Brain-picking - for those who used Atom…

[Didntseethemountain]

I’d be very grateful for a bit of perspective and words of wisdom from those who have used Atom to prepare for the ISEB.

Firstly, was the real ISEB exam easier than the practices and mock tests on Atom - in particular, the comprehensions? DC was set some Atom comprehension homework by school this evening and has cried because it felt so hard. It was Wuthering Heights, which I did for A level English. They needed (very early on - from question 4) to know the meaning of the word “omniscient” and that a metaphor couldn’t be an aural device. These kids are 10. DH and I (in our 40s, with three Oxbridge degrees between us) couldn’t answer some of these questions.

Secondly, is it just me who thinks that the Atom comprehension questions are badly written? If it is just me and the answers are obvious to everyone else, I will sit down and shut up, but I often think there are two perfectly reasonable answer options to some of these comprehension questions. Am I being a bit thick? Does everyone else know the answers? I sometimes don’t know how to help DC because I can’t tell what the “right” answer is either!

DC is pretty bright - CAT score of 140, etc - but these questions seem absolutely insane for 10 year olds.

Anyone? I’d honestly be really grateful. Maybe it’s just me…?

Just me then! I’ll get back in my box…

I've no idea but there's lots of posts about atom on the education board so maybe try posting there.

Ah, thank you! Great username, btw!

We’re late in the game, having only discovered ISEB practice & Atom a couple of weeks ago, so cannot comment on the English comprehension part as I haven’t started that with DC yet.
However, I have done some Maths, VR & NVR with DC, and similarly encountered questions where it wasn’t clear what the right answer might be. Moreover, in terms of difficulty of content, there were questions that went beyond the scope of what DC had done in school (DC is in Year 6). I’ve read that the ISEB is adaptive, so this latter point is understandable given that the test will increase in difficulty the more a child answers questions accurately.
To go back to the earlier point about badly written questions, we’ve encountered some questions in VR & NVR that we thought were ambiguous/unclear. The way that some questions were written, for example, made it perfectly reasonable to choose, say, B as the right answer as opposed to A. And yet B was deemed wrong, and only A was right. When I read the explanations I could see exactly how and why they got to A. And yet I could’ve provided an equally reasonable explanation as to how and why B would’ve also been the right answer.
In cases like these, I tell DC not to feel bad that they got it “wrong” because these are just “trick” questions; to learn the answers and the reasoning behind them; and then apply that reasoning to other questions, whilst being mindful of the fact the limitation in thinking and reasoning are not theirs, but rather the examiner’s who failed to see that there is another perfectly right answer and/or failed to formulate the question more accurately.