Practising 11+ or SATS test papers with your children at home

[tigermoth]

Anyone else out there doing this over the summer holidays? I'm trying to do half and hour or so with my son most days. Not too much, just something to keep him ticking over, I hope. Little and often as opposed to a sudden panic a week before the 11+. I am trying to reduce the pressure as much as possible. No other homework, reading or music practice demands are made of him and he chooses the topics and the time.

I praise lavishly when he gets questions right, and we go through the wrong answers together. I try to teach him, but he seems to hate me taking on the teacher role and often refuses to listen to me till I threaten to ban things. I have no idea if anything I am saying to him sinks in. Sometimes he whizzes eagerly through his chosen questions, other times he looks at them for a millisecond and says he can't do them, his brain hurts, when I know he hasn't given them any thought whatsoever. He wants me to sit with him for the whole time he is doing the questions. I do this but I know I won't be there to hold his hand in the exam.

My dh also sits with him sometimes. My son seems to cope better with dh teaching him, but my dh can't do this every evening.

I worry that my son will not work independently when it comes to the exams, will look at questions and instantly reject them before thinking them through. I can see he is improving (I am too) with practice but it's a struggle. And he does got some proper tutoring in a group each week, and seems to be ok with this.

The questions we are working on - NFer Neilson ones - are really not easy. I can well understand my son feeling daunted by some of them. I do too. Even if he doesn't have to get all questions correct in order to pass the exam, the sheer fact that on the day of the test he will face questions he can't do is bound to dent his confidence.

Sorry I am rambling. I just wonedered if anyone else is going through this. And what about those with older children now at secondary school. Do you think the practising at home helped? Did your children act like this? Any tips to pass on?

oh well, I am a bit clearer about the scoring system. tbh, I think I now know as much as I am ever going to know :) I guess we will just have to see what happens. We won't hear the results till march 2005. When we list our choice of schools on the application form this October, we will not know if ds has passed or failed the grammar test, so putting a grammar school as first choice will be a leap of faith.

Oh, tigermoth, I would hate that! Our grammar school used to be opted out (GM, remember that?) so it didn't get included on the LEA form, and when it opted back in I was very worried that we would be put in that position too, but our LEA very kindly still allows us to put down our choices without including it which means one less thing to worry about.

Loads of luck to you all for the coming year!

janh, I think luck is what we will need. Apparently around about march 3rd everyone in each london borough will hear what school their child has been allocated and hear if they have passed the 11+ or not. Hmmmm ... it's the first year of this new system. Our head teacher implied all may not run smoothly. We shall see. Stressful times ahead, no doubt. In a few weeks time we will be visiting schools in the evening to decide which ones to put on our list of six. Oh joy!

can anyone help please i would like to help my son to get ready for his 11+ but havent got a clue of how to prepare him. has anyone got any ideas of what i need to do?

NFER Nelson practice papers are meant to be on parr with the 11+ tests and you can buy them from W H Smiths. Check what sort of tests your LEA conduct ( multiple choice etc) before you buy any. Look into tutoring too - my son preferred having an outsider to me teaching him.

But right now I feel very unqualified to answer your question!! my son has just sat a familiarisiation test and was very slow in answering the questions so didn't get round to about a third of them and many of the other children there apparently did complete the questions. They had to do each page in 4 minutes. I think in the real test next week they have a set time to do the whole test, so that might make some difference. I thought he would be ok as he had an assessment in the summer and got enough marks to pass. Now he is feeling very unconfident he will manage to do this. Bugger!

Sorry to hear that TM. Do you think he was particularly tired or under the weather that day? I hope you find a way of boosting his confidence.

Roisin

well he is recovering from severe tonsillitis ( been off school since Monday) but the effects of the medication had kicked in by the time he took the test, so I don't think I can assume this made a huge difference. I know he can be slow to fininsh work in school, despite being in the top groups. The tutor centre have not highlighted any big problems with slowness in tests, so I was hoping he was ok. I am going to phone them today. As the tests only require a tick in a box, he does not have to write much. I know he finds a proportion of the questions hard, but I thought he had a chance of passing them. I so wish now that I hadn't taken him to visit the grammar school nearby. He really liked the place and recognised lots of year 7s from him primary school. Ok we have seen some good comp schools but this school was his favourite. Still, the last thing I want is for him to be in a high pressure school environment and not be able to cope. Feeling really unhappy though.

Good luck to those doing their 11+!

My son is doing his Common Entrance later in the year, so there is probably a lot of stress on the horizon for us.

Tigermoth, is your ds actual test next week?
Good Luck! I 've been thr this myself last year, the waiting is the worst....We had a two week wait for the results, and I swear to god I was a quivering nervous wreck that morning the results were due. The bloody post didn't turn up till midday By which point I had sprayed nearly a full bottle of rescue remedy down my throat.
Hope you get the news you have hoping for! I'll keep my fingers crossed for you.

oooh, good luck for DS from me too, tigermoth! It was our grammar school's open evening yesterday, hordes of parents and children streaming up the road, some of them looking quite tight-lipped and anxious...

I hope he will be 100% fit on the day and show what he can do.

Yes, hear hear Tigermoth. Thinking of him and all the other little candidates round the country!

chalize, we have to wait till march of next year to hear the results of the 11+ tests!!!
In one way I am glad we have such a long wait, as by that time the 11+ test will hopefully seem a distant memory and if my son doesn't pass, it will be easier to take the news as life will have moved on. MInd you, when the post is due around that time my heart will be thumping like mad!

