Introduction
Whether your child is taking their 11+ at the end of year 5, SATs at the end of year 6 or your GCSEs in years 10 and 11, here are just a few things that we will cover in the tutorial sessions.
11+ – Comprehension, Creative writing and verbal reasoning
- Initial assessment
An online assessment will be offered to understand your child’s strengths and areas for development. - Spellings and word meanings
By the end of the programme, your child should have a good grasp of the spellings for keywords as well as their meanings in order to tackle the comprehension and verbal reasoning sections. Synonyms, antonyms and word groups will be covered. - Review of word classes and language devices
The English language is a series of building blocks which consist of word classes such as nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs etc. Understanding these as well as well as literary devices, which make writing more impactful -similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia and hyperbole etc. is a core focus during the tuition sessions. - Comprehension skills
Answering the comprehension part of the 11+ programme involves reading passages with speed and accuracy. Techniques for success include developing close reading skills, homing in on specific vocabulary to decipher meaning. - Punctuation
Many verbal reasoning questions will throw up questions where children will need to identify errors in punctuation. Developing confidence in the correct use of commas, ellipses, colons, semi-colons, brackets, hyphens, dashes will be part of the syllabus. - Grammar and sentence structures
Your child will be given lessons in developing knowledge of clauses, phrases, conjunctions, speech, parenthesis and much more, as well as understanding how to identify the different types of sentence structure – simple, compound and complex. - Verbal reasoning
Techniques and know-how to solve word problems, find hidden words and crack number and letter codes, will be given. Synonyms, antonyms, spellings will also be covered as part of this. - Creative writing
Some centres will make creative writing a part of their assessment – which involves bringing the above together into a coherent narrative, in order to persuade, explain or describe. - Timed paper practise and regular assessments
Practise, practise, practise is the key to embedding knowledge of these core skills, along with tips for time management during the session.
SATS
- SATs takes place at the end of Year 6. Your child will need to demonstrate ability in reading comprehension, focusing on characters and structure and providing their answers in a variety of formats. We will practise their reading skills in session, including their ability to decode words, language and meaning.
- We will also cover the key aspects of grammar according to the curriculum including suffixes, conjunctions, parts of speech, tenses and punctuation for the grammar paper. As well as practise spellings for the aural spelling test.
GCSE English
Here we will cover all aspects of the Language and Literature paper including:
- Revising and knowing the set texts including characters, and their motivations, plot, structure, language and form
- Core focus on language devices, structural techniques and context
- Create structured essays which answer the question
- Sharpen your exam technique including timings and planning
- Improve your understanding of SPAG
- Write narratives with descriptive and emotive language
- Practise past papers and key questions
- Make sure you take notes during lessons and tuition
- Complete every piece of homework given
