Do you think my DS will need a tutor for 11+

bylromarha

Right, I'm saying all this as a primary teacher who has an extremely bright son that scares me as he does stuff I have never seen a child his age do...

For a year 3 child, your son is certainly ahead of the pack - I'm sure you're aware end yr 3, children should be achieving around 3c/b in maths. The teacher who doesn't seem to care about the G+T register - I can understand where she's coming from if the register is just a piece of paper. Does being on the G+T register in the school actually make a difference, would he benefit from extended learning opportunities by having his name on the list? If not, then I'm with her. No point in paper for papers sake.

G+T is not recognised as SEN, even though it is. It gets no funding, and is very much up to the individual school as to how they extend and support the learning of their G+T kids. The school may have a policy so get hold of a copy, and as your OH is a governor, he should be able to find out what the policy looks like in practice. I say may have a policy as the school DS goes to has 2 lines in their inclusion policy and I've had to fight for him to get opportunities to learn in a way that matches his need. Still not happy 100%, but better that he at least gets more appropriate teaching for 20 mins a week.

As for a tutor for grammar, I'd agree that exam technique has to be practiced for the 11+. But don't start yet! If, as a previous poster has said, the 11+ is Oct/nov time, then your child will have had no chance in school to look at test techniques prior to it. So I'd open the previous papers for him in about July personally to give DS a chance to have a look at how things are worded, how to attempt answers etc.

And I'd start looking at the papers myself now to ensure that he has experience of similar problems in a more fun way - so logic and reasoning I'm guessing is on there, so teaching him how to play Sudoku on DS is one way of gaining that sort of skill of reasoning - eg "this has to be a 5 because..."

But I personally wouldn't pay for a tutor as I'm confident in my skills to teach - if you feel confident in the paper and confident conveying those things to DS, then I guess you won't need a tutor either.

All the best

kelloggs36

You don't need a tutor - they do not guarantee that your child will pass the test and you can buy papers from WHSmith yourself and go through them with him. If he is only in year 3 then he has another 2 years to go - I would buy them next year when he is going into year 5 which gives a year's worth of practise using the papers. Find out which tests your area do and focus on them, as some areas don't do the non-verbal reasoning tests.

choccymoose

Wow thanks for that, when he was on the G and T register last year he went on a number of workshops at the local Grammar schools with other children identified in that area of learning, he got so much out of it, just seems a shame that we are having to push his teacher to challenge him, can understand where you are coming from though if there were not things for him to access!

I will definitely start to research the papers myself, thanks for the advice. Seems to be that the technique is just as important as the knowledge. I wouldn't have known this if I hadn't asked the question.

Thanks

chloe99_2

choccy - have a look at some papers and you will see what we mean!! It's not really school material that gets tested

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Rather than putting him in for additional tuition, which could easily have the effect of putting him off as he gets older - most kids 'change' in their attitude to some extent at round about 10 years old - are there ways in which his interests and activities could be structured that provides him with more challenges?

The key could be to support and develop his motivation, rather than specific examination skills, at this age. Perhaps, as he enjoys his cub activities, developing his knowledge of sailing -

sailing can cover a lot of science and maths - ecology, the nature of waves, lots of physics, understanding the weather, why some people get sick and some don't, geology of the cliffs around where he goes, fossils, plate tectonics, volcanology, seismology, chemistry - saline solutions, acidity, effects of acidification of the oceans, ice cores, etc

the history of sailing, why we are a seafaring nation, how trade routes in ancient times were created when there wasn't the technological advantages we have now -

Navigation, geography, cooking food from different places, trade, slavery, human rights development

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Now, obviously, this is a huge amount of stuff, but the principle is that he moves towards a broader skills base, making him a more rounded individual rather than the performing monkey model that intensive coaching poses a risk of creating.

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I'm slightly biased, as DD2 took the local private school entrance exam with no coaching whatsoever and was offered a place. Suffice to say, we were delighted, especially as she wasn't one of the several children vomiting into the gutter with nerves on the morning of the exam.

Unfortunately, a change in circumstances of the great-grandparents (who were going to pay her fees), means that she is going to the standard school that all children from her primary attend from year 7. Private schools are finding times hard; after our Head spoke to their Principal to try and persuade them to give DD a bursary, he came back and said that they had not offered a single one for this coming year and have said goodbye to several current pupils whose parents had lost their jobs over the period.

But DD knows that despite our somewhat impoverished circumstances, she is as smart as anyone else and I have no doubt that she will be fine whatever school she goes to, as she has the benefit of study skills, logical thought, problem solving strategies and the ability to handle both nice and difficult people.