As I said earlier down the thread to Janh, it is horrible having to visit grammar schools without knowing if my son has passed the entrance test. All the open days are in sept/oct, and Janh you're right about the hoards of tight lipped parents descending on these places. I just didn't think of the implications of taking my son along and wish I hadn't dangled that carrot above his head as it were, though most parents had children with them so I was not alone in this. Last year parents knew if their child had passed the 11+ before the schools organised their open days, so that was fairer on the children and parents. At least you knew if you ddin't get a place it wasn't because you had failed the test.

We have seen some good comp schools, so all is not lost and we are set to see a couple more that sound promising. I will take my son along and really get enthusiastic about them to try and make him just as happy with an alternative to the grammar.

I phoned up his tuition centre yesterday and talked this through with them. They said my son did pass the 11+ in their verbal and non verbal mock tests in August (and these were timed, so he wasn't disasterously slow). They said he is in with a chance, just like hundreds of others taking the test.

Thanks for your messages of good luck.

DS1 sat his mock 11+ last week and we received the result shortly afterwards. He got above the pass mark in all 3 papers (in Kent they do verbal reasoning, non-verbal reasoning and maths; the children are required to compose some English prose, but that is only taken into consideration in the event of an appeal). I was really surprised that his poorest mark was in Maths, which is by far his strongest subject, but maybe that was an indication of the difficulty of the paper. I know several other children who were expected to sail through failed on their maths result.

Anyway, the important thing is that the school has indicated that, should he fail the 11+ proper, they would support an appeal. The school also stated at a recent meeting that their prediction rates were 100%, i.e. if they predicted that a child is grammar school material, they have always passed the exam and got into their chosen school, and if they predicted that a child is high school material and the parents nevertheless put them in for the exam, they have always failed. So I am comforted by the fact that the school feels he is grammar school material.

In this area it is doubly important that a child is not borderline. The local good high schools operate a system (banned by the government, but I'd like to see them stop them doing it), whereby, if a child sits the 11+, the high schools won't consider them as a candidate. As you have to list your 3 schools of choice and all schools get to see your list and the priority given to each school, it will be obvious to any school if a child has sat the 11+ because there will be grammar schools on that list.

So the danger is that you put your child in for the 11+ and they fail. You are then excluded from all good local high schools and end up being offered a place at a sink school on the other side of town . This is why it is so important to have the backing of the primary school in the event of any appeal.

Horrible times.

Is this new this year then? Our local paper had a piece in this week saying that there would be a presentation at the open evening about some change or other in the entry procedure...

Mind you what our grammar school really wants is open entry, atm of 120 places 100 are for children resident in the borough (it is a big borough geographically mind you) and 20 are for those from outside. Maybe it was that.

FWIW I got the NFER practice tests, ds did ok in the first, I then spent time explaining the wrong answers, identifying his weak area and teaching him how to examinie an exam paper so he answered all the ones he found easy first, leaving him time to focus on harder ones later, this has worked well.
Do his school do a pratice? My ds has had his two and flew them, his mate next door a yr7 says the actual test is easier than the practices, but not sure I'll truly believe that. At th end of the day is they need that much work to get through a paper, unless the second choice school is really bad then it isn't bext to get them into a grammar school unless they are really able to handle the harder achievement standards. sorry if that soudns patronising, it is simply what I have been told in the playground.
I am playing it down now and have offered ds a trip to Alton Towers if he gets over 95%, £20 if he gets over his practive score high of 88%. It feels a bit wrong to be doing this with 10yr olds I think...our school selection here is awful you have to choose your school well before you get the results...
our school asks only for verbal reasoning, nothing else... amazing how it varies from area to area...
aaarghhh good luck everyone we sits ours on oct 8th the first paper, the next is in Nov...
xxx

funnily enough I too have heard from several year 7s that the real tests are a bit easier than the practice papers, but I am not going to believe this either. I suspect it could be the effects of a surge of adreneline on the day of the test, making some children work quicker.

Catan, we are in the same position as you - some good comps in our neighbouring borough, but if we don't put them as first choice on our list, much less chance of ds getting in.

The system has changed in all london LEAS this year. You put a choice of six schools - grammar, comp, church school, whatever, in any borough you are applying for. So you have to lay all your cards on the table. The LEA then see what schools on your list have a place for your child. But they hold on to this information. Say your child was offered places by three schools. The LEA will only tell you about the place offer from the school that appears the highest on your list. Everyone gets informed at the same time - in March. If your child has entered the 11+ you will get the results then as well.

The system is meant to stop the situation occuring where some children have several offers while others have none to begin with and have to go on waiting lists. There will now be much less movement if your child is on a waiting list for a school.

It all sounds fine in theory, but don't know how it will work in practice when March comes along.

Some parents have done that here, put the high school as first choice, put their child in for the 11+ planning on appealing for a place at the grammar if they pass. However, as many of the grammar schools in this area are now heavily over-subscribed, it is a risky strategy.

i am sure if we put a comp first we will have no chance of appealing for a grammar school place if my son passes the 11+. The grammar schools are so oversubscribed. I will see how my son feels about the tests then make a final decision. He takes the last of the four tests around October 9th. The secondary school application form has to be given to the LEA by the 20th October, so we have a week to decide. My son has just done a timed maths test with me to practice his exam timimg. Maths is his worst subject. He managed to complete all the multiple choice questions in the set time. Didn't get a massively high mark but at least he has got his head round the idea of answering every question.

Applications here have to be in by 22nd October and the 11+ exams are in January. So helpful.

goodness freckle, I thought I had it tough, but your situation is even worse!