How much work to expect?

[RuedeWakening]

So, we are home tutoring DD for the Sutton grammars. How much is a reasonable amount of work to expect her to do as preparation at this point of year 5? I'm leaning towards little and often, so some English and some Maths every day, with something longer at the weekend.

Does that sound OK? We will obviously review things as the year goes on, and we get feedback from her teacher on how she's doing at school.

Thanks.

[neuralc]

Hi - same situation and same approach. We're doing small amounts (up to 30 minutes) per day using 10 minute tests; one subject per day. We'll do this until Christmas and then review. Early days

[aslongastheirhappy]

I don't think there is a standard answer to this. It's more a question of knowing whether your child concentrates for long or short periods of time. My DD sat her 11+ in warwickshire 2 years ago and we crammed in the last two weeks of the summer holidays and she was 65th of 2050. Not a good approach for everyone, but suited us! My DS sat his 11+ on 10th Sept just gone. We worked all summer holiday doing 1 hour each week dat. He sat a mock and got 92%. It was hard studying for throughout the whole holidays as we both got tired of it. That said, he went into the exam with lots of 'real paper' experience (he did 15 long papers, 2 x 50mins as the CEM exam is) so he went in fully prepared. Don't let anyone tell you there's a 'right' way you 'should' do it. You know your child best, and together you'll find what works for you (both!).

[ninanina]

For us it was more than what we had originally expected. My dc was really quite good at the start of year 5 but just going through the amount of books we had took an immense amount of time. And you just can't do it all at once - we found my dc couldn't do more than 2 hours in one go (due to his vehement objections but also loss of concentration and motivation and consequently loss in quality of his work). So if we missed some days (or occasionally weeks) we just couldn't catch up on other days. That's why I would advice slowly but surely, space it out, do every day a little rather than leaving more for later, or else you will find that you run out of time. It is much better to start early in year 5 and if you see your dc is good, you can slow down later, but if you do slowly first and find your dc still needs quite a bit of work to get satisfying results, then you might not have enough time left towards the end. If you get all the cgp books, fptp and some other ones, this is more than a year's work. Bear in mind it is not enough to just rush trough the books to have them over and done with. I believe it is effective if you go slowly and explain along the way, so in reality each 10 minute or 50 minute test takes longer. But don't be deterred by the amount of work. I believe majority of kids study really hard the year prior to the exams even if they (or their parents) do not admit it, putting their pass down to their offspring's natural inborn genius of course there will be kids who will fail despite studying hard, but I guess less so the other way round (those who will pass despite not preparing hard).

[Aethel]

I think it very much depends on your child's personality type and learning strengths.

My DD1 is quick to go, reads like lightning, jumps to a conclusion (so is good at some "quick guess" questions but may misinterpret others) and has a great vocabulary.

My other DD is very bright mentally and verbally, but is a slow reader (has dyslexia and help at school with this: will be trawling the SEN threads!), can't spell at all (argh, CEM area), but incredibly good at NVR and is strong at mental maths (with the exception of times tables). We are still considering whether she wants to sit the 11 plus at all (I think she would enjoy one of the local grammars where their SEN team is very supportive, it may be worth a try if she wants to).
Should we go ahead and DIY my approach with DD2 will be completely different: far more slow-and-steady than with DD1 who worked in sharp bursts and never had a pace issue.

[Aethel]

And I also agree with nina: we did a "ten minute test" and then spent 10-40 minutes marking it together and going through any material where needed.
It felt a bit slowing to do this, but as the same question types repeat, it meant we were effectively revising topics every time she did a test.

We also did the 40 min timed tests but only nearer the time (from about June once every week or so) as they were more to build stamina and check for gaps then to actively learn new material.