And the staff will be left with the memory of the small, cheeky one who had an answer for everything and wrote in a science test that the amplitude of the wave generated by the speaker membrane would increase as a result of an increase in energy making it move further, which would result in an increase in sound pressure levels - when the question was 'what happens if you turn the volume dial to the right?'. She had picked that up from my own coursework.

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I can sympathise with your DS though, because it can be so frustrating at that age to be bored at school. It gets worse at high school, though, as I always had extra activities and harder work set for me at primary (or I would be a complete pain because I had finished all the day's work by about 10.30am), only to find that I had to coast through the first three years of senior school before they got around to the work I had done in primary. Boredom, for someone with a few extra functioning braincells, can be the catalyst for a lot of problems. And despite everything I did (or didn't do), it still boiled down to my getting top marks in the exams every time and having the staff who didn't like me (there were a few ) practically choking over announcing I had come top in the year again.

Mind you, I don't think I really got out of second gear even on the last two years of school either. Pity I didn't go to University then, but I had just spent the previous ten years of school bouncing off the walls mentally because it seemed like everyone else was going at a snail's pace, and so couldn't face fighting for more education when it was strongly disapproved of at home.


Sorry if this isn't what you needed to hear about, but if your son is in a similar position, it is very hard to explain to someone else who hasn't experienced it, just how frustrating it can be, when at the same time, you still want to slob out and watch Spiderman or play on the Nintendo, because you're still just a kid.

choccymoose

Jojo, loving your ideas of expanding his wider knowledge, when we went to Egypt he researched all about it before we went, he was 6. He then went to stay with his grandparents for 2 weeks in Portugal and came back speaking the lingo!

He is begging to go to air cadets because its airplanes that he's really interested in, really hard saying that he has to wait 5 yrs before that and that he should stick with cubs, luckily its a sea scouts unit and is affiliated with the naval college so he gets to see aircraft carriers and the like, so have sold it to him as the best of both worlds at the moment, luckily he will be doing a beginners sailing course with them over the next few months so will learn all about navigating, the wind etc. He is also just about to begin scuba diving as both OH and I do that as a hobby, he's really interested in the theory in behind it all and has researched Jaque Cousteau and likes looking at the dive site maps. I guess we are doing all we can at the moment, just need to find ways to keep him interested and hopefully all will be ok.

He also loves the forest school approach, i'm currently finishing my forest school leaders qualification and he loves coming out with, whether I'm running a session or just scouting the woods for a new area to access.

elfen

I took the 11+ without having private tuition, and it didn't affect how I did.

Mado

Both me and OH worked with DD on the paper packs you buy in the bookshop when she was in year 5.
She passed with full marks last year.
We knew she could do it, and she didn't disappoint.
Nearly all of her classmates were tutored; only 2 others passed (out of 15).

You have plenty of time before you decide. Buy the packs and start working on some of the techniques. If you find that he isn't doing well with that, then you can decide to have him tutored. If he sails through that, you're wasting your money!.

We are now helping DS through the same papers; with full confidence that he has what it takes to get in by his own steam.

Even if everyone else is doing it, your child can pass the exam without formal tutoring.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

choccymoose wrote: »

Jojo, loving your ideas of expanding his wider knowledge, when we went to Egypt he researched all about it before we went, he was 6. He then went to stay with his grandparents for 2 weeks in Portugal and came back speaking the lingo!

He is begging to go to air cadets because its airplanes that he's really interested in, really hard saying that he has to wait 5 yrs before that and that he should stick with cubs, luckily its a sea scouts unit and is affiliated with the naval college so he gets to see aircraft carriers and the like, so have sold it to him as the best of both worlds at the moment, luckily he will be doing a beginners sailing course with them over the next few months so will learn all about navigating, the wind etc. He is also just about to begin scuba diving as both OH and I do that as a hobby, he's really interested in the theory in behind it all and has researched Jaque Cousteau and likes looking at the dive site maps. I guess we are doing all we can at the moment, just need to find ways to keep him interested and hopefully all will be ok.

He also loves the forest school approach, i'm currently finishing my forest school leaders qualification and he loves coming out with, whether I'm running a session or just scouting the woods for a new area to access.

I wish you had been my mum!

WolfSong2000

Be careful of pressuring the kid too much...I remember (and this is an extreme example) a friend of my sister's - very bright girl, but her parents made her and her elder brother work every waking second, either school work, music practice, etc. They never got any "down time"...the brother ended up having a nervous breakdown...sister's friend did okay and ended up at...I think it was Cambridge, but still...

Many, many years ago I took an entrance exam for a private school...failed the maths paper, but excelled at the English paper, so the school took me on anyhow...it's been a recurring theme throughout my life (failed maths GCSE, top grades at English, but still got into Uni)...I'm still grateful my parents didn't pressure me. I did have a maths tutor for a while for GCSE, but it made no difference for me, so tutoring may not be for everyone.