Approaching the 11+

Description: 11+ tutor Freddie shares his general Advice and Practical Tips for approaching the 11+ exams.

Useful Preparation

While you may not know exactly what will appear in your 11+ paper, these are some examples of useful preparation tasks.

• Learn the statutory spellings for Year 5 and 6 – you can easily find this list by searching ‘Year 5 and 6 statutory spelling list’.
  
  
• Punctuation – make sure you understand the rules for apostrophes, commas, semi-colons, speech marks and colons for lists.
  
  
• Reading – read challenging books. These are excellent for examples of good writing, vocabulary expansion and comprehension preparation. Read for 15 minutes a day to increase your reading age considerably.
  
  
•  Read the guidance given on school or county admission websites for their useful advice.

Be Kind to Yourself

• Remember that whichever school you go to, you can be successful.
  
  
• Remember that passing or not passing the 11+ does not define your intelligence.
  
  
• Do not stay up late revising or thinking about it – the more rested you are, the better you will do.
  
  
• Healthy food is always better for you. Your brain loves it too.
  

• Give yourself treats – you are worth it.
  
  
• Be proud of yourself for all your preparation and progress – everything you have done will help you, whatever the result.
  
  
• Even if you do not pass, your hard work will make it far more likely that you get into top or ‘grammar’ sets in other schools, which might even be better for you. Some students like being ‘top’ in a school, rather than struggling to keep up.
  

Start the Day (of the test) Right

• Have breakfast – this is vital even if you are a little nervous. You do not want to be feeling drained or tired in the tests.
   
  
• Do something stress-busting – walk the dog, do some exercise, breathing exercises to keep you calm.
  
  
• Panic is the enemy of performance.  Think about what is coming up but avoid thinking about whether you will pass or not, or who might be better than you.
  
  
• Make sure you have all the equipment you might need, like stationery and a calculator, as well as a healthy snack and bottle of water.

During the Test

• Listen very carefully to all instructions and follow them carefully.
  
  
• Do not do anything which could risk disqualification – talking, looking around etc.
  
  
• Listen carefully for practice questions – they will remind you exactly how to do the questions and how to mark them on the answer sheets.
  
  
  
• Read questions very carefully – you may need to:
  • Put 1 or 2 options;
  • Identify something which is True or False;
  • Look at all options to help you answer;
  • Find a synonym or antonym.
    
    
    
• Mark the answer sheet carefully:
  • often a machine marks it, so make sure your answers are clear;
  • rub out any wrong answers carefully if you make a mistake;
  •  mark the number of options they want – mostly one or two.
    
    
    
• Rough work / working out:
  • Do all of your working out / rough work in the test paper;
  • Do working out to help you check you are right, especially for word and mathematics problems;
  • Use charts for Verbal Reasoning and mathematics word problems and use lines so you do not make an error.

Timing

For mathematics and Verbal Reasoning, time is often crucial as you have a lot to do in a little time.

• Then go back and do the ones you can do which take a little longer.
  
  
• Finally do the ones you find hard.
  
• Put a mark against EVERY multiple-choice question as you have a one in four or five chance of getting it right.
  
  When you get near the end, just put an option down, rather than leaving it blank.

Writing

• Use your planning time well at the start, thinking about structure as well as content.
  
  
• Plan the writing task as fully as you can
  
  
• For non–fiction, list the ideas for each paragraph (3 or 4 ideas /arguments) and some linking words (however, in contrast, as well as this, in addition, secondly etc) which you can use to organise.
  
  
• For fiction, make notes on character, setting, genre, plot, relationships.
  
  
  • Remember to use paragraphs.
    
    
  • Do a range of sentences – simple, compound, complex.
    
    
  • Use higher level vocabulary – think of synonyms to use for words.
    
    
  • Show a range of correctly used punctuation.  High level punctuation includes: comma, apostrophe, semi-colon, bracket, dash, colon.
    
    
  • Proof-read your work for spelling, punctuation, paragraphing, grammar and words (replace with better synonyms).
    
    

By tutor Freddie. Contact Us