You cannot prepare for the 4+ assessments the day or the week before.

Parents keep contacting me and asking me which activities they should be doing with their children in preparation for the second round assessments this week and next week.

That’s not how it works.

If that was how it works, I would have week long programmes rather than year long programmes.

Parents all over the country right now are frantically trying to find out what has come up in the 4+ assessments and quite frankly, it won’t help them.

Cramming never works.

People can tell you - ‘Reading came up, cvc words came up, writing came up and numbers to 20 came up!’ for example and so what?

What will you do with this information?

Get out some books and read to your child?

Show them some random cvc words and get them to read them?

Get them to write?

Get them to practise numbers 1-20?

Will that really be helpful?

Think carefully about it.

It won’t be. In fact it will probably just irritate your child. I’m here to build a love for learning across this country and not an annoyance towards it.

Learning is slow and steady. Learning is definitely not a sprint.

Especially at this very young age. Learning can also be very mood dependent at the age of 3 and 4. My son might be in the mood to do learning one day and really not on the next day. I never force learning. I let it flow very naturally.

Preparing for the 4+ assessments the day or the week before for top schools will never work. And if it does work for you, you are the exception and not the rule. And to be honest, I wouldn’t brag about it either. And if it does ‘work for you’, it’s because your son or your daughter was already more than ready for their second round 4+ assessment and definitely not because of the last minute learning you did with them.

All the best to all of our amazing clients patiently awaiting their 4+ assessment results. We have a few more next week and then we are done. Now to prepare our new cohort of students, many who started a whole year ago!