Those of us who pride ourselves on being on top of everything school-related have had our world turned upside-down recently.
Parents of Year 5s with the Kent Test on the horizon are particularly anxious.
But one of the toughest things to manage in a normal year is fitting a revision plan around the demands of the school day, football club, drama classes etc. And – just for a while – those commitments have evaporated into thin air.
When my sons were taking the exam I would have found this absolutely brilliant…
A sensible plan at the moment is for your child to spend 45 minutes on weekday mornings. One day maths and non-verbal reasoning, the next, English and verbal reasoning.
If your child is focused for a short period of time the exam will seem a manageable step for them, and their confidence will remain constant. The more pages of revision you wave in front of them throughout the day, the more reluctant they will feel you risk them becoming overwhelmed. At that point the sessions become a miserable battle for both of you.
So that’s the timetable sorted. Do keep weekends completely free. And in the background, read aloud to your child most evenings from a book that you both love. Chat about the characters and the plot – this will develop the skills of inference and deduction in a relaxed and enjoyable way. Children with the ability to infer meaning from the text do well in the English exam.
Now to address the content of those little revision sessions. What should they all be doing in that time?
There are four subjects to cover in the Kent 11+ – English, Maths and two types of reasoning (verbal and non-verbal/spatial). All of these subjects are covered very well on Bond Online. At this stage please avoid their exam paper content and focus purely on individual subtopics. All the reasoning is there with clear explanations of corrections and the English grammar and spelling exercises are where you should put the time in now.
If you’d like more specific materials to work from, your child is welcome to join one of our 11+ tutor clubs, where we teach a live hour-long session each week and give you (almost) 24 hour individual support whenever you feel you might fall to pieces. Interested? Then click here to get in touch today.
Our clubs are the cheapest in the area (as far as I’m aware) and we think they are the best by a mile. Just 6 in a group and close personal attention at all times.
Before I go, I’d just like to share a little secret about the maths exam. Interestingly it is not the difficult questions that are the challenge on the day. Your child could miss them out and still gain a strong pass. It is the easy stuff they fall down on. Shape naming, recognising simple fractions, simple measures and special numbers (primes, squares etc). This content can be done practically at home. Buy a set of 2D and a set of 3D shapes. Google the key vocab and do it together. Stick the square numbers on the fridge, say what they are and leave them for a week. Then swap them for cube numbers. If these basics are strong you will be giving your child a head-start.
If you need a bit more hand-holding though, just email me for support.