All The Resources We Used for 11 Plus Prep

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A homeschooling blog 11+ preparation…eh?

I know it might sound a bit contradictory – why would a homeschooling blog talk about school entrance tests? But bear with me; there’s a good reason for it.

When we started homeschooling, we weren’t entirely sure if we’d continue homeschooling into the secondary years. We wanted to keep our options open, so we decided to prepare our oldest child for the 11 + grammar school entrance exams. This way, we could choose the best path for their education, whether it meant continuing to homeschool or transitioning to a grammar school.

Ultimately it has panned out well for us as the rigorous preparation for the 11 Plus gave our son a significant academic boost. Ultimately, we decided to continue homeschooling into the secondary years. However, the benefits we saw from the 11 Plus prep were undeniable. So, we ended up having all our kids prepare for these entrance exams, even though we chose to stick with homeschooling.

Year 5 is crucial for 11 Plus prep. I would recommend starting right at the beginning of Year 5 to cover all the material and practice needed.

Find out all you can about the 11+ tests in your area. Check the Local Authority and school websites for detailed test info. Don’t rely on rumours from other mums. Check everything yourself with official sources even if that means calling the schools directly.

This site elevenplusexams was invaluable for me:

Goldmine of information.

If you’re not hiring a tutor, you’ll need to be disciplined about your child’s preparation.

We spent their academic Year 5 (age 10) year preparing specifically for the tests.  I won’t lie, it was intense as there was not only the content to cover, but also being able to answer questions accurately and quickly.

Up until that point we were homeschoolling in quite a relaxed un-urgent way. However, as we were homeschooling, we had the flexibility of scheduling our days however we wanted, so the preparation for these exams just took the place of our homeschooling subjects. For the academics of homeschooling we just focused on English and maths and didn’t bother with history or topic work.

And they read a lot. My kids have always been avid readers, but during this year of 11 plus preparation, I did intervene and request they read books that they probably wouldn’t have chosen to read themselves.

It wasn’t just about passing a test; it was about building a solid academic foundation. The surprise bonus that we discovered is that after the 11+ exams, (which they did at the start of Year 6) is they didn’t have to study or work through any year 6 maths or English content as it was all covered in the 11+ preparation content, so they had a whole year off “schooling” after their exams were over. Not only that, my kids were more or less ready to start GCSEs in Year 7, so we did a mix of KS3 content and GCSEs form Year 7 and have been able to take it slow.

This strategy has successfully prepared my three kids for the 11 + using the same resources for all of them.

Make sure you are getting the correct preparation materials for the test that is applicable to what your child will sit. My older two sat the CEM Durham 11+ exams, then the grammar schools in area switched to the GL 11+ exams. This was really annoying as we had to buy all of the test specific preparation material again. But I’m so glad I checked, as the tests are different enough from each other.

I have also included resources to use from Year 4. These aren’t 11+ specific resources, but this it what we were using generally for dipping in and out of for English and Maths, so I thought I would include them. If you’re considering having your kids sit the 11 plus entrance exams for grammar schools, I hope this list of resources helps you out!

English and Maths Year 4 (and carrying on throughout Year 5)

During Year 4 we just concentrated on building strong foundation in English and maths. We didn’t use anything 11 plus specific resources, except for my younger two, two ease the burden of memorising a lot of vocabulary in a short amount of time, we started memorising the 11 plus vocabulary flashcard words.

Comprehension:

Depending on the level of your child, start at this level then move on to the next level in the series. If the level is too easy then just skip to the next level of the series.

Spelling:

Vocabulary:

Extensive vocabulary knowledge is essential for the 11 plus. The best way to acquire these is naturally through reading, but I found my kids just skipped over any words they didn’t know when they read, so we decided to use flashcards, and learn a few a week through out year 4 and year 5.

The set of flashcards we used aren’t available on the market anymore, but these vocabulary flashcards from CGP look quite good and child friendly:

Maths

In addition to our normal maths curriculum, we focused on memorising times tables multiplication and division facts. These have to be accurate and fast. We also used this time to practice accuracy and fluency on addition and subtraction facts up to 100.

In addition, depending on the level of your child, start at this level and carry on to the next level:

11 Plus Preparation Year 5 (for the 11 Plus GL exam)

During Year 5 we continued with comprehension, spellings, vocabulary, mental maths and our normal maths curriculum we were using for homeschool.

In addition, we started some 11 plus specific study using the following resources.

Term 1 of Year 5

From September to December of Year 5, we worked through these study guides and workbooks to get ourselves familiar with the format of the exam.

Term 2 of Year 5

From January of Year 5, we started doing one or two of these 10 minute tests from each book of the series.

Term 3 of Year 5

From May we continued the 10 minute test books and also started doing one practice paper a week from this series. We chose the GL publishers as it was a GL test we figured this would reflect the real exam content.

There is also the CGP practice paper series. This wasn’t available as a pack but we did get a couple of tests from CGP as I thought it might be good to get questions from a different perspective.

Don’t get both the GL practice papers and CGP at once. Most likely you won’t end up using all of them, or you’ll want to use all of them and end up stressed out due to the amount of work.

Something new which CGP published that I wasn’t aware of during our 11 plus preparation until the last month, are CGP 11 plus revision cards in a boxset. As the practice papers were showing a weakness in Verbal Reasoning, towards the end of August I bought one for verbal reasoning, and it was quite fun to use. It made a change from the books and papers.

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