11 Plus Exams Forum

We have 4 children ranging year2- year5. I am OK in teaching maths/NVR at home, but find it difficult to teach english. DD1 in yr5 and is not very keen in reading. DS1 in yr3 and quite mature, who reads and loves books but still he says he does not understand some texts that supposed to be his age range. We are bit worried how to prepare them for 11+ tests. Looking for any help and advice as to how to teach creative writing and comprehension skills for private school tests. And how to teach vocabularies, synonyms, antonyms etc.

Any advice welcome and thanks.

First Aid in English is a really good set of books. Its quite thorough so don't be daunted by its size. You can get it on Amazon.

-Bond papers
-Private school papers-most are not that difficult for adults!

Most important-read to your children every night for 10 mins. Ask them questions about the text every now and again and explain vocabulary

Good luck

I agree, don't just ask questions they can easily answer, get then to infer information from the text. A simple example: Say if he was reading about a man who was in the cafe ready to go outside and he was holding an umbrella. You could ask him what kind of weather do you think it is in the story? He'd reply 'it could be reining as the man has an umbrella with him.' So the text didn't actually mention the weather but he's inferred the information.

We were given the above example in the school I work at. I've found the link incase I didn't explain it very well ...

http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/files_u ... n3_HO1.doc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

At the independent I work out the children are taught to answer comprehension questions using PEA, Point Evidence Analysis, for any question with marks above 2 marks. This makes them look at the question, find a quote relating to the answer and then explaining the reasoning behind this quote. They also look at poetry and the imagery in poetry in detail so they can use that imagery as part of their analysis. Some of the answers at 11+ can be 6 mark questions and so would need at least 2 to 3 different PEA answers within the overall answer. The school can't guarantee that the comprehension piece is non-fiction, fiction or poetry so they practise all types.

The North London Consortium for Girls which includes City, NLCS, St Albans ,Channing etc has 8 , 10 and 12 mark questions and Merchant Taylors had a 15 mark question this year. DG