Developing 11+ exam skills at home

For many children, the 11+ exam is their first experience of a formal exam under
timed conditions, which is why it’s vital that you spend time developing your child’s
exam skills before the actual exam.
Below are our top tips for helping your child develop their exam skills at home:
Timing
Time management plays a big part when it comes to succeeding at the 11+. If a child
works too slowly during the exam, they may end up running out of time and not
completing the test. Likewise, if a child rushes they could end up making careless
mistakes that will lose them vital marks.
Here are some keyways to improve your child’s time management:

1. Beat the buzzer – first and foremost, if your child is still struggling to complete
practice papers in the recommended time (45 minutes for most Bond test papers)
start using a kitchen timer and encourage them to ‘beat the buzzer’ and complete the
test before the buzzer goes off. Perhaps start on shorter, ten-minute tests to build
their confidence, then progress up to longer tests.
2. Read ahead – particularly if your child is doing the CEM 11+ exam (where there are
typically more questions to answer than can be completed in allocated time), it's a
good idea to get your child into the habit of spending a few minutes at the start of the
test going through the paper and highlighting the questions that they think they will
struggle with. They should then go back to the start of the test paper and work
through all the questions they’re confident with and then go back to the highlighted
ones. This means that they won’t spend too long on questions they’re struggling with
and miss answering the questions they can do.
3. It’s ok to skip – lot of children struggle to complete tests in the allocated time
because they spend too long trying to answer questions they’re stuck on. You need
to make sure your child understands that it’s ok to skip a question they can’t do, and
that they can always come back to it at the end if they have time.
4. Time to check – when you’re doing practice tests at home, try to find time for your
child to get into the habit of finishing with 5 minutes to spare in order to check their
answers.
5. Find the clock – get your child into the habit of finding the clock when they practice
at home so that they do this as soon as they enter the exam room.
6. Exam plans – each time your child does a practice test, they should get into the
habit of writing an exam plan on a scrap piece of paper. For a 45-minute test, their
plan should look like this:
 Exam starts at 10am and ends at 10.45am
 10-10.05am: 5 minutes looking through the questions
 10.05-10.40: 35 minutes answering the questions
 10.40-10.45: 5 minutes checking answers
Exam habits
Completing practice tests and mock exams at home not only improves subject
knowledge and time management skills, it also gives your child the opportunity to
 develop good exam habits, which will help them cope with the actual test
environment.

1. Exam routine – encourage your child to develop a routine so that they develop good
habits ahead of the real exam. Get them used to gathering together a sharp pencil
and eraser, having a drink of water and popping to the toilet before they do a mock
exam at home.
2. Dealing with nerves – for many children, the 11+ will be their first ever formal exam,
so it’s important to help them understand how to deal with any nerves that may arise.
If your child starts to feel nervous, get them to breathe slowly in and out and repeat
these 5 times. If they do this regularly, they’ll know how to calm themselves down if
they start to feel nervous on their own in the exam.
3. Dealing with distractions – some children struggle when they go into an 11+ exam
room because it’s a different environment than they’re used to. Although the exam
room will be quiet, for children who are used to practising in total silence, noises
such as coughs and sneezes or squeaking chairs can be really off-putting. A good
way of combatting this at home is to vary the places where your child does their
practice tests, so that they don’t start to feel that things need to be ‘just so’ before
completing a test. A bit of background noise or walking past whilst their practising will
also help them get used to any small distractions that may occur in the actual exam.