11+ Comprehension: How to Find Evidence and Explain Your Answer

Many children can read a story. Fewer can prove they have read it in the way an 11+ mark scheme wants. The difference is not intelligence. It is method. Papers ask two related things, again and again: what does the text say, and what can you reasonably work out? The first is retrieval. The second is inference. Both are stronger when a child can point to evidence — a short quoted phrase — and then explain it in their own words.

Picture a detective who not only names the culprit but holds up the muddy footprint. That is comprehension. 'I think the barge-woman knows Yusuf' is a guess. 'I think they may share a past, because she gives a calm salute "as if they had agreed on something he could not remember"' is an answer. The quote is short. The explanation does a job. Nothing in that sentence shows off. It simply connects clue to idea.

Teach children to label the question in their head. If it says according to the passage, find, what did, or why, according to, it is probably retrieval. The answer is on the page, sometimes wearing slightly different clothes. If it says suggest, imply, you can tell, what impression, or why do you think, it is asking for a step beyond the literal — still tied to a clue, not a daydream.

A useful physical habit is to underline the question's key words, then hunt. Not the whole paragraph: the sentence that actually matches. Children who copy six lines are not safer; they are slower, and they often hide the one phrase that would have scored. Encourage a quotation of two to six words where possible. 'Silver coins' may be enough if you then explain that the moon's reflection has been broken by the barge.

• Read the question twice. Circle whether it wants a fact or a suggestion.
• Skim for names, places, feelings and time words.
• Highlight one short clue — not a whole paragraph.
• Write the answer in your own words, then bolt the clue on with because or which shows.

The weakest explanations repeat the quotation in simpler English and stop. If the text says 'the bunting hung too still', writing 'the bunting was very still' is a translation, not an explanation. An explanation says what that stillness suggests: the air has dropped, people are waiting, a storm may be close. You are showing the examiner you can hear the implication.

A child-friendly pattern is Point, Evidence, Explain — but keep it human. Point: what you think. Evidence: the short quote. Explain: what the quote makes the reader think or feel, or what it shows about a character. You do not need the labels in the answer. You need the thinking. For language questions ('how does the writer…?'), name a technique only if you are sure: a metaphor, a short sentence, a list. If you are not sure of the label, still describe the effect. Examiners would rather have a clear effect than a misused term.

A miniature worked example

Passage: 'The chip shop lights went out one by one, and still the bus did not come.' Question: what atmosphere does this create? A strong answer might be: 'It feels lonely and late, because the lights go "out one by one" as if the street is shutting down, and the word "still" shows the wait has already gone on too long.' Notice there is no waffle about the child's own bus journeys. Personal experience can help you notice, but the marks sit in the passage.

The first trap is answering from general knowledge. If a passage is about canals, do not write everything you know about canals. The second is extreme inference: 'they are definitely spies' when the text only offered a salute. Stay a small step from the clue. The third is skipping the boring sentence. Writers hide keys in plain statements ('He stopped, not because he was lost…'). The fourth is leaving no time to check that the quote actually supports the point you wrote. Mismatched evidence is how good readers still lose marks.

Practise this method on short original passages, not only on full papers. A twelve-minute observatory mission that asks one retrieval and one inference question, with a forced highlight, trains the muscle. Then, on paper day, the child is not inventing a strategy while the clock runs. They already know how to find the footprint and hold it up.

Method without reading stamina is a beautifully labelled empty tank. Children who read stories, football reports, graphic novels and recipes for fun meet more sentence shapes than any workbook can supply. They also meet atmosphere. When a school book is a struggle, keep the pleasure-read sacred and easy. The 11+ does not need to colonise every page in the house.

Comprehension is learnable. It is a set of habits: slow down at the question, hunt, quote short, explain the effect, avoid wild leaps. Teach those habits with kindness and original texts, and children begin to feel like detectives rather than victims of a trick. That feeling, quite as much as any technique name, is what you want them to carry into the exam hall.