How can I help DS to improve at cloze?

[JackiePaper]

Hi have a Ds who is just starting yr 5 and will sit the Birmingham CEM test in a year. His maths and English are good and I've showed him a non VR paper which he could do most of. However he really struggles with the Cloze type exercises, especially the fill in the missing letters type. I'm at a bit of a loss at how to help him work out the answers aside from just giving him more and more papers
He is an avid reader and always has his nose in a book so didn't think he'd struggle so much with this! Any advise on techniques to improve skills would be gratefully received!

[Lea's mum]

dd was also a bit behind in Verbal reasoning. We built up her vocab by buying an A to Z notebook, and she wrote every new word she came across in her practice papers - with the definition / synonym, and antonym. She read them regularly and over the last months we have gone through the letters, one by one, to ensure she remembered them. This has really helped and her VR has significantly improved.
You are doing great to think about it now, this is a great opportunity and your ds have plenty of time to improve. It is actually quite amazing to see that hard work is paying off, up to the last few weeks!
Our dd is going through the test on the 12th. Good luck and all the best to your ds.

[mystery]

Do you think that doing some simple crosswords might help kickstart the sort of thinking that is needed for missing letter Cloze?

[JackiePaper]

Thanks for the advice. A-Z book sounds like a good idea, will give it a go. He seems to struggle with 'seeing' the word though, even if it's words he knows and is familiar with. Once I point out the answer he's like 'oh yes of course!' He's never seen anything like it before though so hopefully will improve with practice.
Crosswords is a good idea, will try to find something suitable. Good luck to your dd for the 12th
Any once else found that their child struggled with this? How did you overcome it? This forum is great by the way, so helpful when trying to DIY, especially as DS is the eldest and never done anything like this before. When I sat the 11+ it seemed a whole lot simpler!

[mystery]

I think one of my dd would be the same which is why I am pleased it is multichoice here.