11 Plus Exams Forum

I've posted something similar on the English forum, but wondered what the Essex mums/dads/tutors feel? My DS is in Y4 and whilst he did the Bond English 8-9 with no trouble, he is struggling with the 9-10 Bond Comprehension-particularly the one we did yesterday on the Peak districk and cave/spring formation-it was jolly hard going!


Some really helpful people on the English board suggested using the Haydn, schofield and Sims and Letts success books, which I have ordered, but I wondered if it was common to find these Bond Comprehension papers hard? I'm also sure I read on here that the 9-10 were much harder than the 10-11, which worries me! He is 9.5-so surely, if he's 'grammar material' he should be able to do them? Are the 9-10 Comprehension harder than the 9-10 English books? He's a 4b in reading/writing at school-so I thought he was ok, but maybe not!?

We found this particular one soul destroying; in the end we sought other comprehension papers/exercises. These were a lot better. My DS passed all his entrance exams, so must have worked. For us changing track was key in keeping motivation and sanity going till the end.

no_ball wrote:We found this particular one soul destroying; in the end we sought other comprehension papers/exercises. These were a lot better. My DS passed all his entrance exams, so must have worked. For us changing track was key in keeping motivation and sanity going till the end.

Thank you; that's very reassuring!

Can I ask which other comphrehension papers you tried instead?

I'm glad to know it's not just us...

My DD is using the 9-10 English Assessment Papers and finding the comprehension part much trickier than the 8-9 book. Her scores are all over the place. Her school does no comprehension work whatsoever, which doesn't help. We've tried doing the comprehensions orally which has been useful.