Verbal reasoning

[Reallytired]

Its it worth teaching a child verbal or non verbal reasoning if they are going to go to a state comprehensive and are not sitting any exams for selective schools.

I think that verbal reasoning is a like gymnastics for the brain. How would you go about teaching a child verbal reasoning in a fun way. I used to enjoy it as a child.

I see little point in doing verbal reasoning papers if my son is never going to sit one in anger. However I would like to improve his thinking skills. He is far to young for verbal reasoning at the moment as he is six years old. What age would you introduce a child to verbal reasoning.

My dd (9) loves doing the Bond verbal and nonverbal reasoning tests, even though she prob never need to sit a proper test on them. She thinks their great fun and begs to do more, I haven't had to teach her as such she generally works out how to do them herself.

Reallytired the Bond series mentioned by coastalmum starts at (I think) age 6-7, so if you are keen you could buy one. I don't think you'd need to teach him as such.

As for improving thinking skills generally, what about chess for spatial awareness/forward planning etc ?

I'd not really considered the 'brain stretching' element of VR/NVR before - they've always seemed rather useless exercises to me. Wouldn't logic puzzles & crossword type things be more fun and feel less like work? (One of my dcs loved this sort of thing and one didn't)

I think it depends how you present something. Most things are useless including crosswords. What can make verbal reasoning unpleasent is the fact that its linked with the stressful activity of doing entrance exams for poncy private schools or job selection.

Private schools spend quite a bit of time learning verbal reasoning, even in schools where 99% of the children will attend all the way through to 18.

Not all private schools put much importance on it reallytired. At my dcs school they do 2 practise papers and that's it. I don't think it's it's just the stress of the entrance exams that makes it less appealing than stuff on cat64's excellent list, I think the test books are fairly dull and the questions unexciting and it resembles a school exercise too closely. My dc that likes puzzles didn't really like VR and he likes exams! He'd far prefer to solve a code, even if it's much the same sort of thing. However, if your child does like it(and some do) then fair enough I guess.

My dcs are privately educated and none have been taught or pracised VR at school, though dd and ds1 and ds2 had VR testing as one part of the exams to get into selective schools. The other elements were maths and English. Dd sat 7+ and ds1 and 2 were/are aiming to transfer at 13+; the school they are/will be at had a filtering out test at 10/11+ to see who would be allowed to go through via Common Entrance at 13+. The thing about Vr and NVR is that practising them gives a diminishing return, ie. once they have done 2 or 3 papers they will have pretty much covered all the types of questions. Doing VR/NVR for months on end after that isn't going to turn say a 50% sort of child into an 80 or 90% type of candidate. And I must say I'm not even sure it would teach thinking skills per se any better than a normal puzzle book that's presented in a child friendly way.

What about one of the modern Latin courses aimed at younger children ? Maybe 6 is a bit young but try Minimus in a year or two. Latin grammar is a logical puzzle type body of information. Everything needs to slot together in a particular way if a sentence is to make sense.

Had you thought about Nintendo Brain Training?

Seeker whispers in a very small voice "also had you thought that children do tons and tons of thinking and don't really need to have their thinking skills improved - learning to deal with the world gives thm all the skills they need!"

My Ds did not do any formal VR prior to his entrance exams to selective schools, other that a few Bond exercises, which he found very obvious and easy. However we were told he scored exceptionally highly on the VR tests, (apparently they put a heavy weighting on them to make a more even comparsion, because the state school children will not have learnt the same amount of English/maths etc to be comparable in those exams with prep school children.) He does read voraciously, and so has an extensive vocab.
Not sure why you would bother with VR tests per se unless you intend to enter your Dc for selective schools?