What books to Buy for 11+

[ruchita20]

Hello to lovely parents,

I am new to this forum, needs more knowledge about 11+
And congratulation to proud parents for there Son/Daughter passing 11+.

I am so confuse!! which book to buy as there are lots of books to for 11+.

My Son is in year 5. I have started 9-10 bond books for Maths, eng,VR and NVR. Can any one suggest what other best books are there to try?

When its come to writing my son brain freeze. He cant even think what to right. Any help welcome.

[The Lamp Post]

You will have time to do 11+ books, my biggest regret is not getting my son to read more earlier. Some examples, 'The Secret Garden', 'Around the World in ninety days', 'Oliver Twist' etc etc. That helps build up vocabulary. But for Kent it is Bond, GL, Letts, for Bexley Bond CEM, Letts. There are some recommendations on the Kent council web site aswell

[Sparklecat]

Which school are you interested in? If you only need a straight pass, do some GL papers to establish where he is, then work on those areas. If you need a higher mark, maybe tuition is the way to go. Keep it gentle for now and build up later in the year.

For English, the CGP ten minute comprehensions were good, but work or mark with your son so you are teaching more than testing. First News from supermarkets can be a good read. Lots of good quality books will help vocab.

[scary mum]

Have you read this section?
https://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/schoo ... nt-11-plus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[ruchita20]

I am looking for Dartford Grammar and Gravesend Grammar?

He is very good at Math,VR and NVR but English Comprehension and writing his weekness.

Very stressed!!!

[ruchita20]

Thank CM,SL and TLP much appreciate for your help.

[The Lamp Post]

So about 6 months out we performed a mock and whilst my son was okay with Maths, VR and NVR, his English comprehension was very poor. So we stepped up the amount of English that we did. With Comprehension there is a lot of material on how tackle, e.g. any comprehension question is going to be: what happened; when did it happen, how did it happen, why did it happen and who was involved. Do a varity of passage, factual to non-factual e.g. poems, diary enteries I think Schofied is good. Go over basics of metaphor, simile, alliteration etc etc. Use text structure to help guide through questions. We also struggled with the long texts to begin with so we moved back to Letts and then to the longer passages.

[inthemedia]

Hello there. Fresh from the 11+ and with a child in year 4, so already thinking about how to approach it next time. We had a tutor for our year 6 and it was invaluable as both my husband and I work full time and we have little patience - we clash with our son when it comes to homework. One hour a week with a tutor 1-1 plus some support from us too.

I used a combination of Letts, GL and Bond books - and towards the end found a 10 minute Comprehension test book - crammed full of short but very varied texts with no more than 12 questions - wished we bought that from the start as comprehension was his weak spot (he got 107 in his English paper so scrapped a pass).

I also agree that vocabulary and a wide reading ability is key to VR as well as the English paper. I'm going to start with words and meanings now with my year 4 as I was shocked at how many words I took for granted my year 6 didn't know. Get them used to reading olde world texts, poems, Shakespeare etc too.

And technique is as much of the game as knowledge. I found with VR and NVR it was all about elimination and logic - my son scored 133 for Reasoning - his favourite paper and he's got a logical brain (hates reading though).

With Maths, it seems it's moving to worded problems with at least one and sometimes two steps need and thorough working out. In the past it's been rapid arithmetic but now it's more long winded and set out in words and sentences (and not numbers and symbols, if you get my drift). Maths also tripped my son up (110) despite excelling in Maths at school and posting 60-70% marks in mocks and test papers).

Good luck!