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The 7+ exams are private school entrance exams that are usually sat in the January of Year 2, with a view to students joining the school at the beginning of Year 3.

Many parents are unsure of when to start formal preparation for the 7+. After all, parents don’t want to push their children too heavily at an early age. The answer to when to start really depends on what you mean by “formal preparation”.

Most of our 7+ students join us about a year before the exam, however, their parents have often worked with them at home from an early age. These children have been reading regularly, listening to stories at home, working on puzzles, writing stories and often cultivating a few wider interests that they are able to discuss at an interview.

If you feel you would like to work at home with your Reception child in order to prepare them for the 7 Plus, then our tips will provide a guide to starting some gentle preparation at home.

ENGLISH

In order to pass the 7+ exam, your child will need to be a strong reader, able to sound out almost any word. To support your child in reaching this standard, working on phonics from a young age is essential. A sound knowledge of phonics will improve not only your child’s reading ability, but it will improve their spelling too.

Reading

Maintaining a reading word book is a vital part of any reading programme.

How to use a reading word book:

1. Keep a small notebook to hand whenever your child is reading a new book.
2. Whenever your child struggles with a word, write it in the notebook.
3. Return to these words regularly over the course of a week or two.
4. Tick a word if read correctly and put a dot if incorrect.
5. When your child has received three consecutive ticks, you can leave this word for a few weeks, but remember to return to these words occasionally.

Once your child is able to read simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words, such as “cat” and “mop”, you can start to introducing them to phonic blends, such as “sh”, “th” and “ow”. The Finger Phonics and Letterland: Beyond Phonics books are perfect for learning the blends.

Young children will often resist writing, however, you can practise spelling new words with a cursive magnetic letters set. Click here to view the set that we use in class.

To develop an enjoyment of books from an early age, do try to read to your child regularly and to engage them in the story. Even seeing you turning the pages is informative for children as they learn to read from left to right.

Handwriting

In order to have good writing, children need to be able to control a pencil. Learning pencil control doesn’t just come with handwriting practice, it can also be developed with colouring activities as well as dot-to-dot tasks.

When young children are colouring, it can be tempting to overlook the fact that they’re often going out of the lines, however, scribbling does need to be gradually curbed from the age of three or four and children need to be reminded that they should try to keep within the lines. Only then will they start to learn the pencil control – and the neatness – that they require for beautiful writing in the future.

Children often struggle to develop the fine motor skills that are required for neat handwriting, and are likely to have difficulty with holding a pencil. For children aged 7 and under, jumbo pencils and pencil grips will certainly help them to learn how to hold a pencil properly.

When working on letter formation with your child, try to encourage them to form use the cursive style from a young age. Learning cursive handwriting makes it much easier for children to naturally progress to joined up handwriting as they get older. Use the form below to receive some cursive handwriting sheets to get you started.

You can start practising handwriting at home today.

Download our free Cursive Handwriting Starter Pack below. 

Creative Writing

Most private school exams ask children to complete a short piece of creative writing as part of their assessment. To develop these skills at an early age, encourage your child to tell stories orally. They can come up with stories that revolve around their toys or create extensions and alternative endings to stories that you’ve read together.

MATHS

Whilst your child may be too young to do much in the way of writing and arithmetic, you can still start to build their understanding of number from an early age.

Aim for your child to be counting to at least 100, preferably 200, by the end of Reception. When teaching your child to write these numbers, you may find it helpful to use place value cards, which can easily be found online.

In Reception, your child should also start learning number facts, like odd and even and the bonds to 10. This can be done using Numicon frames. Numicon provides a way for children to visualise numbers, which is great for their early understanding of maths. They’re colourful and many children enjoy just playing with them. For further details on using Numicon at home, read our blogpost on Numicon activities.

By beginning to use mathematical language, you can start to develop your child’s ability to solve word problems. This can be done verbally. For example, you can work with physical objects whilst talking about “adding” objects, “taking away”, “subtracting”, “sharing” and how many “lots” you may have. By encouraging your child to predict whether you’ll have more or less than before, you’ll be building a solid foundation for solving written problems later.

GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

Most private schools want children to be adept at answering general knowledge questions as well as being competent in English and maths. Some schools will test this directly with a multiple-choice test whilst others will incorporate general knowledge questions into the interview process. For example, Exam Papers Plus reports that St. Paul’s Juniors ask question like “what clues in this picture show that these people might be going on holiday?”. Bromley High Junior School has been known to ask more straightforward questions like “would a bird live on land or underwater?”.

To build general knowledge, it’s handy to have a range of colourful puzzle books that you can use to spark discussions with your child. Use this as an opportunity to talk about animals, habitats, different cultures and the environment.

In an interview, it’s possible that your child will be asked about their hobbies outside of school. Exposing your child to a wide range of subjects will therefore not only help them at the interview stage, but it will also give them a wider range of experiences and related vocabulary to draw on when completing creative writing tasks.

Whilst performing arts and sports are, of course, positive endeavours for children, you may wish to encourage your child to take an interest in more unusual activities such as science, computing and history.

Andrea Beaty has created a beautiful range of ambitious project books for young children that are designed to develop an interest in subjects like architecture and engineering. For budding computer coders, try apps like ScratchJr and Daisy the Dinosaur. Make the most of these activities by encouraging your child to discuss their interests and explain what they’ve just done.

Finally, whether or not reasoning will be formally tested in the 7+, you can start working on verbal and non-verbal reasoning at home. Reasoning skills can be tested in maths exams but they’ll also develop another way of thinking that will help your child in all areas of the curriculum. These Bond books – http://amzn.to/2iWfGE9 and http://amzn.to/2AHMhVb – will get you off to a good start.

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