Non verbal reasoning tests for entrance exams - help!!

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I recently tried to go through some non- verbal reasoning tests suitable for 11+ to try to help my son with an entrance exam (non fee paying school - another story). We started off well but after around the first 7 questions it became impossible - we just cannot work out how thoses stupid shapes in a grid form a pattern, it is just nonsense. How the hell do 11 year olds pass this exam? My son's school tell me he is academically gifted and he sailed through the verbal reasoning and English in no time scoring around 90%. We are both good with words. I haven't tried the maths paper yet.
Any hints? Does this non verbal reasoning follow any kind of cognitive logic, or should one just pick one of the multiple choice answers and hope for the best?
I am not stupid, I have Msc and an academic career. PLease help.

do you have the answers to the questions so you can work them out? My DS did verbal and non-verbal this year and i found the Bond practice papers from WHSmiths really useful (they do a parents' guide explaining techniques etc.)
If it's any help DS was hopeless at these to begin with even though he's generally pretty bright, but after 2-3 weeks' practice he was good enough to get through the entrance exams to selective schools, so it is do-able.

The elevenplusexams website has a section on NVR which will help you with this.

Some people just "get" NVR, some don't, fwiw very visual people tend to just breeze through but those with difficulties around "spatial" sorts of things find it v. hard.

One approach is the "layering"technique. Try and think of the basic image shape, and a number of processes that have been applied to it. These are then varied, with a degree of logic, throughout the sequence. You can go through each one, layer/process by layer/process; laborious at first but dc will speed up.

I'm not explaining well but the website has a v. good explanation.

From my own experiences as a child, being very bright and good at VR doesn't always mean that NVR comes easily. As others have said you can get Bond guides that explain how each "type" of question works which may help. My weirdy 8 year old does NVR for fun, one of those "is she really mine?" moments.

Non verbal reasoning IS stoopid, if you ask me.
Many a times, there is more than one correct answer!
For e.g, I went wrong a couple of times just coz the answer follows different logic than I do. Not that mine is flawed, but who can argue?

A common example is wen a diagram is rotated. The problem image may satisfy both 180 and water image. Then how do we find exactly which logic to apply to the answer?!

This is just a sample, there are a LOT of ambiguities to the answers, and most of the q's should be left to luck.

What you need to do is to have your child do these papers 18 hours a day as parents submit their children to in order to get into Grammar Schools. If you do this your child will get in but be advised it will lobotomise them in the process killing all the creative and enquring parts of the brain.

Who has heard recently any positive reference to GS as being sites of naturally intelligent children, as opposed to the heavily coached/tutored?

(Erm zanzibarmum, my DCs all are or were at GS.
None were tutored or heavily coached.....). The GS they attend doesn't 'lobotomise them'. Sorry to disappoint.)

They shouldn't need to be tutored or coached. If they can't do the tests it is the wrong school for them.

I always think comments like Zanzibar's are the equivilent of tapping someone on the shoulder at a bus stop and saying 'Excuse me, but I don't like your shoes.'

The OP wasn't asking for opinions, she was asking for advice. As my lovely Mum would say, if you aint got anything nice to say, don't say it.

I would get the Bond guides as others have said. How to do non verbal reasoning is a good one.

Chuckra are another good website for 11+ exams. They give advise on working out questions - you pay about £15 to join for 1 year, but the info was a great help to us when my ds2 was prepping for his 11+. Bond assessment available WH Smith were brill.

Oh, blimey, just noticed a few 'anti-tutor' / 'coaching' comments .... you get them everywhere, those little green eyed monsters

Yes, practising a few to get the hang of the test is not the same as being 'heavily coached'. There are books in WHSmith you can buy. Those 11+ sites can be a bit scary with very pushy parents. I am sure you can just do it yourself.

Ouch!
I did give advice.

The evidence suggests that practice on NVR tests can significantly improve perdformance - by as much as 30 per cent from recollection. That's partly why the tutoring industry for GS entry has sprung up. But practice on these papers may drive your child to distraction and may turn them off learning if they come to see education (Latin to draw out) as a routine business.

At Parent's evening recently I asked DSs form teacher what he thought about practising VR and Non VR tests.

He said that the school could tell which children had been heavily coached, and that in his opinion the best thing to do was to make sure DS was fairly up to speed with current affairs (assuming that the school interviews the child as well as testing them).

Having said that, I think it's a good idea to at least have tried out a few of the tests, so he is not going in blind!

I wish your DS the best of luck!

I work at a GS - 70-80% of our intake are heavily tutored to pass the silly tests or go to prep school with that end in mind.

My God - that 11plus forum is scareeeeeee

We bought a book like this which gave handy pointers to look at in every question. Before that, I couldn't work out the answers to some even with the answers in front of me!

stillenacht, do you find that the children who have been heavily coached are at a disadvantage once they get there? That's what we've been told.

I would second the Bond NVR books - sometimes it's a bit like doing crosswords - you need to do a run of them e.g. one a day for a week or two to get your mind locked in (IYSWIM). I love doing them and ds1 got an age-apt one for his Christmas and he loves doing them too . Maybe we have weirdy puzzle oriented brains and he'll be a code breaker when he grows up.

Non Verbal Reasoning is precisely that, with english and maths you are able to verbalise the answer. However, you are still able to verbalise the NVR to begin with. There are five basic things to look for in NVR tests. Size, Orientation, colour, shape and position. I suppose the initial stage of NVR is the find the difference pictures. Where you have two identical pictures that have been changed. You know the ones I mean. It is the same process in a way. The questions vary some have two steps, some three the more complicated ones are those which have the five functions mentioned above. Orientation, position, colour, size and shape. I hope this helps

Get a copy of the bond book Milliways suggested and get started. Once you and your DC have worked out the key to the shapes they are pretty easy.

I think it eventually clicks. Some of them are very tough and you can stare at them for hours and still not work them out. Often having the answer doesn't help either. I found the best sources were those that had explanations for the answers. The best ones that I have come across are

www.amazon.co.uk/Papers-Non-Verbal-Reasoning-Multiple-Assessment/dp/0748784950/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1284476237&sr=1-2-fkmr0

www.11plusexams.com/11-plus-non-verbal-reasoning/

It does get easier. I did non verbal reasoning tests with my two; their scores went from less than 50% to above 90% after practice - you do need a lot of it though. The best way to improve was to go over everything they got wrong, before going on to another test.

The site atestingtime.com has online tests, which you pay monthly for, and can use as many tests as you like. I found it much easier to get the children to do tests on the computer, (that being their favourite place) - I didn't have to mark them myself, but went through them if needed using the explanations on the site.

Another vote for the chuckra website.

It's free to join and there are papers to download plus some NVR practice games. The 11+ wiki site they run is excellent and has guides on how to answer each of the question types.