Due to Covid 19, I am making these exams available on-line. Please contact me if you are interested in your child taking part.
Test and Teach
My mocks are different. They contain no maths or non-verbal questions. I’m not a maths teacher. I haven’t trained to teach maths. I focus purely on the English and verbal skills that will be tested in the 11+. Their English result will decide if they are offered a place. (Many of the candidates will be very strong at maths.) My mocks have been designed to give children the opportunity to answer questions and then receive immediate feedback. They consist of 3 comprehensions - poetry, prose (fiction) and prose (non-fiction). The questions test higher comprehensions skills, such as inference, and I have also set traps to catch out those who rely on the answers jumping out at them. I also include jumbled sentences and paragraphs, cloze and synonym/antonym questions (CEM) and SPAG questions (GL).
Students pictured working on the cloze question. This was their final question before taking a short break.
Keep scrolling down - or you’ll miss the most important part!
The most important part - the teaching.
They’ve had a break, and now we’ve gathered together to go over the answers. Now they can just listen as I do the work. I’ve explained the traps I inserted into the comprehension questions. I’ve shown them how to avoid such traps in future. The inferential question answers are explained. They are given the answers to the rest of the questions. The parents are welcome to be present at this point. Everyone goes home having learnt something.
Students pictured listening to me teach them after taking my mini-mock. Isn’t this better than just turning up, taking the test and going home again? (I’ve had to go for a tight crop on this image to hide the faces of students and parents - this has meant that I’ve gone missing too!)