Non Verbal Reasoning difficulties

[river1]

DD has just started trying some practise examples (about to go into yr 6). To date her indie school has done NFER English and Maths and Verbal reasoning and she scores around 115-123 for maths and 125-132 for English and verbal reasoning. Unfortunately next yr the senior school entrance exam covers non verbal instead of verbal reasoning. I bought a CGP NVR practise book and she is finding some elements of it pretty hard and very frustrating. I know that verbal rather than non verbal reasoning is her strength but even so I am surprised that it seems this difficult and she is really getting resistant to doing any of it. Any explanation as to why she is finding it such a struggle? Are the Bond ones any easier?!! thanks alot

These things are not intuitive for all kids.

You can bring up her scores considerably by showing her the logic behind the questions.

I think Bond has a book about how to do Non Verbal, it classify the different type of non verbal. This may help.

Thank you both. Yes the book we have goes through the different types/methods, though may try the bond book as well. Just surprised she finds it so hard given that she's generally pretty strong on the academic side. Such a pity they can't just stick with the verbal reasoning!

The cgp book is really really really hard, we use the 11+ one for kids doing 12+ or 13+ NVR. I recommend getting another book, e.g. A bond one.

How much vr practice did they do at school before she got that score? I'm wondering if perhaps it's just a case of her having needed the support prior to scoring higher on the vr, in which case if the nvr is new to her it's just a case of her needing a bit more time to 'get' it. Unless it's changed in a year, then the bond papers/ books are apparently the easiest, so I'd definitely try those as a starting point.

Thanks both - will get the bond ones and give them a try! No specific practise for VR previously but it's her strength. NVR clearly going to take practise - cheered to hear that the CGp ones possibly a bit tricky!

If she's in a through school then surely the school will be doing the necessary prep? We started with bind, then moved to Athay and finished with GL which are really hard. Think our prep uses NFER too

Thanks suit28845321 - yes I assume they will next term but that doesn't leave much time as exam January. We are not sure she will be able to go to the senior school anyway as £ too tight but we were at least banking on a scholarship (she has one at the moment based on English, maths and VR) but now that we know it's NVR instead of VR I think those plans are scuppered! So it's not a worry about not getting in, but that her NVR is going to bring her overall result down massively.
Looked at some GL ones today - no easier :-(

The idea of not being able to do NVR is, to some extent, a self fulfilling prophecy. I think you need to break the cycle of not wanting to do the tests, doing badly in a test, thinking they cannot do it, not wanting to do another test. If you can get your dd to associate the tests with fun rather than failure she will probably start doing better.
Ideas for this: Try looking at a test together question by question and the one who gets it right first wins a point. (She needs to win more points, but not all of them)
Let her know you are not expecting her to do well, because she has only just started.
If you give her a new book, let her do a test untimed and just for fun. Even if she only gets a few right tell her she has done better than you expected because it is a more difficult book.
Do a timed test with her and see who does best.
For the cube ones actually cut out a cube net and get her to put the same coloured dots on the corners which meet. Turn it into art by putting her own patterns on the faces.
If she has only just started doing these tests there is no reason she should be good at them. My own dd was much better at them after practice; everyone is. Lots of praise, the idea that they are something that can be learnt and not a judgement of her intelligence, and associating them with being fun puzzles will go a long way. Most importantly do not let her pick up on your worry that she cannot do NVR.

Thank you JustRichmal😊

When my DC started this, I sat with them and we did them together. Tutors advice was to look for 2 things only - so maybe size, shape, direction etc, so do they all rotate in a clockwise direction, do they all have an even number of spots say. If you have 4 or 5 choices of answer, looking for 2 things will usually narrow down the answer to a choice of 2 possibilities.

Once we'd got that far, it was usually easier to see which one of the two possibilities was correct.