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Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 9:50 am
by ciaowood
Hi, I've been following the results from this year and it's amazing to see such high scores (well done). My youngest will be sitting this test next year and I'm wondering if there are any tips and tricks to help prepare her through Year 5. We would only need a pass. She has a tutor for an hour a week and am looking at joining an 11 plus Centre which is 2 hours per week. I'd love to hear other experiences of what study they did and how long they spent per week working towards it. At what point in the year did things start getting ramped up. It looks like the bar is getting higher and higher each year and I'd like to do all I can to help. Thanks in advance.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:53 am
by Sparklecat
The bar is exactly the same as last year; 25% will be selected. If you're paying a tutor and feel the need to do more, find another tutor, or stop doing more. Relax. If a tutored child doesn't pass, then grammar school probably isn't right for them. Encourage them to read whatever they're into. Perhaps a times table app. Do a mock exam nearer the time.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 12:54 pm
by ciaowood
Hi, thanks for your reply. Apologies if I offended you by suggesting the bar was getting higher - I understand it is the same percentage each year; it just appears the results coming through are very high this year, I was just passing comment - perhaps I shouldn't have.

Thanks re your advice about our tutor/grammar etc, I was just asking for others' advice of what they did for their child that went through the test this year or before and found it successful. In my opinion, my daughter would suit a grammar school but, again my own opinion, it seems that if they don't receive sufficient tuition/practise enough of the different subjects, they may get left without a place because so many others are tutored greatly - I am not criticising this at all, merely looking for experiences of other parents to see what their process was so I can maybe implement some of them.

Thank you very much.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:32 pm
by Poplol
One hour formal tutoring is sufficient.
Three or four mocks is enough to get a child used to working under exam conditions and identifying weak areas that need to be worked on. February is a good time to attempt your first mock. We were pretty relaxed but picked up the pace in the summer holidays. Summer was mostly revision. I bought some materials online to help with that. We had a timetable to help us stay on track. He had two months formal tuition and the rest was covered by me.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:42 pm
by ciaowood
Thanks Poplol, that's great. I've got so many books from my eldest who was very easy to work with - my youngest is a different story altogether lol which is why I need a good plan. A timetable is a hood idea, thank you.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 1:51 pm
by Mamabear75
My son passed with some (pretty informal) at home bond books and practise papers. Unfortunately he didn’t quite get the score he needed for the super-selective and I’m pretty sure this is down to lack of timing/speed work. If left to his own devices my son was routinely getting 80+% so we didn’t panic and had planned a fairly relaxed approach in the summer holidays. It was only then however that we moved from practise papers to timed tests and realised he would seriously struggle to finish let alone score high enough for his preferred school. With hindsight, this was naive on our side and too late to change anything dramatically with just 5 weeks until test date (2 week family holiday at the start) and unsurprisingly he didn’t finish any of the papers - in maths he missed out 6 possibly 7 questions altogether - not ideal when there’s only 25!

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 8:52 pm
by ciaowood
Thank you Mamabear for sharing, I'm sorry your son didn't get the score he needed but wish him well wherever he goes. Timing is what I'm most worried about really so I'll definitely be factoring in more practise for that. Thanks again.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:00 pm
by Lucky13
My son had an hour with a tutor each week from October of Year 5. The tutor set him homework each week which took about an hour in total. He did two mock tests with his tutor - one at Christmas and one at Easter. In the Summer holidays, we got him to do about 30 minutes work each day...I know others who were going to the same tutor were doing 3 hours work each day in the summer holidays :shock: No way was that amount of work for us just to get to a particular school! My son scored 393 and I'm hoping that will be enough for Judd in catchment...although starting to worry now hearing all these high scores mentioned this year. Good luck!

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Thu Oct 24, 2019 10:39 pm
by LouisaT
I think the majority of people mentioning scores are those out of county and wanting super selectives, as it’s critical to them. We got a comfortable but not super selective pass, I wouldn’t ever see the need to mention it as it isn’t relevant, so maybe that explains why it appears that a large proportion scored highly.
We only needed a pass, and we couldn’t be happier.
My daughter went to a group tutoring session once a week for the whole of year 5 and the summer. She did one mock exam with same tutor but it was very late, in August so we only had the last few weeks to work on weakest areas, which we did most days. Some of those sessions went better than others, however! I will be having my younger children take a mock much earlier, around March if possible, I think that gives a good amount of time to improve any weak areas.

Re: Tips for Year 5

Posted: Fri Oct 25, 2019 8:20 am
by Parent78
My daughter had group tutoring every 2/3 weeks. She had homework packs to do, which she probably did about 3/4 nights of the week. She did a mock exam at the beginning of Aug and then had weekly sessions throughout Aug with her Tutor ( but did very little about 10 mins every 2 day’s on her own.). She is end of Aug birthday and passed quite healthily. We continued with the tutoring over the summer holidays not because we felt she wasn’t ready but because it kept momentum. I found that her tutor made the homework very difficult which at times became quite frustrating but when she did the test she said it was much easier than she expected. I suppose keeping continuity is key. Hope that helps.