AlanA✶ is a personal coach built to help your daughter enjoy getting ready for the 11+ — and to grow real confidence along the way.

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.

What the percentages mean (and what they don’t)

The percentages you see — on each subject and on the journey map — are a practice-retention measure, not an exam score. Each question sits in one of five spaced-repetition “memory boxes”; the percentage is simply how far, on average, her practised questions have climbed those boxes. 0% is brand-new material; 100% means she has recalled it correctly several times across days.

So the number answers “how well is she remembering what she has practised so far?” — a motivation and progress signal. It is deliberately not a percentage of the whole syllabus, and not a prediction of exam success.

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.

How AlanA✶ builds towards the 11+ (and how “readiness” is measured)

Rather than drilling random questions, AlanA✶ practises against a defined skill map drawn from the upper Key Stage 2 curriculum and the standard 11+ reasoning types. The intention is that progress aggregates — she steadily covers, and masters, the whole range of skills the exam draws on, not just a favourite few.

The skill map she works through:

• Maths: place value & rounding, the four operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, ratio, multi-step word problems, measures, shape / perimeter / area, sequences and early algebra.
• English: reading comprehension & inference, vocabulary (synonyms/antonyms), spelling, grammar and punctuation.
• Word Puzzles (Verbal Reasoning): letter and number series, analogies, codes, odd-one-out and word logic.
• Shape Puzzles (Non-Verbal Reasoning): series, analogies, odd-one-out, rotation and reflection.

What the “Readiness” band means. It combines two things across that whole skill map: coverage (how many target skills she has actually practised) and retention (how well she remembers them). It is weighted towards Maths and English (the core of the consortium test), with reasoning as strong support. Crucially it is capped by the level she is practising at: only work at Grade 6 (challenge / target level) can reach the top “Exam-ready practice” band. So it rewards mastering the right things at the right level, not easy wins.

Two exams, two tracks

The South West Herts consortium (state grammar schools) uses a shared, largely curriculum-based test — Maths and English including comprehension, with reasoning-style content — sat in September of Year 6 (so a September 2027 sitting is for 2028 entry). St Margaret’s School, Bushey is an independent school with its own assessment — typically English and Maths plus an interview — on its own timetable. AlanA✶ builds the shared foundations both rely on; St Margaret’s interview and any writing task are best prepared separately.

Coming next: short, timed mixed “mini-mock” papers in the exam’s style — jumbled topics, a clock, no hints — so readiness can be anchored to performance under exam-like conditions, the closest a home tool can get to the real thing.

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.