The Swot Shop’s Selective Preparation Program is known for its meticulous design aimed at high academic achievers. It is tailored to the rigorous demands of selective high school entry examinations.
The program provides the optimal preparation over four terms. Students start in Term 2, 2025 and finish after Term 1, 2026 just in time for the Selective Exam.
Program Highlights
- Focused Curriculum: Concentrating on critical exam areas – Reading, Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skills, and Writing – our curriculum is aligned with the latest exam formats and requirements.
- Up-to-Date Learning Materials: We stay ahead of the curve by instantly updating our materials to reflect the latest sample papers and exam styles, ensuring our students are well-prepared for any challenge.
- Expert Exam Techniques: Our lessons place a significant emphasis on developing exam techniques, enhancing speed, accuracy, and concentration, as well as familiarity with multiple-choice formats.
- Comprehensive Practice: We provide extensive practice with typical exam questions, reinforcing the skills and knowledge required for success.
What to expect from our Selective Program
Frequent test practice will occur, including in an online format to reflect the new format of the actual Selective Test. Parents will be provided with weekly feedback as to children’s scores. The rank and the highest scores, lowest scores and average scores of the group are reported. Students receive most test answer sheets and questions for review.
Our Selective Exam Preparation Program is structured to address the four key components covering all relevant aspects of:
- Reading: The course covers many types of texts and activities: Poems, magazine articles, reports, fiction and non-fiction texts, cloze passage, main idea paragraphs, word meanings, drawing conclusions, making inferences.
- Mathematical reasoning: Questions require knowledge of the NSW K-10 Syllabus (Stage 1, Stage 2 and the first half of Stage 3). All questions involve reasoning and problem-solving skills.
- Thinking skills: Understanding and identifying patterns, verbal reasoning, argument analysis, logic and drawing consequences from data etc.
- Writing: Writing skills teaches effective vocabulary to use in a variety of written genres. Impressive sentence creation and variation are then developed, followed by paragraph construction and finally whole written pieces.
Students experience extensive testing during the lessons. Parents receive emailed results indicating score and rank in reading, mathematical reasoning, thinking skills and writing and an overall ranking. This ranking often indicates to parents that the student has maintained progress, improved or requires improvement.
In Lessons 10, 20 and 30 students sit a regrade test and a trial at the end of the course.
Entry Requirements
Entry to the Selective Exam Preparation Program at The Swot Shop is via an entry test. This is to ensure the students who participate will benefit and are suited to the challenging nature of the course.
Our selective entry test has four elements: Reading, mathematical reasoning, thinking skills and a writing skills task. As in the selective examination, reading and mathematical reasoning have equal weighting (25%). Thinking skills has a greater weighting (35%). Writing carries a weighting of 15%.
This program is for dedicated and academically robust students committed to refining their exam techniques to perfection. Only students in Year 5 at the time of testing are eligible for the program, as it assumes students have mastered the school curriculum up until that time.
Upcoming entry testing for the program takes place in April so make sure you register now to secure your place.
