Another Verbal Reasoning Post

Creative Resources for primary children| 11+

June 26, 2024•2 min read

Each person takes half of the letters each. You must then use all of your letters to create words.

Scrabble letters - extending your child's vocabulary

There’s a section of the 11+ within the verbal reasoning questions that states:

In this question, one letter can be moved from the first word to the second word to make two new words. The letters must not otherwise be rearranged and both new words must make sense. Find the letter that moves and mark it on the answer sheet.

The answer is u: when removed from the word ‘pound’, we get a new word ‘pond’ and when added to the word ‘or’ we get a new word ‘our’. The letters have not otherwise been rearranged and both new words make sense.

A task like this is best achieved with a confidence in spelling and vocabulary.

Both come naturally to some people, for others it will be far more challenging.

However, I would suggest that obviously reading is always advantageous to most things in life, introducing new words, demonstrating grammar, spelling, punctuation. However, I think I’ve mentioned the game we’ve played before with the scrabble letters?

Each person takes half of the letters each. You must then use all of your letters to create words.

They need to be a minimum of 3 letters and no names or abbreviations, unless it has a name with a meaning such as dawn or angel, but Jamie or Clara wouldn’t be allowed.

This starts of fairly easily and initially you will probably wonder what the challenge is, however as you get to the end and you are left with an excessive amount of ‘e’s or ‘p’s or ‘q’s or something, you will start to turn grey and pull your hair out…

If you want to take it up another level, what you could do, is once you have used all of your letters to complete your words, try taking a letter from a word to leave a word, but then add it to another to create a new word as these questions suggest.

You mustn’t rearrange any of the other letters they need to stay in their original order.

There may be times when it’s not possible, but have a go, see what you can manage. You may need to work as a team on this final part.

Good luck and if the next time I see you your hair is thinner and greyer, I’ll be able to guess why 😉

verbal reasoning 11+extending vocabulary primary education creative learning

Dawn Strachan

For the past 20+ years I have been a firm believer that learning should be an enjoyable experience. I appreciate that traditionally education has revolved around worksheets, textbooks, listening to teachers. But a grounding in early years and working with children who had a variety of learning styles from I learned that it is an individual activity that is personal to all of us. We don’t all learn in the same way. Our influences, our experiences, our capabilities all influence how we retain information. But through it all, I believe that if we can make it enjoyable and engaging, they will want to participate. With participation comes practice which in turn boosts skill and confidence. With an increase in skill and confidence comes a willingness to have a go. This in turn leads to more practice which leads to a positive spiral of success. The moral, we need to make learning fun, engaging, use a range of techniques.

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