Please may I ask what is the best strategy for preparing for the challenging CSSE English exam in these remaining weeks? Would like to try and improve our child’s comprehension and creative writing skills. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Just to clarify that we will be going over the past CSSE papers over the next few weeks. Anything else we can do to boost her marks and confidence? Thanks

Challenge them to write a short story, one a week should be enough. Think of a fun topic and challenge them, don't put pressure on.

Give them a list of 10 words they must use appropriately in 10 sentences through the story

Comprehension i would suggest taking up the ecc library summer reading challenges, they are fun, low pressure and improve ability at the same time.

CSSE use a lot of challenging classic texts.

I would recommend you read one of these together, a few chapters each night.

Keep stopping and review what is happening. Ask questions about the characters and the events and discuss what might happen next.

Make a list of the words that are challenging and have a go at putting them into different sentences to check that the word is understood.

Read the text to her, don't let her read it alone and just skip over hard words and concepts. Talk it through.

Find a good tv or film adaption and watch it.

Which past papers do you have? DG

Work through past papers and discuss various question types. They are different for each board so a broad knowledge is beneficial. Look at what questions require: inference,features(figurative language etc) and how to best answer these questions. If they have solutions with model answers, all the better.

For creative writing, I'm doing one a week and building up confidence by using what I feel is required (metaphor,figurative language,similes,strong vocab)

All - Thanks for your help. Much appreciated!

DG - I’ve purchased the 2017-2019 papers from CSSE, and downloaded their Familiarisation papers. I also have the 2013 papers purchased from a forum member.