Revision tips for CE please

I'm in complete agreement with happygardening here, leave it and let him enjoy a total rest over the Christmas holiday. If he is at prep school he will spend all of next term going over his exams, and revising and tightening everything up for the summer. If you do too much now, he will just become fed up with the whole thing.

Thea has made a fair point does he want to go to the school you will state as you first choice in a few months? Secondly is your head actually saying he's capable of getting the % required by your first choice CE? What is the required % and at what level? Assuming it's not 70% + on all papers at level three I would worry to much. Has he ever achieved this kind of mark? Do remember very few if any fail to get the required mark for their chosen school unless they are ignoring all advise.
This is a long term, most children by now are tired and a little under the weather, all yr 8' hear about at their prep school is CE, how important it is, how it will effect their future (I'm sceptical about that frankly), every lesson since they started in Sept it's all about CE, the correct way of answering questions, what to revise etc etc. I'm not surprised your coming up against a wall of teenage angst. He's bored to tears with it.
Why don't you and he write a sensible revision time table: I don't know half and hour three times a day 5 days a week (seems a lot to me but I don't do this sort of thing) decide what to do, which individual areas etc, to look at identify areas he's unsure on and those he's confident in so he's got a good balance and just give it a go. The only thing I did was assist in the learning of Latin vocabulary, which we got from the back of a text book, and French verbs, I bought a book of amazon ?200 common French verbs, past perfect imperfect future perfect present etc (you don't need all of those for CE ask you school which ones you need) and we went through 10 a day, ditto Latin but as I said above not till the Easter hols.
I think you need to chill out and let him also chill out.

Stupid q but does he really understand the reasons behind the exams ? Ie this exam will determine your future completely? A good mark ( define that) will get him to school a ,a middling mark to school b amd a poor mark to c ( I assume you are set up with a spare school or two?)

If you are both in agreement that school a is where he should go then he needs to graft. Yes it's hard work, but it needs to be a slow steady climb of bit sized work till the exam. Maybe he needs help to organise his " bites"? You can't eat an elephant all at once after all! And to continue the metaphor maybe start with the toenails - the hard bits ! You might need to nibble those toe nails a few times before you eat them!

It's possible that your aims for him and his aren't the same. Ask this. He might actually prefer school b. The you need a reasoned discussion to alien your goal.

At 12/13 cause an effect should be clear. We had very little trouble with 11+ work because they knew why and where it could lead.

Good luck!

Bribery? We paid our son 50p per revision 'slot'.

HI inthename:

I'd look in your region on the eleven plus forum: www.elevenplusexams.co.uk

DD1 passed for a grammar from ordinary comprehensive - no tutor but we did a little each week (2 hours games/ practise really Thurs evenings + weekends and extra reading nightly)...

free rice: freerice.com/#/english-vocabulary/1389

How many words can you make: www.eastoftheweb.com/games/Eight1.html

CGP literacy workbook Year 5 (lots of grammar/ spelling rules)

bought the set of children's classics from The Book People & read them (either DD1 reading to me or me reading to her) - discussed vocabulary (meaning of words/ word choice) & plot.

Bond 10 minute quizzes (we have all NVR/ VR/ Maths/ english here - so we did 2 each a week across a week).

NRICH maths puzzles: nrich.maths.org/frontpage - upper primary

mathsfactor (we finished arithmetic school & started algebra school).

If your school subscribes to My Maths: play the games + work through NC Level 5 library (we did this gently over the summer).

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by stealth:

High quality tv documentaries: science/ history/ nature/ etc....

Museum visits

Historic Houses

Theatre trips

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On practice papers (which we did in the summer before the exam) - I used to add up all 4 subjects/ divide by 4 and multiply by 300 (notional possible perfect score) for an approximate score. And that more or less was spot-on for the actual score.

Don't go mad and sign up for on-line things - they loose interest.

Don't make it a battle. Explain why you think it's important but let it be their choice.

Do give them rewards for great scores or lots of good work (trip to the park/ ice cream/ tv or video game time/ movie).

Don't make it the be all and end all - there's no guarantee they'll pass.

Back off? Just a suggestion not a criticism of you personally. My DS started revision for the harder and sat earlier Win Coll entrance exam in the Easter holidays. CE is just about learning facts and regurgitating them onto paper in June

What is CE?