Tips and Techniques

Our teaching team reviews the most common exam errors made by the thousands of students who sit mock exams with Eleven Plus Exams every year.

These workshops cover all of these mistakes and teach you how to best avoid them and spot the traps that lead to them.

This is a worthwhile talk if your child is prone to silly mistakes in their exams.

Many students often find comprehension to be the most challenging aspect of their 11+ exam.

In this talk we provide practical strategies to help your child improve their reading comprehension, including:

• A guide for what to expect in a reading comprehension exam
• Insights into what an examiner is testing in the comprehension exam
• The most effective methods for how to prepare for the comprehension exam
• The most effective methods to help build your child’s comprehension ability and confidence

Many students expecting to sit a creative writing exam as part of their 11+ often have little experience with writing.

This is a worthwhile talk to gain advice on where to begin with creative writing preparation and how to boost your child’s current skill set.

In this talk we provide practical techniques to help improve your child's writing skills and the most effective ways to exercise these skills in an exam setting, including:

• A guide for what to expect from the writing exam
• Insights into what an examiner is looking for in the writing exam
• Insights into exactly what content should be included in each different type of task that students may be set and how to effectively plan for each of them
• Tips to inspire your child and improve their writing skills

In this workshop parents will work through examples of verbal reasoning questions with their child, whilst being guided through the best ways to think about these questions.

We provide techniques to help think through and answer tricky verbal reasoning questions, as well as spelling, punctuation and grammar questions in English papers, including:

• Tips for learning vocabulary and thinking through common question styles like synonyms and antonyms
• Strategies for dealing with particularly difficult question styles like Related Numbers
• Strategies for dealing with the technical English section (spelling, punctuation and grammar) of GL English papers
• A review of which punctuation rules to follow and which rules do not matter in the 11+
• Guidance for dealing with cloze passages, word formation, logical verbal reasoning, categories and sentence structure

Many children find non-verbal reasoning particularly challenging, especially because it is often not covered as part of the KS2 syllabus in most schools.

In this talk we cover tips and advice for how to pass the 11+ non-verbal reasoning exam, including:

• A review of each common NVR question style, illustrated with animation to aid in understanding.
• Key strategies for how to apply understanding of shapes, reflection, symmetry, shading, position and rotation to achieve exam success
• Tips for improving exam focus and timing

Eleven Plus Exams offers a unique session for students sitting the 11+ to provide them with motivation and direction as they head towards their final exams. These sessions are typically between 3 and 3.5 hours.

Mock exams are an ideal way to prepare students for the exam conditions they may not have experienced as part of their KS2 studies, however most year 5 students will still benefit from formal instruction in how to best approach the preparation process for their highly-pressured exams.

The session will be interactive and presented by our experienced in-house teachers who engage with the students to deliver a fun, inspiring and motivational presentation. This is an ideal way to encourage your child to remain motivated and to help boost their performance and build their confidence in the lead up to the summer mocks and the real exams.

This session will provide essential insight into exam skills, revision planning, stress management and motivation, including:

• Question Styles: What are the most common question styles that appear across the 11+ subjects and what are the best strategies for answering each of them?
• Exam Tips: How to avoid silly mistakes and tackle questions under time pressure.
• Motivation and Confidence Building: How to remain motivated up until the exam.
• Preparation: What topics should students focus on in the lead up to the exams?
• Effective Learning: What are the most effective methods for revision?
• Q & A: A chance for children to ask any further questions.

Anxiety and silly mistakes due to lack of focus or unfamiliarity with exam conditions can often lead to students underperforming on the day of their real test.

Yoga breathing, mindfulness and meditation can be effective tools for managing stress and anxiety. All students and parents can benefit from these techniques and it is never too late to learn them.

Our parent and child mindfulness talk is provided by Rina Rawal.

Rina graduated at Gold and Platinum Standard with 500 hours of teacher training from Chi Kri Yoga. She has taught beginners yoga since 2014 and is also a Chi Kri chair yoga specialist.

Rina believes regular yoga practice can provide practical and helpful tools not only for adults managing the pressures of modern living, but also children and teenagers faced with the stresses and anxieties of preparing for and sitting exams, such as the 11+.

Using breathing, physical yoga postures, affirmations and meditation techniques, young people can learn to tap into a reservoir of inner calm and peace. They can also improve their focus, concentration and confidence before and during their exams. Like all things in yoga, the idea is to build a foundation upon which the individual can weave more balance and harmony into their day-to-day lives in terms of their physical, mental and emotional health and well-being.

The talk with Q & A will last approximately 1 hour and will cover the following topics:

• Exam Preparation - Your Healthy Five-a-Day
• An introduction to square breathing
• Yoga poses to help with exam success
• Yoga nidra to aid rest and relaxation
• Positive affirmations to retrain the mind
• An introduction to meditation