The Trinity-Whitgift-South London school 10+/11+ thread of 2014

[Ladymuck]

A few days early I know, but most of the entrance exams will be out of the way in a fortnight or so, and I'm sure there are a number of us who are in need of or or as we watch our (still very little) boys forget everything that they may have learned over the last couple of years. And there are many veterans of the process who will hopefully be around to reassure us that we will all come through this unscathed.

Having just marked a verbal reasoning paper at 47% and a NVR at about 50% (I've lost the paper temporarily), I honestly don't know if I'm making matters worse with more practice. He used to be comfortably in the seventies for both. All this is doing is making him upset.

For what its worth, I wouldn't bother doing any more on VR / NVR. There is only so much they can learn from practicing these types of papers (designed to be "practice/teaching - proof"). Its not as if this is Tiffin where you need to be in the top 2 % of the cohort and so you need to practice, practice, practice in order to get the speed up to the top-most. T and " just - I assume - want to know the child has a mininum level of intelligence (which you can't practice for anyway). I think 70s or so is fine for that and I'd assume yuor DS would produce that on the day. Try and find something confidence boosting for him to do.

Thanks, username. I think we're going to sit and do one more VR this afternoon with an attempt at clockwatching more carefully because I fear what went wrong is he sat for far too long looking at instructions and deciding that he wouldn't get good marks if he did that section, so going on to the next section, only to decide the same thing: in other words, he waffled around trying to cherry pick strategically, and it went dramatically wrong. We'll do one more where he just goes from top to bottom and hopefully, if he gets a better score, that'll restore his confidence and then we can move on to something a bit less nerve shattering for both of us.

LadyM – In maths, try telling your son that you will get a mark for showing the workings – which will often be the case even if the final answer is wrong but the workings show that he has started off in a sensible direction. Also, in his practice papers take a mark off for not showing workings – continue to drive the message home.

In English essays the length of text written often isn’t as important as the writing techniques that can be ‘crammed in’ just to impress. Have a look at londonmumsmagazine.com/2013/creative-writing-magic-money-cards and www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/500words/2013/?region=uk for some award winning age related essays. In comprehension, remember to identify the techniques used in answers – e.g. “Onomatopoeia is used to great effect when the character squelches and splashes hurriedly through the wet streets as the thunder crackles and clashes overhead”.

Phew, gamble paid off. Sat next to him with a stop watch for a second VR paper. 86%, and a less tearstained little prince .

He won't get that in the exam either, because I was chivvying him all the way through to keep moving on - he wouldn't quite have finished if I hadn't, he'd have dropped about 10% in unfinished questions, I reckon. But if he manages to get 70% or thereabouts, hopefully a good maths paper will compensate for his slowness in VR - he's never going to be the quickest, but he's very capable once he's grasped what he's got to do. And a school that feels that his thought speeds are a problem isn't going to be the right school for him.

Hurray. Well done Master S!

I think that that had best be his last VR paper! Is DC on Monday?

It may not help your ds at all, but for mine I did make a point of showing him the types of questions where you could crack them by technique alone eg codes. He would hate codes with a passion because they can take too much time, but in the end agreed that the were at least guaranteed marks. With over half the questions it really does come down to vocab, and you either know it or you don't, but there are a few which are just purely being rigorous on technique, and it is a mistake to skip or guess them.

maree, don't worry I have been emphasising the need to show workings. I'm just curious as to whether Dulwich do in fact not give full marks if you have the correct answer but have not shown workings. Eh has tended to lose 6 or 7 marks for doing just that, but insticntively Iw ould have assuemd that if the answer is correct he would get 3/3 marks say, whereas their marking scheme seem to indicate that without working he only gets 1/3 marks. Ds is very strong on mental maths, so will usually add 2 three digit numbers in his head, which looks to have cost him marks.

We've had the day off so far as I had tickets for Potted Panto (very good by the way, and certainly appeals to boys of this age!). I thought that it would just be a few hours, but it took forever to find somewhere to eat afterwards, so ds is just off to try the Alleyns sample English paper. He's already complaining that the story titles are really boring (he's in his 10 minutes reading period). Trying to work out whether his follow-up task should be to redraft his story or to write something for the other title! I may be trying my luck though!!

Deadline for co curricular scholarship entries for T tomorrow for anyone who likes leaving things until the last minute... Anyone with a higher candidate number than 320 out there? If not, then those seem like better odds than I was expecting?

Had a meltdown today - 60% on Withington Girls paper (Paper A, i.e. the easier of the two)...1 Ridiculous errors. She whizzed through the first 3 last week, getting 97-98% on each losing only a couple of marks for silly errors. Our first exam is on Saturday and I am stressing out now. May be we should stop practicing... But then I will stress that we are not doing enough.

I have no inside knowledge, but it is absolutely ridiculous to discount marks for doing arithmetic in your head.

It is one thing to insist upon showing workings when you might suspect a candidate guessed an answer. But you don't guess 3 digit additions!

