7+ Preparation - Any tips?

[Littlemissinventor]

Hello all! We are considering having our daughter try the 7+ exams next autumn. We would want to do the prep ourselves (no tutoring). We would be very grateful for any tips on helpful materials to use for the preparation. We are thinking of trying City Junior and possibly SHHS and Highgate. Many thanks for any leads!

Before the predictable recommendation of various exam cram books (which I feel aren't needed but most disagree).

Read read read -- even in this era of Amazon there are so many great independent book shops in London that you can take DD to every weekend. Most are located next to picturesque parks making it easy to make it part of the routine rather than the target.

At this age I also used computer games with large amounts of reading as motivation.

Along with reading there's the comprehension side -- some way to discuss the reading as a feedback loop is imperative.

The other aspect is building up writing endurance over time -- I feel doing this outside the desk environment is best. It can be taking notes at a botanical garden or museum. Key is to build up endurance over time to a few hundred words in a single sitting.

Using both these you can begin to create a creative writing or story telling formula based on original ideas.

Maths I feel most parents are good at preparing for me.

Many thanks for this - excellent advice! I will definitely follow your tips!
I would also not mind recommendations on good “exam cram books” as I start very much from zero here 😄! Thanks again!

Schofield and Sims is pretty good as a baseline.

If you're looking at the schools now leaning on CPT/online first phase then maybe an Atom subscription.

Thanks again - super helpful!

We have just been through the 7+ with ds who is summer born and we were offered our top 2 choices. As much as reading is great and all, it is a very small part of the preparation. There are many aspects, reasoning both verbal and non-verbal, maths, dictation, etc.

My ds is in an excellent prep school though, who started a year in advance with the prep. There is absolutely no way I would have been able to consistently prepare him even with all the bonds books, schofield and cpg books. We didn't tutor because our school prepared the children very well- most got their schools.

I would honestly suggest you do at least a few sessions with a tutor to at least have a guideline how to go about it. It is so much more than reading books and visiting museums. The work and preparation is intense and I wouldn't just chance it by winging it. The number of candidates increased significantly this year, some schools had 400 sitting exams.

Just to be clear I wasn't saying maths and NVR don't matter my point was parents who choose to prep get those bits right struggle with VR and creative writing (which was what I was describing how to foster without standing over a kid demanding output in some book).

Tutoring is a slippery slope as the 7+ isn't the "one exam to rule them all" and it's the easiest. If you pick up the tutoring dependency here it's basically game over.

We have a summer born and we're at a good prep with 300+ apps for 22 spaces at each intake and there are others here who don't use tutors. There are also dozens of kids who did use a tutor from hot housing pre preps and didn't get in.

If it isn't the right choice then it's not meant to be but you will be able to judge this in the process and with a good relationship with DD prep won't be too bad.