–
–
We’ve combed through social media, Amazon reviews and more to find the most highly recommended vocabulary flashcards for the 11+. We’ve combined those opinions, ratings and our vast experience as teachers to give you the low-down on the best vocabulary flashcards for your child.
–
Good flashcards make vocabulary more memorable, which speeds up your child’s learning and makes it more effective. With so much to cover for the 11+, saving time like this can make all the difference.
–
Many people work on vocabulary in order to improve their child’s verbal reasoning scores, however, vocabulary work is also crucial for your child’s comprehension.
By working on vocabulary (the right way), you’ll deepen your child’s understanding of comprehension passages and also boost their enjoyment of reading.
–
When you’re busy, it’s easy to forget to review words written in a word bank or picked up while reading. Flashcards (especially portable ones) make it easy to make a habit of reviewing vocabulary on a regular basis.
–
Well-made flashcards can be fun and exciting for children to use. They break up the monotony of worksheets and practice papers to add some variety to learning.
–
–
–
Each Wordier flashcard comes with a full-colour, relevant image which serves as a memory aid for children. These illustrations make learning much easier, quicker and more fun.
Selected flashcards also include etymology (word origin) information, which also makes words more memorable and helps children to decode new words in future.
The words in our sets have been carefully selected from an extensive range of 11+ materials and past papers. Using our classroom experience, we have also excluded words that students tend to know already. The result of this research is a range of flashcards that are both challenging for students and also relevant to their reading, exams and the world around them.
Wordier flashcards come with an online edition, meaning your child can review their new vocabulary through online games. Online activities are accessible via desktop or mobile, making them perfect to use on the go.
Combining real-life and virtual learning will not only make learning more fun for your child but it will help new vocab to really stick.
Wordier flashcards are hole-punched and come with a metal ring so that you can easily take your cards to go.
Cards include synonyms where appropriate, however, these synonyms are carefully chosen to ensure that they are not confusing for students. We have, therefore, left out words that aren’t a perfect match for the main word on the card.
Wordier cards are unique in featuring word collocations (or pairings). Collocations tell us which words are commonly used together, e.g. it would make sense to say “a splitting headache” but you could never say “a dividing headache”.
Collocations are included in Wordier cards to ensure your child uses their new vocabulary correctly, which is crucial for creative writing and cloze tests.
–
We currently only have two sets of flashcards but children have requested more (see below)! We’re working on our next set currently, though.
The sets we do have are excellent value for money compared to other colour flashcards.
–
Despite their popularity on Amazon, these flashcards have some pretty significant drawbacks, making them fairly unusable. For that reason, I’ve made an exception and started with the weaknesses below.
–
Unfortunately, these cards seem to be littered with quite basic errors. The sentence “The sad dog was full of malady.” is just one example where a word has been used incorrectly. Reviews also mention several other inaccuracies, such as verbs listed as nouns.
Reviews report the cards themselves being poor quality with some words cut off during printing.
This pack provides fewer than 100 cards for £13.99, making them the most expensive cards on this list.
–
–
There are several sets to choose from with different age guidelines, so your little one can start early.
Words are also sign-posted by difficulty. This may be a bit misleading, however, as words generally aren’t “hard” or “easy”, your child either knows them or they don’t.
The CGP flashcards contain small illustrations on some of the cards. On several occasions, the cartoons are only tangentially linked to the word, however, with one parent noting that they’re “not particularly helpful for understanding” and are “more for amusement”.
The cards come with several recommended activities included, providing lots of ideas for helping your child to engage with the cards.
–
CGP packs seem to contain a few filler words that are unlikely to be novel for the vast majority of children, e.g. the 9-11 pack contains the word “confident” whilst the 8-9 pack contains words like “bendy” and “lesson”.
Whilst it’s handy to have synonyms on cards, some of the CGP synonyms can only be used under certain circumstances. This is likely to cause some confusion for your child.
An example of this is that “convinced” is given as a synonym for “confident”. This could lead a child to mistakenly conclude that the sentence “She walked into the room looking confident.” is interchangeable with “She walked into the room looking convinced.”
Unlike most flashcards, these lack a punched hole, meaning they’re difficult to transport and use on the go.
–
–
–
These cards are essentially a verbal reasoning book that has been broken down and printed on flashcards. There’s little to no educational benefit to using this format versus worksheets.
These cards present a rather expensive way of acquiring a limited number of verbal reasoning questions. Unless your child has a real affinity for flashcards, we’d recommend a book instead.
–
–
From the limited preview online, the cards seem to have a good range of words that are appropriate for 11+ preparation – not too easy and not too obscure.
As simple, black-and-white cards, they are more affordable than most, at £9.99 for 200 cards.
– –
There are no bells and whistles with these cards – the cards simply have the words, definitions and synonyms listed with nothing to use as a memory aid. As a result, children are likely to learn much more slowly and also to tire of these cards fairly quickly.
Several of the reviews mention that the listed synonyms and antonyms can be misleading, causing confusion for students. (See our CGP flashcard review for more information on this.)
–
–
These cards come hole-punched and with a metal ring for portability. Ideal for families that want to use the cards on the go.
The words in these sets will certainly be challenging for 11+ students, featuring challenging words like “irksome”, “kindle” and “amble”.
Each flashcard comes with a long list of synonyms to stretch your child. When learning such a long list, be careful to ensure that your child understands each one thoroughly and understands the nuances of their meanings
–
Similarly to the Collins flashcards, these cards are fairly straightforward with very little to keep children’s interest and make words memorable.
Even at the easier levels, Farquhar cards seem to contain quite a few obscure words (like “laconic”, “sagacious” and “conflagration”) that children are unlikely to be able to use or even encounter in their 11+ exams. As a result, your child could spend a lot of time learning with relatively little payoff.
Whilst the cards tout their “child-friendly definitions”, some of them could be too much for the average 9- or 10-year-old, e.g. “competent: having achieved an acceptable standard”. This could leave you in a vicious cycle of searching for words in the dictionary.
–
There’s a vast range of vocabulary flashcards that are fit for purpose but, perhaps, not the most enjoyable resource for your child to use. Where possible, try to find a set that combines fun with effectiveness and don’t be afraid to combine sets where necessary.
For tried-and-tested vocabulary resources, Wordier will always be here to help.
