Tiffin School's sample English questions include a cloze passage from War and Peace. Very few ten-year-olds have read Tolstoy, and they don't need to. What helps is regular practice with prose like his: long sentences, formal vocabulary and a world far from their own.

So I build reading lists for my students backwards. I start from the kinds of passages that appear in 11+ English papers, then choose books that give children practice with that kind of writing. Below is the list I use for Years 5 and 6, along with the questions I ask when I read with a child.

What Kind of Texts Appear in 11+ English Papers?

Most schools do not publish their past papers, so the best evidence is the sample material they do release. Tiffin School's illustrative English questions are a good example. They use:

  • a cloze passage taken from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
  • comprehension on an extract from Rice without Rain by Minfong Ho
  • the opening of The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
  • a non-fiction extract from Teens by Paul Bühre
  • lines from Emily Dickinson's "Hope is the thing with feathers" and Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage"

None of it was written for primary school children, and between them the extracts cover classic and modern fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Tiffin also says its tests assume children have completed the Year 5 National Curriculum in English.

Other tests are less specific. Kent's guidance says the English section of the Kent Test involves "a comprehension exercise", in multiple-choice format. The pattern I see across the papers I prepare students for is the same, though: an extract from a book the child has probably never read, with vocabulary and sentence structures a step above everyday children's fiction.

So a good 11+ reading list needs four things: older or more formal prose, modern literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Most lists online only cover the first.

The 11 Plus Reading List for Years 5 and 6

If your child is in Year 3 or 4, my 11+ comprehension guide has year-by-year lists for that age. The books below are for the two years before the exam. I have marked the ones I would read together rather than hand over.

Classics with older language

These build stamina with long sentences, unfamiliar words and older ways of speaking. I read most of them aloud with students, at least to begin with.

  • The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (read together)
  • Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (read together)
  • A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (read together)
  • The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
  • Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
  • The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
  • Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
  • Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

Modern literary fiction

This is the kind of writing the Rice without Rain and Lie Tree extracts represent: rich description, characters whose feelings you have to infer and endings that are not spelt out.

  • Skellig by David Almond
  • Holes by Louis Sachar
  • Goodnight Mister Tom by Michelle Magorian
  • Carrie's War by Nina Bawden
  • Kensuke's Kingdom by Michael Morpurgo
  • Journey to the River Sea by Eva Ibbotson
  • The Explorer by Katherine Rundell
  • Street Child by Berlie Doherty
  • Pig-Heart Boy by Malorie Blackman

One note: The Lie Tree itself is written for teenagers. I use its opening chapter as a reading exercise rather than giving a ten-year-old the whole novel.

Myths and legends

Myths come up often in children's reading and in story prompts, and many words in English come from them.

  • The Orchard Book of Greek Myths by Geraldine McCaughrean
  • Norse Myths: Tales of Odin, Thor and Loki by Kevin Crossley-Holland
  • Beowulf retold by Michael Morpurgo

Non-fiction

Non-fiction is the gap I notice most in children's reading. Many strong readers in my groups read almost nothing but stories, then meet a newspaper article or a memoir extract in a paper and slow right down.

  • Boy: Tales of Childhood by Roald Dahl
  • I Am Malala (Young Readers Edition) by Malala Yousafzai with Patricia McCormick
  • Hidden Figures (Young Readers' Edition) by Margot Lee Shetterly
  • Survivors: Extraordinary Tales from the Wild and Beyond by David Long
  • A weekly children's newspaper or news magazine, read over breakfast

Poetry

Poetry is the type of text children are least used to reading slowly. A poem a day takes two minutes.

  • A Poem for Every Day of the Year edited by Allie Esiri
  • "The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes
  • "The Listeners" by Walter de la Mare
  • "Jabberwocky" by Lewis Carroll (good practice for working out meaning from context)
  • "Hope is the thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson

For more classic titles with notes for parents, download my free classic reading resource.

How I Read With a Child for the 11+

A list only helps if the reading is active. When I read with a student, I stop every page or two and ask one question. Each question matches a type of comprehension question they will meet in the exam.

