AlanA✶ is a personal coach built to help your daughter enjoy getting ready for the 11+ — and to grow real confidence along the way.
🎯 The goal: to be ready for the South West Herts (Watford) consortium 11+, sat in September 2027. Everything here works backwards from that date, spread calmly across the year rather than crammed at the end.
Why these four subjects
The consortium exam tests four kinds of thinking, so AlanA✶ practises all four, a little and often:
- Maths — quick, accurate number work. We begin with times tables, the foundation almost everything else is built on.
- Words — vocabulary, spelling and grammar: the building blocks of the English paper.
- Word Puzzles (verbal reasoning) — patterns in letters, words and codes. It is barely taught in school, yet it is very learnable with the right practice.
- Shape Puzzles (non-verbal reasoning) — patterns in shapes and pictures, testing reasoning without leaning on reading.
How it teaches
The method is built on well-established learning science, not guesswork:
- Practise by remembering, not re-reading. She answers questions rather than watching explanations — actively recalling is one of the most powerful ways to learn.
- Spaced repetition. Each question returns on a schedule: easy ones less often, tricky ones more often, so effort goes where it is needed.
- One thing at a time. Every screen shows a single question with no clutter, which protects focus and working memory.
- Immediate, kind feedback. Right answers are celebrated at once; mistakes get a gentle hint and the method — never a scary red cross.
- Short bursts with movement breaks. Sessions are minutes, not hours, with a wiggle break built in.
- The right level of challenge. Difficulty adjusts to keep her succeeding about 80% of the time: stretched, but rarely defeated.
- Rewards for effort, not just answers. Points, streaks and growing stars reward showing up and trying, which protects her love of learning.
Designed for how she learns
AlanA✶ is made with ADHD in mind: a calm, single-task layout beneath the bright colours, sensory controls she can set herself (movement, sound, calm mode, text size), and a tone that builds confidence instead of pressure. The My journey map turns progress into milestones to celebrate, so she can see she is winning.
Grounded in evidence
The design follows peer-reviewed research on how children — including neurodiverse children — learn best, and on accessible, focus-friendly design. So if it works well for her, the same approach can help other children too.