Anyone else trying to home tutor for a grammar school 11+?

[curlymama]

My ds is due to take the 11+ for our local all boys grammar school in November, so I've started to do some work at home to try any prepare him for the exam.

But it's so hard!! I'm absolutely rubbish at maths, whereas he is excellent, and scored well above average in his end of year school exam. So I'm feeling like it's pointless doing much of that with him, because he understands most of it already, and the bits he doesn't, well I can't explain them to him anyway. He really does not enjoy English, whereas that was always my strength at school. So the one area that I feel I could help him in, he is very reluctant to do, which turns doing comprehension excercises into a bit of a battle. I know he can do the work, he just doesn't want to try when he's at home with me. Plus, he has aspergers (although I think it's fairly mild) so if he doesn't see the point in doing something, he simply won't! As for the VR and NVR, he is quite good at both, but from what I've heard, it's all about learning the techniques to use. So we are kind of learning at the same time. Most of our sessions so far have been quite enjoyable, a few have not.

His teachers, and a friend of mine that does private 11+ tutoring have said not to worry too much because they feel he will be fine in the exam, but last year there were over 500 applicants for 100 places, and I really feel that this school will suit him so much better than the local secondary school. Incidentally, I think the local school, which is quite good, will suit ds2 very well, but not ds1, which is why I'm slightly freaking out about him getting a place. He will start private tutoring once a week when the schools go back in September, and tbh, I couldn't afford it for much longer than that anyway. Plus I figure that if he needs that much tutoring to pass the exam, then he probably sholdn't be at the school. So I'm trying to find the fine line between making sure he is prepared for the exam, but not over tutoring iyswim.

So really, I'd just like to hear if anyone else is doing this sort of thing, maybe get a little support group going and share experiences.

you will find a mine of information on the elevenplusexams.co.uk forum

Thanks for the reply. I have had a look at that forum, but it scared me! There seemed to be alot of parents who would push their child much harder than I am prepared to, simply because as I said above, if he needs that much pushing, he's probably not up to the high standard the school expects. I'm quite aware of a couple of other children that have been coached for this exam, did well and got in, but are now having a miseable time struggling to keep up with the others.

Some of the advice on the elevenplus forum has been useful though, so I will continue to keep looking there.

How many tests is he taking- our local grammar is just VR and NVR, not maths or English.
(more than 1500 applying for 140 places )

I think you're being very sensible.

Thanks deaddei, it's not often I'm called sensible! Are you tutoring as well this summer? 1500 applying? That's huge!

Ds will have to do maths, English and reasoning. They wont say whether its NVR, VR, or a combination of both. They find out on the day.

We helped our son through his 11+ last October as his school were doing absolutely nothing for the more able children. The terrible results of only 2 children passing from my son's Junior school speaks for itself.
When he was in YR5 I asked what support we needed to be giving and his teacher said she wasn't sure!!So we went about supporting him as much as we could at home.I am not great but not too bad at maths but my O'level grade b was an awfully long time ago! LOL
It got to about May last year and we decided to go to a tutor for an assessment and we continued working with him at home a couple of times a week....or as often as we could and the tutor worked on his literacy. This really highlighted the areas where the school just didn't differentiate and we could concentrate on certain subjects such as algebra or percentages...up until he went to the tutor he had done no story planning.

The Bond books were great, 10 minute exercises etc and I would also recommend a few practice papers.

As my son's birthday is at the very end of August, I am concerned at the thought of him starting grammar school only a few days after he is 11, not because of his abilty to learn but the lack of knowledge he may have compared to others there.

Try to treat it "lightly". By trying his hardest, I told my son he could never fail.

Good luck.

Dingle- state schools in our LEA are not allowed to support 11+ and grammar schools openly.

10:1 is not bad odds for a place- try >20:1

Why montmarte, is there a simple reason?

Sorry, I am not at all happy with the Primary school in general, my DD has Down Syndrome so she didn't fit into their pigeon holes either. Send a child into school with a knife and a atitude and the school will support 1;1 but send them in with a disability and they will drag you through tribunal to even get a statemnet which is then ignored!

Rant over! Sorry, I just feel a bit bitter that neither of my children's needs were addressed!

or even "an attitude!"

I am home helping my DS for the entrance exam this november/december which replaces the old 11+ in NI.
We are both struggling with the english/comprehension type questions - but finding the maths fairly straightforward thankfully.

We have a revision book from school - to use durinig our long 9 week summer holidays and a Bond book which someone bought me.

Its going to be hard 3 or 4 months - we have 3 exams in November and December.

