Home tutoring

[elizabethswan]

Is there anyone out there with experience of home tutoring for 11+?? I have tried and failed to establish a routine with my lad, sometimes we'll do a couple of papers a week, and sometimes not at all, it all depends if he has much school homework. We've been doing bond papers but not sure if they are helpful; he hates the english ones so much he refuses to do them but don't know if they are authentic anyway, are the GL Assessment papers better?? I know we need to get cracking now and would really appreciate some advice! We're interested in both Sale Grammar and Alti Boys.

[TIDDLYMUM]

Bond are ok up to a point.I would use bond up to 10-11 plus, Schofield and Sims for Maths, we also used AFN for VR ( two sets). Leave GL till last as these are the same format as the Alty exam. I'd not be too worried about the English papers as I don't think AGSB have a comprehension.

Sale is CEM format I know nothing about this other than you will need to do that format of paper.

It is five years since we did the exams so my info might be a bit out of date, don't think so though.

[Vicster]

We did stuff at home as we didn't want to get a formal tutor. I don't really know if I would call what we did tutoring though as it was more DS doing practise questions by himself and working on his timing towards the end. The input from me was mainly in purchasing the resources.
We used bond online to start with because I liked the fact that the system marked everything, DS could do small chunks of practise in his own time and he could see his progress on line by comparing current scores with previous scores. There was no input or nagging required from me. Once he had been doing bond online for an hour or so each week for 3-4 months he had pretty much covered most of the questions and complained it was getting repetitive so I then bought some bond practise papers and then in the last 8 weeks we moved on to GL practice papers.
We didn't really have a routine, it was more a case of DS having a target of 1 hour per week practise until the last 6/8 weeks when he upped it a bit.
If you are doing a couple of papers every week then I assume your DS is sitting the exam this September? Depending on the length of the papers I would consider scaling it back a bit until nearer the time. If you are doing the 10 minute papers then a few a week is fine but if you are doing the full length 50 min papers then a few every week at this stage is quite a lot and could lead to boredom quite quickly.

[elizabethswan]

Thanks Tiddlymum, do you think it's too soon to do GL Assessment then, that was what I was going to do next. Are they too difficult at this stage?

[elizabethswan]

Yes, Vicster we are doing exams in September, I think we are doing too much but I'm starting to panic, not having had much success at all in the past with my daughters, so I'm probably pushing him too hard, it's difficult to know what's the right thing to do, people I know either do a ridiculously cruel amount of work or, I believe, they lie and say they are barely doing anything; the next thing I know, they've passed the tests and my lot have failed!! Determined to succeed this time, but maybe should cut back a bit!

[Vicster]

I personally would recommend saving GL papers until the last two months, because there are a limited number of them available and they are the best practise for Alty.
I don't know what resources to recommend for Sale but the bond online does cover CEM style questions as well as GL style questions. If you think your DS will respond well to questions on the computer then bond online might be worth looking into (you used to be able to get a free trial) as it requires little imput from you but provides the child with explanations on everything they get wrong an has the advantage of being split into 10 minute or so chunks for each set of questions.

[Vicster]

Are you in catchment for the schools?

[elizabethswan]

Yes Vicster, we are WA14 so are for both luckily, although I suppose less so for Sale. thanks for the advice about the papers.

[enigma]

One of the trick of home tutoring I've used is to bombard the child with lots and lots of test papers... it doesn't matter whether it's a bond or GL assessment at this point. The idea is for the child to familiarize the system, exercise the brain and get used with high level of thinking. Should there be hard questions which many of us parents even struggle to solve, there's always a good explanation that you can find through Google and most importantly YouTube. The only problem is the child's motivation as he will get bored taking tests all the time but believe me the poor child will soon get used to it and accept it as part of his daily routine. My DS passed all his 3 state grammars and 1 independent with an almost guaranteed scores just by using that technique and my DS agreed that the bunch of practice test papers played a big part to his good results specially the 3 state grammars. All his test papers were downloaded online for absolutely 'free'... even just typing "11+ math pdf" to google will give you numbers of free practice papers. The only time that I personally and seriously tutored him was during his exam with the highly selective independent as he had no clue how to answer some of the questions.

[cleo]

I am home tutoring my DS and like Enigma I'm giving him papers to complete, marking them and then going over corrections. However, I do ask him to correct his mistakes independently first. Which can be really frustrating, especially in maths, when he realises he has not read the question properly or has put the decimal point in the wring place ect But he has to learn to read the question twice or underline the key words in the question.

I have just booked DS in for two mocks and realised how quickly time is passing by. Before we know it September will be here