DS will be taking the Kent 11+ in September, and we have also entered him for the Sevenoaks assessment in January. He's been going to an 11+ tutor once a week during Year 5 (plus associated tutor homework). He's a very able boy and is doing well with his 11+ prep - on paper he 'should' do well in the test (I'm fully aware that there are no guarantees about how well he'll actually do on the day).
I'm now starting to look ahead to Sevenoaks entrance, and my question is whether the 11+ preparation is also likely to be the right preparation for that. I'm not too worried about the maths, as it looks similar to the practice papers he's been doing, and the school website says that the VR test is similar to Bond etc, so that should be ok too. I think the English is more my concern. DS hasn't had a lot of experience of doing more traditional comprehension tests like the Sevenoaks past papers (e.g. what do we learn about the characters from this passage - 5 marks). Comprehension and inference have never been his strongest area - he does fine in the 11+ practice papers but they're multiple choice which is very different. I think he would have more difficulty in expressing an answer rather than knowing it, IYSWIM (e.g. if the question was: does this passage show that Fred is a) shy b) scared or c) sullen he'd be able to answer it - but if the question was: how would you describe Fred's character from this passage, he'd find it much harder). Also, the writing task is not something he's used to - e.g. look at this painting and describe the scene from the point of view of one of the characters. His tutor doesn't do much on writing because it's such a peripheral part of the 11+.
Sorry, long post, I'm just wondering if anybody has advice about what we can do as good preparation for these types of questions? I read with DS a lot, and I'm trying to cover a range of genres/periods, and we can obviously do the past papers from the website between September and January - but are there any other techniques and/or resources that anyone can suggest? I should have said earlier, DS is at a state primary so they're not involved in prep for either test. I don't want to push him too hard, but equally I want him to be well-prepared, particularly as he'll be up against kids who go to schools that prep specifically for Sevenoaks.
Thanks!