I have just skimmed through this fascinating thread.I couldn't help a wry smile at the bits that addressed the comprehension section and realise there were some tips that might have served my son well at the time.

The cheating the examiner idea of not reading the text at the start but going straight for answering the question made me chuckle. We ended up as I recall with a more traditional approach - read the passage and then tackle questions one by one, leaving and going back to questions when stuck. Usually it turned out that the answers tended to follow a pattern - the answers to the early questions were early in the passage amd later questions later (at least the examiners gave that break - usually).

The cheat we found served us well was to do with those nasty posh nineteenth century texts (thrown up by the Essex consortium) with all sorts of words in them that few people use these days and many adults even don't know the meaning. How then do we get 10/11 yos to do the question along the lines: find a word in the text that means the same as "whatever" in lines x to y? The approach we often found worked (by instinct and practice) well was to work out whether "whatever" is an adverb, adjective etc. and find a word that falls under that definition (there won't be many) and finding one that seems best to match - we found noticable improvements over time but never (understandably) the 100% success rates aspired after - now maths that was another matter (I was rather less lenient there).

On a slightly more serious note, this does bring home notion that the key to English success is having good vocabulary (just as with Maths it is knowing the times tables) and both serve well for verbal reasoning - or am I being too simplistic? And that meant extending your childs word bank through plenty of reading, vocabulary and spelling tests, games and stealth (which in our case often involved throwing in posh words into our conversations and inviting my son to ask what I meant). I never quite cracked getting my son in the habit of automatically looking up any new or unfamiliar word in a good dictionary, because I feel that discipline to be useful. We partly cracked it though and we found searching on the computer sometimes helped.

I teach at a grammar school and quite frankly the best advice is let you children be. Don't push them, tutor them etc because if they have the 'ability' to pass 11+ then ok, but if you are tutoring your children, because without tutoring they would 'fail' (god forbid!), once they get to grammar (after barely scraping through the test) they struggle and lose confidence; they generally lack skills of creativity and problem solving and only know how to 'pass tests' yet are unable to truly actively learn.

It becomes all about the tests, the grades and obtaining approval; they learn from a young age that to 'pass' the test, to 'win' that place at grammar is a measure of their worth-these young people (human beings may I remind!) have so much to offer in so many different ways. Our world is changing, we will need all sorts of different skills, let's not let our children and young people down by stifling their innate ability to be creative, multi-skilled and adaptable. Remember they are your babies, would you really love them any less if they don't pass that test? That's exactly how your children see it!! Believe me I see the 'emotional fallout' at school!

The fact that you love them and are there taking an interest in their education and future is good enough.

Also if, like me, you have a child with AEN you really need to consider carefully the provisions in place at the school of your choice-some of the best AEN provision will be found at non-selectives and comprehensives.

Good luck!

Tired teacher.

Would like to ask if anyone is doing the online tests from this website at moment? How is it going?

Hi,

My son is due to sit the Kent and Bexley test in Sep 2010.

He has been working on the bond books and generally gets 80-90% with the occasional dip.

We are just moving on to the 10-11+ level, and will attack the 10minute tests.

I hope we are on track as he is a very able boy, but I worry about silly mistakes on the day.

Hi Pwarden,

You say you worry about silly mistakes on the day.

Is that becasue your son is sometimes over-confident with certain question types or is going too fast?

I try and really think about the traps that the examiners have set. For instance, the vocabulary type questions will normally have some deliberately tricky words that are put in to confuse and 'trap' those children that are flying through the test.

Be aware of the 'traps' - words that have two (or more meanings) or words that sound similar (homophones).

My example for this is the word 'curb'. When a vocabulary question is set the person creating the paper will surround it with words like 'pavement' and 'road' and attempt to fool the student into thinking that the word is 'kerb'rather than the real meaning. Nasty.

Another example is the word 'grave'. Sometimes it means 'serious' but put it in a question with words like 'coffin' or 'church' and you might forget it has another meaning......

These are typical, easy mistakes that can be made and all I can say is to monitor the type of question that your son sometimes gets a silly error in - and then try and get him to always double check that particular type at the end of the test (assuming he's got enough time)

hello tired teacher,
what a relief to read your post, im not sure about tutoring my daughter but after reading the posts on here, felt i should be. surely if shes clever enough, she will pass the entrance exam with no tutoring? or am i totally wrong?
we came on to look at the verbal reasoning questions and she can do most of them now.
im confused and a bit worried