I've been harsh on marking cos I've been trying to drive home the point, and fortunately the nice people at DC give a detailed marking sheet, but from reading the sheet they do differentiate between method marks and answer marks.

Irisha, Ouch! I guess I've always tried the "it is only worth doing the papers to make mistakes as you learn from the mistakes" route, but equally I'd like to finish on a high note. Could you perhaps set her one that she has previously done again, if only to reinforce that she can on fact do it?

Ds has just come and asked what "flaccid" means. Clearly Dh's "talk" didn't cover all of the associated vocabulary. The comprehensions seems to be going disastrously, so we might stick to just talking through some remaining comprehensions.

Ladymuck, been wondering the same about points lost for no working. We have same issue- strong mental maths and no workings shown. The Dulwich paper sat today had some 3 mark questions which he does in his head so would be therefore lose 2 easy marks on a number of questions. He is only sitting Whitgift, they don 't show number of marks worth on their sample paper so may be different? Not sure I can make drastic changes by next week- panic!

Last year I asked a T teacher friend how many boys sat the exam and her answer was "Oh god, loads!" so I don't think I can ask her again this year :)

Hey lady muck

Just checked out exam card for W on Thursday we are candidate 340 and applied literally on the closing day as we only as only saw W on the last open evening ( surname is also A so not done alphabetically ) so does that mean we are looking around 350/400 sitting ?

Thanks Soupy. I suspect across all the different entry groups they certainly will have loads. I think that I was expecting at least 6:1 sitting for 11+, so if it were only 320 then that would be good news.

Teddington, I would assume so. In which case numbers are down on those reported in previous years which seems rather odd. And certainly the odds for a Whitgift interview would be good. I think they have 56 or so boys in current year 6, so would look to take 120 odd at 11+. They'll offer at least double the number of spaces, and interview more again (I'd guess at W interviewing 300 and T 200, but those might be conservative).

I'm going to assume that someone is sitting with cards number 420+ (in which case, please delurk!). But there may be other factors at play too. Historically everyone I knew sat both W & T, whereas I think for example Messers Muck, Steptoe and Teddington are all only sitting for 1 of the 2.

[This could be worse than analysing the size of envelopes!].

We applied 2 days before Trinity's closing day and got a number in the first half of the 160-320 block (ie there might not even be a full 320 registered). MrsSteptoe are you willing to check your T number?

Dd just did a VR paper and ran out of time, missing out on 10 of the 80 marks 68%, which is probably ok along with a decent showing in maths and English, but way off where she needs to be for the reasoning-only exams. Ho hum.

I've just realised this means I have 2 teen boys at home next Friday. Gah!

We are W only: transport reasons. T not near convenient train station.

Lady muck: what marking sheet did you get? All we got was the sample paper on website?

OK, DD just did Reigate Grammar 2011 maths paper and got 96%. Not sure if it makes me feel better - such inconsistency as 60% in the morning and 96% in the afternoon makes me so anxious. I dread grading papers now... What if the blip happens during the exam? I just can't explain such inconsistency -I will probably age 10 years in the next 3-4 weeks!

This was a Dulwich paper. They have the marking scheme on their website eg here

At this point I think you all need to relax and think calming thoughts

Whatever you do over the next few days is going to make zilch difference to how your dc perform in the exams and could actually be counter-productive

We are lucky in that dd's school prepares children extremely thoroughly for 11+ and I think she's probably donee re than enough - they have a mock exam at school tomorrow but that's more to get them in the swing of timings, doing one paper after the other etc. Her exams proper start on Monday so this weekend she will be riding, walking the puppy, reading, chilling and finishing off her Xmas selection box ...

If it makes you feel any better ds1 sat 10+ at T and W, we tried doing a couple of practice papers over the holidays (it was a bit of a last minute decision so no other preparation or tutoring) and the results were so disastrous that we had resigned ourselves to using the exams as a dummy run for the following year. According to Mr B ds scored one of the highest results in the maths paper (we'd abandoned the practice maths paper as it was going that badly!) and got a very nice scholarship at W so all is not lost :)

Haven't touched NVR since summer holidays. We need it it for WHS and Alleyn's but since not sure if we'll sit WHS at all, only Alleyns. So were focusing more on VR since practically all schools we are sitting use that.

Does anybody know how difficult (and important) NVR is for Alleyn's? DD totally gets it, it's more her thing, but that said we haven't done a single full length GL NVR paper yet? Do you think it's worth doing, given that Alleyn's is 1hr for both VR/NVR? Or should we focus just on practicing separate exercises?

Irisha, as Reigate just has the one paper (and use it to assess from scraped through to scholarship) I'd call it a win and relax! If it is really this Saturday then you haven't too much time left to worry.

Soupy, perhaps you could call Mr Timms and suggest that if only 200-odd boys are sitting, then perhaps there's no need to cancel school... [or perhaps not!]