New to birmingham

[quasimodo]

from my own personal experience, I used as a wide variety of books for 11+ as I could lay my hands on. Waterston's stocks the best range of material for 11+; variety covers all levels of difficulties and choice. The Bond series is OK and should be completed quite early on; don't rely on Bond for CEM. CEM is supposed to be tutor proof and is there to weed out strong and weak candidates. There are many on this forum that also advocate lots of reading. Personally my DS hates reading and still did relatively well. Its not the be all and end all in my opinion. Good luck.

I disagree. How many years has it been since your ds took the exam?
Until a few years ago, CEM type materials were not even available commercially and, now that they are, it's fair to say the level required has correspondingly jumped up too.

Firstly, grabbing hold of a load of books and completing them all may be working hard, but it isn't working smart. Some children might stand this kind of 'volume work', but not many. Better to, as the poster states, focus on what they need to focus on!
Plus, testing alone isn't really going to help your child. It's like measuring my height every day - it's not going to make me grow taller. Better to genuinely expand their vocabulary and understanding of texts than simply sit taking tests.

Looking for books in the CEM format is a good start. There are many good ones available via this website for both cloze and comprehension and vocabulary. Memorising and practising vocabulary - websites such as freerice.com are great for this - is something you can do now. Make a note of any vocab that your child did not know when completing papers and help them to memorise it.

I'd personally say that reading a good book will do more for children's literacy skills than pretty much anything else on earth, including wading through paper after paper. Reading is a vital part of preparing for the literacy syllabus, and, more importantly, for secondary English and life itself
If your child is not great at reading fiction (and I have to say that my own ds2 still doesn't read much fiction at all, to my frustration ) then let them at least read non fiction, and/or magazines such as How it works and National Geographic.

Totally agree with you Um.My dds school have been pushing the reading and the types of vocabulary in the books for the last few years.We have been doing the same not only because it was the only way to improve the verbal skills for the CEM exam but also in my view improves your child chances of better grades at GCSE and more importantly for life itself.