11 Plus Exams Forum

Any feedback welcome ! - how much English comprehension should kids be doing at school in years 5 + 6? I understand may be a lot of variation, but generally how often would they write answers to a comprehension and how many lessons/hours/duration given to it per week?? Also how are they taught it?? Teacher talks through the comprehension and goes through it as a group before they write answers or kids doing comprehension with no input until going through answers after completion ?? Thanks

I work with Y3/4/5/6 students and I am constantly astounded at how little comprehension they do. Mostly it would be tests done in a timed environment with the teacher going through the answers in the class afterwards. However little your school is doing there will be many other schools doing less. DG

in all of year 5, (since Sept 2013) we have done 2 or 3 comps. 1 homework, 1 in class, and 1 incase I've missed something.

This clearly is insufficient for the 11+, so yet another thing we have to pick up at home.

Some days I really do feel like I am DD's teacher

For English, Maths and VR you probably are! DG

I concur...currently ds2 does very little comprehension - actually - none since he started in Y6, for homework. They are, however, being given "practice SATs" every week, under timed conditions in school. Don't even get me started on that - I am almost at the point of disapplying him for the last month or so, just so that he misses the SATs and is one less Level 6 for the school to crow about, despite his teacher not even congratulating him on his GS entry - in fact, he hasn't even acknowledged it. I have to say though, I think the lack of comprehension is more to do with this particular teacher as ds1 certainly had a comprehension passage to do at least every 3 weeks in Y6.

It seems very little comprehension at our school until recently as they want some of the class to do L6 reading.

To me it seems as though pretty much everything in Y6 is around the SATs. I've explained to DS that they won't mean anything at GS and its only really ''advertising' for the school, but he likes to do well so is trying his best.

I'm surprised, my DS is in Y5 and they do quite a lot and he brings home a comp. homework every other week at least.
Despite that his comp. tests weren't good enough, so I had to work on it at home.

Are those multiple choice or descriptive?

The ones in the GS exam are MCQ (with some options very close to each other and need a sharp eye). The ones usually taught at school are descriptive ones which are ok to start but not ok if you think that's enough prep for GS.

I remember one of the famous tutor in Bromley (where parents queue up like mad) had no clue that Olave's/CEM comprehension is MCQ. Obviously we stopped sending our son there but wondered if other parents know this distinction.

They are descriptive, like you say it's good to start with, helps a little bit, but I know he has to do MC too.

Dd is in Y5 and in a state school, she is near the top of her class for reading and she says that they do almost no comprehension and the same with guided reading. The groups who get heard during guided reading are those at the lower end of the class. This also means they do not get any follow up work etc which would include some comprehension at some time. But of course they still have to follow the school reading colours of which she has read all of the books in her colour but not allowed to move up!

I work in an Indie and the children are learning how to work on comprehensions from Y5. They are taught to highlight important parts of the text, how to use Point, Evidence, Analysis (PEA) to obtain as many marks as possible. The texts vary in length and type including poetry. Some of the texts used are up to GCSE level. They are attempting different comprehension so like this at least every 2 weeks. Not one is multi-choice!

I am having to teach both DD and DS how to tackle comprehensions at home and I just wish they were taught like they are at my work.