Year 4

• Year 4 is our prelude to 11+ English; we start our journey towards 11+ exams and ensure students have a solid foundation for key skills in both reading and writing.
• Once you have enrolled, we begin by arranging a meeting with you to understand what schools you are aiming for, so we can provide you with additional advice and guidance.
• Our 11+ curriculum is not pre-written, this means it is personalised based on the students in our class and the schools they are aiming for; each year our curriculum is tailored to our students’ needs.
• Our students in Year 4 enjoy one hour of English a week, and a separate very popular one hour reading club.
• We aim to develop students’ breadth and depth of reading; in the reading club, students choose the literature we read from a pre-selected list we offer; all students are gifted their own copy of the reading book too.
• We teach reading skills such as: inference, interpreting figurative language, language analysis and explaining the writer’s choices.
• We teach writing skills at word, sentence and whole text level- this really helps to strengthen students’ foundations in writing.
• Students are taught how to write appropriately for different purposes e.g.: recount, descriptive, narrative, persuasive etc.
• Students become confident making independent choices with their language and understanding their craft as a writer- selecting words and devices with precision, and considering the impact of their choices for creative expression.
• Our approach to teaching 11+ English is very much skills based.
• Many of our 11+ students successfully get into schools of their choice- many succeed in all their exams and have the difficult decision of then having to choose which school to accept, and which to decline!
• For many students, this is just the beginning of their study of English with us, many stay with us through their secondary education and this becomes an 8-year journey, taking our students up to their GCSE years.

Examples of schools our students have previously gained a place in: Haberdashers, North London Collegiate School, City of London Girls, Henrietta Barnet, Latymer School, The Tiffin Girls’ School, QE Boys’ School and Nonsuch High School for Girls- these are just a few!