11 plus books for home
The good news is that there are hundreds of quality 11 plus study books on the market that will help your child with their preparation at home, with or without having a tutor. When I am asked by parents to recommend suitable books, I do so with the Essex CSSE 11+ exam in mind. However, the reality is that the skills required for the 11+ and independent entrance exams throughout the country are actually very similar. No amount of practice is ever wasted, so anything you do will be valuable as long as you do it alongside specific practice for the exam your child is taking.
Here are some of the books I have bought, read and can wholeheartedly recommend. You may well find you are able to get some of these second hand if you didn’t want to buy new, but none are particularly expensive.
11+ Comprehension Books
11 plus comprehension reading papers test a variety of skills: inference, information retrieval and knowledge of spelling, punctuation and grammar. With or without a tutor, preparing for the 11 plus at home can be aided by having your child regularly practise the skills using books like the ones below.
11+ Essentials English Mini Comprehensions: Inference
Inference questions are considered more difficult to master than those requiring straight forward information retrieval. This book offers practice by getting children to read a short passage and answer a series of questions requiring them to ‘read between the lines’. What I like about the book, is that it gives the answer along with the exact part of the text supporting the inference. These are short exercises which won’t take long to do.
Classic Fiction Comprehension – highly recommended for CSSE English
This comprehension book is more aligned to the CSSE comprehensions. Although the tests are longer (out of 60 marks), the questions are written in such a way that students are required to write longer answers to get their marks. The tests are all based on classic children’s literature, which makes them a perfect practice book for the CSSE 11+ (or Common Entrance Exams). The book will not be in the same format you are used to if your child is taking an English 11+ paper that is multiple choice only, but being able to understand a challenging comprehension is common to all papers.
RSL 11 Plus: 11+ Comprehension – Recommended for CSSE 11 Plus
This book is also good for practising the Essex CSSE 11 Plus and Independent School 11 plus English Reading Comprehension Paper skills. With generally longer answer questions, mostly 2 or 3+ marks, there are also lots of 6 mark questions which are increasingly coming up in the CSSE paper. The Essex 11 Plus CSSE paper hasn’t had punctuation corrcetion for a while, or ‘what do you think happens next’ style questions, but that does not mean this book isn’t a highly valuable resource regardless.
11+ Maths Books
The purpose of doing maths 11+ practise books at home is to keep all topics being practised weekly. The bext books give solutions with an idea of how to get the answers. You will find the following books useful for 11+ maths at home.
11+ Essentials Mathematics: Worded Problems Book 1
This is a super book for practising a variety of 11+ maths. Divided into topic sections, the organisation allows you to focus on specific areas of weakness. the questions are also split into ‘Beginner’, ‘Intermediate’ and ‘Advanced’ levels, so you need to be looking at the Advanced pages for the best comparison with CSSE 11+. However, for areas of weakness, working up through the stages helps gain confidence.
There are two other books in this series too: Book 2 and Book 3 giving you further practice.
RSL 11 Plus Books: 11+ Maths – Practice Papers & Detailed Answers
New this year, is an excellent book from RSL. With a super mix of challenging questions and worked exampes, this is highly relevant and recommended for the CSSE 11+. The book is split into 6 papers, so the downside is that not everything is covered. However, what IS covered is done very well indeed.
11+ Maths Revision Guide
This is a book to be used by parents and children together. It gives methods for most, but not all CSSE 11+ maths topics (e.g. nth term formula is missing) and the worded problems are good practice for the CSSE 11+ maths paper. There are a small number of questions to consolidate each topic as you go through, and a (slightly) larger test at the end of each section. A useful book to have.
11+ Vocabulary Books
11 plus comprehensions and verbal reasoning papers are known to test whether a child has an advanced vocabulary. Children should be reading a range of books that are challenging in this repect – and for the CSSE 11+ English paper they need familiarity with children’s clasics (see list) The resources below will expand their vocabulary in a variety of ways.
The 11+ Vocabulary Word Search Extravaganza
A unique word search puzzle book specifically targeting key Eleven Plus vocabulary, also great for Year 6 SATs preparation. This book goes beyond being a simple word search collection by including synonyms and antonyms, and selected topic areas, so that definitions and vocabulary learning are reinforced.
Eleven Plus: Vocabulary Flash Cards
A fun way to learn new vocabulary is by using flash cards. Children can use them on their own or with others, gradually building their familiarity with an array of commonly appearing 11+ words. Use them at breakfast, a few every day, and challenge your child to put them into their writing to consolidate the learning.
11+ Vocabulary: 1400 words testing Synonyms/ Antonyms/ Homophones/ Homographs/ Idioms/ Cloze: In 10 minute Verbal Reasoning tests
If you have a bright child in need of expanding their vocabulary for 11+ comprehensions or to improve their writing, then this book offers you a way to do that – especially for reluctant reader who may not be getting the same exposure to advanced language by reading enough children’s classics.