Preparing for the 11 plus myself after leaving tuition company

[Tead]

More context is below but can someone please suggest some good books to that I can use to teach my year 4 son maths, english, verbal and non verbal reasoning.
I know the 11+ requires children to have covered all of the material in year 6 ahead of the exam so I need to cover all of the year 4 material and some of the year 5 material by the end of July next year.

I was think of going through this book with him to cover of the maths then move onto 11+ questions / assessment books.

www.cgpbooks.co.uk/primary-books/ks2/maths/m4q25-new-ks2-maths-targeted-question-book

My son is in yr 4 and we live in a competitive grammar area where many parents start their tuition in yr 4 or earlier. I enrolled my son into a specific tuition company this year because they have a reputation for adopting a more relaxed environment to teaching. They also start their courses in November whereas the others started in Sept.

We left the center after 4 weeks because my son found the material very challenging and felt the amount of homework was excessive (this was due to him finding the work difficult rather than the volume).

The center started the children on year 5 topics, the teacher confirmed they would be covering year 5 material from the start of the course, and there wasn't any bridge to cover the year 4 material. I am therefore trying to tutor him myself so any advice on which books to use and which books to read would be welcome.

Sending a lot of sympathy! We had a similar situation with my daughter last year when she was in year 4. Also in an extremely competitive grammar area and the one we sent her too was a classroom style place that was more like school rather than a personal lesson plan for my daughter. I'll send you a DM with who we're using now (they've been outstanding!) but the CGP books are really great, as are a couple of the atom resources.

We used Atom online with great success.

Those CGP targeted question books are excellent - I would go through all the Y4 ones with your son first, and if there's anything he's not yet learned at school, you might want to check out BBC Bitesize or other online resources such as YouTube videos, to go through those areas in more detail.

You can move him on to the Y5 ones when he's ready - don't be swayed by what the tutoring company has told you. You have to work at a suitable pace for your child. There's no point in moving on if he's not secure at the previous level, though it's fine to move further on in one area than others, if he's stronger in that area.

Make sure he keeps reading out loud to you, and discusses any new vocab with you. I think this is a more effective way of increasing vocab and building comprehension skills than using word lists and workbooks.

Is he in the top few children in his class at school? Does he normally grasp new concepts easily? You will be able to tell his strengths and weaknesses as you work through things with him, and you can support him better than a group tutor can. Grammar is not the right place for everyone, so if you feel it's taking a long time to see any progress, you may decide it's not worth pursuing. Any learning done will help him anyway.

Finally, you have loads of time, whatever the tutoring company has told you - it's only the first term of year 4! We didn't start properly until Y5 and my daughter was more than ready for the test after home prep.

I agree the CGP books and sample exam papers are the best way forward. Do also make sure you know the structure of your local authority test. Do you need verbal, spatial and non-verbal for example for the reasoning? You also need to know which CGP books to choose - GL or CEM. I live in Kent which is GL (and does have spatial reasoning questions). I am not sure which areas use CEM. The elevenplusexams.co.uk forums have region specific advice which may help. Good luck

We were in the same boat two years ago (end of year 4, DD didn't clear the entrance exam for a tuition centre admission)

We mainly used AE publication's "11+ Year 5-7 Mega Bundle".

It gives a good overall idea of the syllabus, so we could plan for the next 16 months. The NVR material in the bundle was very useful in teaching a methodical approach to this type of problem solving (we were both NVR newbies).

For English, besides the AE material, we were also gently introducing new reading material that DD wouldn't normally read otherwise - Railway Children, Anne of Green Gables etc. And also read, jointly, harder texts - newspaper articles, obituaries, essays, Treasure Island, White Fang and the likes. New words, idioms etc we came across went on to the fridge in post-its that we regularly revised and discussed.

While covering new topics (say, ratio), we also used past sample questions on that topic from various schools for exercises. We also used old primary maths challenge questions for practice.

About three or four months before the exams started, we subscribed to Atom and DD started practice exams every weekend.

DD eventually got in a school that we all like, but with hindsight I feel -

-- we should have started earlier. Starting late meant more intense work later.

-- We should have used a tutor specialising in eleven plus. DIY approach meant we had to work harder, and the same outcome can be achieved with less effort by a teacher with more experience.

Good luck!

@justanotherdaduser hi should we go for ae remote or in centre? Do you know any other better options you can suggest plz?

Hi, afraid we don't have experience with either. We just used the AE 11plus books, didn't use their tuition.

There was a recent thread here though about AE tuition centre. That may have more useful information.

I second the recommendation for AE material. The books are great especially for maths and NVR. Atom is good but my DC preferred book and paper at that age. Look at market place there are loads selling it after using. You could buy a few to check how they suit you.

@MuffinCoffee do u suggest we do tuition or just their material ourselves? Or their remote learning rather than in centre? To save time and energy

Bond online is good.

@Razzmata what we found is the quality of the teachers is down to which one is assigned to you. You can't pick. We were lucky with the teacher we got. But we had a cover one day when she was off sick and that teacher wasn't great. Working on your own is possible would depend on the child and how much time you have available to invest into the process. I can just vouch for the content of the book. It's really great and has also helped in y7 concepts for maths.

@123woop can you kindly pm me for details on where you went for tuition plz? You had offered that advice to op (in 2022).

Hello all,
my son got into a grammar school last year and I have 11+ study materials (practice papers, test books, work books) to give away (FREE) for year 4 and 5 from AE Tuition. This is complete material covering English, Maths, verbal reasoning and non-verbal reasoning. I found these materials very useful. If anyone is interested for this you could contact me and pick these from me from Feltham (Near Heathrow) in London.

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