Schools here don't support for 11 plus- no VR or NVR taught.
curlymama- we did it last year- ds didn't get in, and is going to local boys comp, which I am very happy about.
There were reasons why he didn't perform well in the tests, which have only come to light recently.
He had a tutor for about 7 months- he really enjoyed all the VR and NVR, and the English really boosted his standards in year 6.

Good luck!

dingle- because our LEA do not want to be seen supporting 'elitist' principles I suppose.

Personally I think grammar schools are an excellent idea (and I stunned some colleagues earlier this week with the revelation that I failed my 11+).

Thanks fo the replies everyone.

MaamRuby, I know what you mean about doing what's right for your own child. It is hard though, I'm feeling guilty that I don't think both my children will do well at the grammar school, it somehow feels like I'm short changing the youngest, although my head knows that's irrational, my heart still says it.

Dingle, we got the bond books, and the 10 minute tests are good. On the days that ds is feeling particuarly unmotivated or we are really busy, they are great just to do quickly and go through any wrong ones afterwards. In general, I have heard that the Bond books are quite hard and have a high standard, so hopefully if we are doing most of the questions confidently by exam time he should be ok.
My ds was also born at the end of August, so I have the same worries as you, especially as socially I think he is behind those of the same age anyway. But I was pleased to discover that they do take age into account when marking the exams, so I suppose that's one bonus!

Tennis fan, ds is struggling with the comprehension type excercises as well, but I'm told that is fairly common with aspergers. My tutor friend said that alot of it was about trying to get them to use good describing words, and being able to explain why. Apparantly the questions that contain the most marks in comprehension ask 'why do you think' type questions. She said a good excercise/game to try would be to look at people while you are out, and then try and make up lives for them, give them jobs etc, and then ask them why you think that job looks like it would suit that person. Another one is to make up stories, with each person doing one sentence at a time. Then you can give points for good descriptive words. I haven't done much of this yet, I'm going to save it for when we go on holiday and ds will get a week off doing the more formal work. I'm not sure yet how much success we will have with it though, as ds really isn't very imaginative.

Btw, I found an 11+ VR iphone app that I think ds will like, I tried it and it is mulitiple choice, but questions are simelar to the ones in the books. Going to save that one for holiday as well.

Deadei and Montmatre, it's a shame your schools don't sound very supportive. Reasoning stuff can give teachers a really good idea of a childs ability, and they often quite enjoy it.

How have you found it when your dc's just don't want to do the extra work? We started off really well and ds was very keen, even suggesting ways that he could do the books, but today he just really didn't want to do it. Said that getting into the school just wasn't worth the effort and all the extra work! It's really hard trying to get him to see the importance of doing the work, without making him think that getting into this school is the be all and end all, because of course, he might not get in!

I think when we got to that point, particularly in literacy which is generally a subject boys don't tend to do so well in I believe, that's when we decided we could not do it all at home with him and gave him a couple of months with a tutor.

We didn't have to do NVR but DS loved VR, just like doing a puzzle, even some maths he used to enjoy. I found he would bend over backwards to please his teachers but for me to expect him to sit down at home and write a story or do comprehension (something he hated with vengance)just wasn't going to happen easily, especially with a disabled sibling to care for too.

It was quite a weight off our minds when we decided to tutor for those last few months.

I found a few sites online as a different way of learning too, DS loves IT so I just changed the ways he learnt every now and then to keep him interested.

I think it was very hard to get my DS to understand why he was actually doing this, we didn't get to see the schools until after he had got his results so he had no real motivation apart from us telling him that IF he passed it would give him more choices of schools when the time came.

And do go on the 11 plus forum for sheer light relief
Especially when they're counting down the days for the results, and are on Valium/large amounts of gin/stalking the postman.

TIMING is key, my dds friend has aspergers and aced the VR test which is invigilator led, ie 4 minutes, turn the page etc. However, the VR & Maths, she HAD to answer every question and so didn't finish either paper so "failed" both of them by 30 odd points.
I advised her mum to get her raw scores and she was able to present at appeal that her dd had infact got nearly every question she answered correct - just hadn't finished. They start at grammar in Sept!

I did home-tutoring last year for an exam with just VR and NVR so can't comment on the English and Maths stuff. I found the 11+ forum useful for practical stuff on what to cover and what you can safely ignore, but full of rather obsessive posters. The other site which is excellent for home-tutoring is Chuckra; lots of very helpful free how-to guides and practice material.

Was interested to see QOD's post re. aspergers. Our recent experience with our LEA is that they ask you whether your child has any special needs and as soon as you say they are SA+ then there is accommodation given for the test, so a child with aspergas would probably be given extra time to sit the test. I would have thought that this practice was national.