Twenty-seven combinations, one mark: complete the sentence
The Short Answer
This question gives three groups of three words and asks your child to pick one from each so the sentence makes sense. Three groups of three makes twenty-seven possible sentences and exactly one works. All three choices must be right to score, so the order of working matters: start with the middle group, because the verb decides what can perform the action and what it can be performed on.
What is a complete the sentence question?
Your child is given a sentence with three gaps, and three choices for each gap. They pick one word from each group so that the sentence makes sense.
Three groups of three means twenty-seven possible sentences. Exactly one of them works, and all three choices have to be right to score. Two out of three earns nothing.
That last point is worth saying to a child directly. It changes how carefully they check, and it explains why this is not a question to rush.
The verb decides everything else
Start with the middle group, every time.
A verb answers two questions at once. What kind of thing could perform this action? — which rules words out of the first group. What kind of thing could this action be performed on? — which rules words out of the last.
A verb that survives both tests is almost always the answer, and your child will usually know within fifteen seconds. Starting with the subject tells you far less, because most subjects can plausibly do most things until a verb narrows them.
How do you teach the method?
Take the three verbs in turn. For each, ask what could do it and what it could be done to.
Discard any verb that has no possible subject or no possible object among the words given.
Fit the surviving verb to its subject and object.
Read the whole sentence back. Grammatical is not the same as sensible, and this is where the difference shows.
Can you show me a worked example?
Where do pupils lose marks?
Starting with the subject. It narrows nothing and wastes the first fifteen seconds.
Accepting a grammatical sentence. The telescope magnified the crumbs is perfectly formed English and describes nothing. Only reading it back as a whole catches it.
Getting two right. Which scores the same as getting none right, and is far more frustrating.
Try it yourself
Choose one word from each group so the sentence makes sense. Start with the middle group and read your answer back in full.
- The (chef, curtain, pebble) (seasoned, faded, sank) the (soup, sunlight, pond).
- The (author, kettle, mountain) (wrote, boiled, erupted) the (novel, water, ash).
- The (gardener, telescope, biscuit) (planted, magnified, crumbled) the (bulbs, stars, crumbs).
- The (blacksmith, envelope, river) (hammered, sealed, flooded) the (horseshoe, letter, fields).
- The chef seasoned the soup. Take the verbs in turn: only a person can season something, and only soup among the three objects can be seasoned. A curtain can fade but it cannot fade sunlight, and a pebble can sink but it cannot sink a pond — both of those verbs need an object they cannot have here.
- The author wrote the novel. A kettle boils water, but it is the water that boils; and a mountain erupting does not erupt ash in the way this sentence needs. Reading each candidate back in full is what exposes those.
- The gardener planted the bulbs. A telescope magnifies stars, which is nearly right and is the trap — but check the other two groups: if telescope and magnified are used, only crumbs and bulbs remain, and a telescope magnifies neither.
- The blacksmith hammered the horseshoe. An envelope does not seal a letter — a person seals it — and a river floods fields without the sentence needing the other two groups.
How much practice does this type need at home?
Two short sessions a week, and the useful exercise is spoken rather than written. Give your child three verbs and ask, for each one, who could do it and what it could be done to. No sentence, no answer to find.
That drill is the whole question type in miniature, and children who can do it fluently stop finding these hard almost immediately — because the twenty-seven combinations were never the problem. Choosing which three to test was.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why start with the middle group?
Because the verb answers two questions at once. What kind of thing could perform this action? That rules words out of the first group. What kind of thing could this action be performed on? That rules words out of the last. A verb that survives both tests is nearly always the answer, and usually you know within about fifteen seconds. Starting with the subject instead tells you almost nothing, because most subjects can do most things.
Does my child get anything for two out of three?
No. All three have to be right, which is why the order you work in matters so much — it is not a question that can be half-answered. That is worth saying plainly to a child, because it changes how carefully they check.
What if two combinations both seem to work?
Read both back in full, as complete sentences, and one will usually turn out to be grammatical rather than sensible. A telescope magnified the crumbs is a proper English sentence and describes nothing anyone would say. The test is not whether the words fit together but whether the sentence means something.
How is this different from a cloze or missing word question?
A cloze question gives you a gap in a passage and asks for a word that fits the sense of the whole thing. This type gives you a fixed structure and three explicit choices at each point, so it is closer to elimination than to composition. The skill is testing candidates systematically rather than thinking of the right word.
Sources
- GL Assessment — 11+ familiarisation materials and question type descriptions Published 2025.
- Clever Clogs Academy — our own Year 4 and Year 5 lesson records, Winslow Published September 2025 to July 2026.
We are not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to GL Assessment or Buckinghamshire Council. Test arrangements change; always check the council's own pages for the current year's dates.
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