Books/websites for preparation in 2012 and future years

[anxious_mother]

Many Thanks Ok1,
Your approach is quite unique. Good that it worked for you. Do keep us posted. I have sent you a pm.

Fatbananas,
Thank you. How is your Ds doing with his writing ?

[reeyah]

anxious_mother, you should share your own experiences on this thread too? Your DS did really well, from what I can remember

[Barr_Beacon]

Thanks for your advice!

[anxious_mother]

Sure Reeyah,
English : Started with Bond from end of year 4 then in year 5 December we started doing various papers ranging from Alpha Series, Secondary Selection, IPS and again Bond. He found the 5th papers in Bond the toughest. Reading books ranged from Murpogo, Roald Dahl,Jonathan Straud,C.S. Lewis to Jeremy Strong.

I hear lot of people say that the more variety of books DCs read the better but In our case it was only useful for synonyms/antonyms. DS does not understand much about inference . It has had an effect on his long writing for HGS and KES. I would like to state that just because a child is an avid reader he/she does not automatically or eventually become a good writer. I feel the Primary schools need to work a lot with DCs right from Year 2 with their sentence structure and selection of vocabulary level and then build it up till the beginning of Year 6 so that they become good at doing LONG WRITING. In DS's school the English teacher tells me that he is good but I as a mother am his best critic and know what she says is not true.

Reeyah if you search in the Google for " Suggested Reading list for Year5/6 then you come up with loads of state primary schools that give a list and also I was casually looking up for a topic called Tongo Lizards for Sats and I came across 2 state Primary schools and was amazed in the way they are providing info. to children. Some of the children have their own public account, where parents like us who are outsiders can leave a comment on their long writing task.
The whole point is, majority of time is spent in school by our DCs so the school holds a greater responsibility as compared to parents bcoz some of the kids like my own DS do not take it seriously when told at home and in such a situation school is our only hope. I have been thoroughly disappointed with our Primary. I had started a post requesting a good school for one of my friends who was relocating to Birmingham because I did not want her to have an experience like me.

Sorry I went a bit out of the topic.

As Far as NVR is concerned we did Dynamite, A.E., Alpha, 11plus DIY, Coast, Bond. It was his favourite so no complaints in this section.

Maths : A.E., Dynamite. Alpha,Bond,Coast, Blake Hammond(quick Maths),11 plus DIY etc.

VR : Coast, Alpha, Bond,A.e.,11plus DIY, . He struggled a bit initially with time but then we saw some wonderful videos suggested by someone in You Tube.
So I will always be thankful to this forum.

[reeyah]

Thank you Anxious_mother for the wonderful insight into your preps for 11 plus

Must admit, you deserve a pat on the back! There is no way I would have had the strength or made enough time for all the papers/books you used with your DS. I have never even heard of Coast , so I think I had better do a little more research for DS2 .

As for schools, it is true that DC spend more of their learning time there, but they won't be getting the individual attention that only a parent can give. If only our DC were a little more cooperative at home!

[anxious_mother]

Yes Reeyah,
If only they are cooperative can we improve them . English writing is not a subject which DS likes so at least if his teacher had given him more remarks when he went wrong or when he was writing too simple sentences then things would have been different. His Year 6 teacher is far more better than the others but there is nothing much she can do in these few months. I can only hope that he does not have to struggle much in Year 7.

In google if you type 11plus Coast then you get this wonderful website. Although you get good amount of free material it is worth paying so that they give you an instant feedback. Also the K--L centre in Shirley was very useful and DS took 2 mock exams from them just for the feel of it and also to know where he was, in the general ranking. It is very cheap compared to most of them especially the one in Edgbaston I heard charges £ 100- £1000 pounds.

Good luck with your DS2's preparation. Maybe next year I shall be asking you for advice if there were any new websites

[anxious_mother]

Barr_Beacon ,
If you would like to look at my post I have given some info.
Thanks.

[Turtlegirl]

The books & websites we liked were:

English
As everyone has said - lots of reading - Morpurgo, Joan Aiken, Enid Blyton, Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell's Far Flung Adventure series, C S Lewis, the Andrew Lang Fairy story books (not just for girls - four massive collections of traditional tales, which I note you can download for free as e-books now), AdelineYen Mah, the Jungle Book (the original Kipling), Anne Fine etc etc

Vocab - New First Aid for English, the AE workbooks and the 11plusexams vocab builder programme. Also synonym toast from the Scholastic website and Free Rice
We do quite a bit of discussion about what's going to happen when watching tv, as ok1 mentioned. We do this with mystery type adventures in particular - Scooby Doo, MI High, Sarah Jane Adventures. My kids often watch this programmes more than once, which I think helps them to think through story structure a bit. You can certainly see some of it coming out in their writing!

She did all sorts of comprehensions - Bond, WH Smith, stuff found from various school sites around the web. She is naturally quite good at this so I didn't concentrate on it too much.

Maths
Bond, Schofield & Sims Mental Arithmetic (good for speeding up nuts and bolts maths). I also used a Carol Vorderman book - Advanced 10-11 KS2 maths - last summer holidays to make sure she was okay with things like percentages etc. It has pages of similar problems which ensured that she could have some good practice on things she was a bit shakey with. It also has stickers Free Rice also has a maths things.

NVR
Bond mainly, but also some more offbeat stuff provided by her original tutor (who sacked us). She is pretty good at this so she didn't need so much practice.

VR
We used some Bond stuff including a book on reasoning puzzles.

My daughter has trouble with concentration, so I preferred to use the 10 minute tests as much as possible to keep it manageable. If I tried to get her to work for too long it always ended in tears for all For us I think the best thing was variety - trying different formats and types of things so that my daughter didn't get *too* bored.

We also used the Shirley mock exams, which were useful, well organised and reasonably priced. In the feeback sessions they told us that our daughter looked borderline, based on info from previous years. She got her place fairly comfortably. But it did help us to know where to focus.

I'm enjoying this topic as I'm beginning to think about how I'll do it differently (specifically less stressily) with my Yr4 son...

[UmSusu]

Hello DIYMum,

Is there any chance you would copy / move your excellent advice to the other thread? There have been a few contributions on it now and hopefully if we get enough on there the mods might think about turning it into a sticky.

KenR / other mods, is there any chance of this happening? Newcomers always the same questions and as there is no straightforward way to prepare for CEM exams, it would be really helpful to collate these suggestions.

[anxious_mother]

Many Thanks TurtleGirl,
I'm sure someone will like your approach. Do keep us posted about your developments with DS.