  • Retrieval: "Where does it say how long they had been walking?"
  • Inference: "How do you think she feels here? What tells you that?"
  • Vocabulary in context: "What could 'forlorn' mean? Which words around it help?"
  • Author's choice: "Why do you think the writer used such a short sentence here?"

One question per page is enough. Any more and reading turns into a test, which is the opposite of what we want. I explain each question type in more detail in my comprehension guide.

I also ask students to keep a word book. When they meet a word they like or don't know, it goes in with the sentence it came from. My post on 11+ vocabulary explains how to work with those words, and the free vocabulary tracker gives you a ready-made page for it.

A Worked Example: The Opening of The Secret Garden

Here is how one of these sessions looks with a real text. This is the start of the first chapter of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, first published in 1911:

When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. It was true, too. She had a little thin face and a little thin body, thin light hair and a sour expression. Her hair was yellow, and her face was yellow because she had been born in India and had always been ill in one way or another.

Four sentences are enough for all four question types.

  • Retrieval: "Where was Mary born?" The answer is right there: India. A short, exact answer is all it needs.
  • Inference: "What do the people around Mary think of her? How do you know?" The passage never says it outright, but "everybody said" tells us the opinion is shared. A good answer names the feeling (they find her unpleasant) and points to the words that show it.
  • Vocabulary in context: "What does 'disagreeable-looking' mean?" Most children know "agree" but not "disagreeable". The "sour expression" two sentences later points them towards unpleasant or unfriendly.
  • Author's choice: "Why is 'It was true, too' such a short sentence?" It follows a long one, so it lands with a jolt. The narrator agrees with everyone else, which is an unusual way to introduce the main character.

A good follow-up is to ask why Burnett uses "thin" three times in one sentence. Questions about the effect of a writer's words are worth practising, because Tiffin's second-stage paper asks children to explain a writer's language in their own words.

Those four sentences can fill ten minutes of conversation. Once a child can do this with an adult, the next step is asking themselves the same questions when they read alone.

Let Them Choose Some of the Books

Reading enjoyment among children is low. The National Literacy Trust's 2026 survey of more than 125,000 children and young people found that 36.1% of 8 to 18-year-olds enjoy reading, up from 32.7% in 2025, and only 20.3% read something daily. In the 2025 survey, the things children said would make them read more included books linked to a favourite film or TV series (38.1%), books that matched their interests (37.1%) and being free to choose what they read (26.6%).

So I would not turn every book into an 11+ book. In my experience, the children who read the most are the ones who still have a book of their own choosing on the go, alongside the stretch book they read with an adult. If your child loves graphic novels or a long funny series, keep them. Use the list above for the shared book, and let the bedtime book be theirs.

Reading Time, Audiobooks and Reluctant Readers

How much should my child read?

I suggest 20 to 30 minutes most days, split between the shared book and a book of their own choosing. A little every day does more than one long session at the weekend.

Does my child have to enjoy the classics?

No. The classics are on the list because older language does appear in papers, as the Tiffin cloze passage from War and Peace shows. Reading a few chapters together still builds familiarity with that style. If a book isn't working after a few chapters, swap it for another one from the same section.

Do audiobooks count?

Yes. Listening builds stamina, a sense of story and vocabulary heard in context. I suggest following along in a print copy for some of it, because seeing how words are spelt and punctuated matters in the exam too.

What if my child is a reluctant reader?

Start with what they already enjoy and keep the stretch reading short. Poems and short non-fiction articles help here because they can be finished in a few minutes. Offering a choice between two books from the list usually goes down better than handing one over, which fits the National Literacy Trust findings above.

When should we start?

Any time in Year 5 works for this list. If your child is younger, my comprehension guide has lists for Years 3 and 4.

A Reading Routine for This Term

  1. Look at your target school's sample papers to see what kinds of texts it uses.
  2. Pick one shared book from the list above and read it together, a chapter at a time.
  3. Ask one question per page, rotating through retrieval, inference, vocabulary and author's choice.
  4. Add a non-fiction text and a poem each week.
  5. Keep a word book going alongside.

A reading plan built around your child's level and target school is part of my 11+ English tuition. My other lessons are on my services page.