A Realistic 40-Week 11+ Vocabulary Plan

This plan works whether or not you ever use an app — it’s the underlying method, laid out week by week, for a family starting in Year 4 or early Year 5 with a full school year available. Adapt the pacing to your own calendar; the structure is what matters.

The core numbers

A thousand-word core, learned at six new words a day, five days a week, covers roughly 1,080 words across 36 teaching weeks — leaving room in a 40-week year for four dedicated revision weeks, spaced through the plan rather than bunched at the end. Fifteen minutes a day is enough: a few minutes on the new words, a short quiz covering today’s words plus anything due for review.

Weeks 1–4: building the habit

The first month matters more for establishing the daily rhythm than for the words themselves. Pick a fixed time, keep sessions short, and don’t worry yet about testing retention rigorously — the priority is making the habit feel normal and low-friction before the spacing schedule starts asking more of a child’s memory. Start with concrete, everyday-adjacent themes rather than the most abstract literary vocabulary — early wins build confidence.

Weeks 5–12: the spacing schedule kicks in properly

By week five, review words from the first month start needing re-testing on a schedule — a day after first meeting a word, then two days, four days, a week. This is where the value of daily consistency becomes visible: a child who has kept the habit finds review quick and easy, because the words are still fairly fresh; a child who skipped days finds review sessions harder, because more has been forgotten than the schedule assumed.

Weeks 13–20 (first revision week around week 13): consolidating themes

Around a third of the way through, a dedicated revision week — no new words, just mixed review across everything learned so far — is worth building in deliberately. This is also a natural point to introduce comparative practice: taking near-synonym words learned in different themes and asking which is strongest, the kind of degree-sense practice that’s counterproductive too early (when words are still being learned individually) but valuable once a base is established.

Weeks 21–28: multi-meaning words and format practice

By the midpoint, it’s worth layering in exam-format practice alongside the vocabulary itself — timed sections, mixed question types — so technique and vocabulary develop together rather than technique being bolted on in the final weeks. This is also a good stretch to focus deliberately on multi-meaning words: by now a child has enough vocabulary depth to appreciate that “bank” and “novel” have two faces each, without it feeling overwhelming early on.

Weeks 29–36: closing the core, second revision week around week 30

The final stretch of new words, plus a second dedicated revision week. By this point the earliest-learned words should be at their longest review intervals — a month or more between tests — which frees up session time to focus on words that are still shaky rather than re-testing everything equally.

Weeks 37–40: full mocks and confidence

The final month shifts from new learning to consolidation: regular timed mock-style sessions, review of any word groups still causing trouble, and — deliberately — less new material, so the last weeks before an exam feel calm rather than crammed. Confidence at this stage often matters as much as the last few marginal words learned.

Adjusting the plan

If your timeline is shorter than 40 weeks, the priority order is: keep the daily habit, keep the spacing (even if compressed), and push multi-meaning and comparative work later rather than dropping them — they’re high-value but not urgent in the first few weeks. For families with genuinely limited time, our crash-plan guide covers a specific triage approach for a 10-week runway.