know you could have told yourself that, but here’s what that one truth means.

Your child:-

1. Loves you.

2. Believes you.

3. Needs you.

4. Learns from you.

5. Learns everything about how to be, learn and think from you.

Your son or daughter at primary school age looks up to you – and is influenced by you – in way they will never be again.

What this means is that you are in a position of what I call

superinfluence.

Every day, whether you try to or not, you influence your child.
If that’s true, then imagine how you can influence them when you do try.

Deliberate influence directed at a definite target – this is superinfluence. There are five happy steps to superinfluence when we are getting ready to sit and pass the 11+, plus one bonus step. (Begin developing your superinfluence with the English Masterclass Bundle – four books dedicated to multiple choice tests and outstanding 11 plus creative writing.)

1. Knowing that you do have influence.

2. Deciding what and how begins with where.

3. Naming and getting rid of your worries about the 11+.

4. Doing it: doing the influencing. My own mantra is ‘Only doing does.’ Because it’s true.

5. Repeating step 4. ‘Only doing does’ doesn’t mean ‘only doing once does.’

We’re going to go deeper into each of these over the next 5 posts, making this another 11plushappy! mini-series. P.S. You have one week left to grab your copy of the English Masterclass bundle sale – all four books – for less than half price. I urge you to seize the moment and move your child to the front of the line now.

1: Know that you have influence

We’ve been through it already: you do. Accept it.

You launch your child’s life.

Where are you launching them towards? What skills are you going to give them to make sure they don’t just survive life’s journey, but create life’s journey. Be guided by this statement:

Parents who put education first tend to develop children who come first in education.

It’s not rocket science. Speak French, they learn French. Speak telly every night, they learn telly every night.

Speak excuses, they learn excuses. Speak belief and achievement, they learn belief and achievement.

What you want to get across to your child is the message that what matters is

“You, me and learning.”

Because it is what matters.

I’m not saying the other stuff of life is rubbish or less important. I know I’m risking you saying, ‘Hang on, I want my child to play football, or chat with friends, or swim, I want my child to enjoy his computer games, to enjoy his childhood.’

Well, my son, and the other children we know who make it to grammar school, still played football, still swam – they simply did it as part of the learning schedule.

There is time for it all. But at the same time, there is only one time for a best shot at that grammar school.

Your child will enjoy his childhood if you love them, if he or she has a great relationship with you, if they know you care, if you guide them, if you believe in them, if you develop them. Develop them and you set your child up to enjoy childhood days and teenage days and adulthood days and old age.

Be careful of a strange fear in modern culture of ‘putting pressure’ on kids. It’s a feature of language and thought today that some grown-ups sprinkle their sentences with the word ‘stress’ like some people sprinkle salt on their food.

My instinct, from observations on children at school and in tuition, is it isn’t helpful and it isn’t true.

Sprinkling salt or stress isn’t good for you!

Technology-creep, obesity, selfishness, poverty of language, a material-craving, but work-avoiding celebrity obsessed generation – that’s pressure. Not getting a good job when you become an adult and are trying to make a home – that’s pressure. Getting up to your neck in debt because you can’t earn enough to pay the bills – that’s pressure.

Not thinking you are worth, or able, to go for your dream with everything you have – that’s pressure.

The truth is children love challenge. Leave them alone and they’ll argue to be the best at ANYTHING – my spaghetti is longer than yours, I can throw further than you, I’ve got to level 7 on this game, my team is better than yours, on and on it goes. Listen to children talk and very quickly you’ll discover a natural desire to be and do and have the best.

All you are doing is funnelling that natural, fun urge for challenge through the positive filter of superinfluence, and directing it towards learning and developing their mind and character in ways that will help them be ready to sit the test, as well as learning academic and personal skills they will use for the rest of their days.

Reassuringly, the 11+ process is about challenge, not competition. Being the best you can be is very different from being better than anyone else. How can they be compared with another child? Your child is unique – it is impossible. So let them know there is no need to worry or compare themselves to other children. By all means, however, let them compare themselves with themselves! What do they know this week that they didn’t know last week?

Parenting is your job, and superinfluence is your power.

Don’t leave parenting up to advertisers, phones, game developers, telly; don’t let it be influenced by your exhaustion at the end of the day. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it.

Join me tomorrow for the next part of this superinfluence series. Ready to go? Use your superinfluence and the English Masterclass Bundle to teach your child the skills they absolutely need to have the best chance of passing their 11 plus. You can still grab it at a bargain price, but only for 7 days.

Best, Lee