11 Plus Exams Forum

My younger dc is struggling with understanding the language of classical books. I have realised a couple of times that she completely misunderstood some sentences or expressions. Unfortunately being busy, I don’t get a lot of time to sit down with her and read together and explain as we do so. I am looking for an unabridged edition of classics which would include the explanations of vocabulary. Have you come across something like this? I guess that would be a perfect solution for lots of busy parents.

Could you treat her to a Kindle, loaded with the books you want her to read, so that she could use the built-in dictionary? ( Not sure whether other varieties of readers have the same facility). She could combine it with good old fashioned notebook and pencil to write definitions down.

It is great to hear your dd is reading classic books.

It has the capacity to have a real impact on her vocabulary and the story lines along with the new words will all be of great benefit to her.

A little notebook kept close when reading to record unknown words and you encouraging her to use the words in her vocabulary is what I would recommend. DG

Have you been able to get a list of classical books to read? My DC also struggling with comprehension and vocab

With DD she had a plain bookmark of paper and would write page number and word(s) on it and then we would go over it together when I got home from work. I also randomly picked a sentence I thought might be tough if she hadn’t picked it up and she became more aware of when she was reading but not understanding which is an important skill in itself.

She had often read the Usborne Young Reader versions as a child so knew the gist of the story which also helped when reading the full version. She went though a phase when classics were just not her thing and I never forced it, I was happy she was a voracious reader and didn’t want to kill that enthusiasm.