11+ verbal reasoning and maths

[goldie81]

help!!! I'm stressing already about my daughter doing exams in sept! How much work should she be doing??!! She's reasonably intelligent but i obviously want her 2get into a good school!

Urm. Firstly teach her not to overuse exclamation marks

www.elevenplusexams.co.uk is a good website and they have forums specific to your local area.

We are trying to do some of each paper (in our case verbal, non-verbal and maths) every week.

More specific questions might help?

Dd is in Y4 and we are doing bond books. I work full time so mainly doing it at the weekend and holidays at the moment. Will step it up a notch come Y5.

At this stage (5-6m before test) DS1 was doing a total of about an hour a week.

Instead of stressing, try to find out the exact details of which subjects she'll be tested on, then assess her strengths and weaknesses in each subject. If she's brilliant at Maths but weak on vocabulary questions (for example) then concentrate your efforts on increasing vocabulary.

Ha ha- no more exclamation marks. Got bond books and others- suppose it's a matter of working through.
Then trying to cope with long summer hol just before the exam- I also work full time so come the end of the day it's the last thing my daughter wants to do.

Is it super selective you are trying for?

Yes extremely. A consortium of schools that you have to battle to get into in Watford. I'm new to it all & it seems everyone keeps hush for fear of 'stealing' their child's place at school!

Ah, the S.W.Herts consortium. As it happens, I'm something of a (self-proclaimed) expert.

Maths: 50 questions in 50 minutes. None of them hard. Unfortunately this means that the average score is very high. In order to get a mark of the WBGS/WGGS/Parmiters ilk, your daughter really needs to be getting 47/50 or more. Accuracy and checking are vital. There should be plenty of time for both.

VR: 100 questions in 45 minutes, which is a lot. They need to be quick on this one as well as accurate. The papers are Moray House. According to DCs who have been through it, the closest papers in style and content are Athey. Bond books are fine for practice but don't have the full range of question types so a range of papers would be best. Susan Daughtrey's 'Technique and Practice' books are pretty thorough. Most marks are lost on the vocabulary questions. The average mark on this paper isn't as high, but your daughter needs to be getting about 85/100 or higher to be in for a chance at a place at one of the schools mentioned above.

Forgot to say that with the Maths, you might want to make sure she has covered all the topics at school. The paper only tests KS2 material, but at our children's school the teachers were 'saving' some of the topics to do in Y6. Not helpful when the test is in the middle of September. I used the Bond 'How to do 11+ Maths' book to find gaps in knowledge.

God, posts like rainbow's chill me (sorry) - ds is yr5 and I have only just realised that the tutor thing and coaching is not a myth. I don't have time to do all this on top of homework and my job - extra maths I'd be happy with but learning and practising a completely random thing is so unfair - non verbal and verbal without practise would just be ridiculous.

Op - take heart. I am managing to fit half an hour once a week in between everything else.

Actually, it could be an hour in a good week. But I only bought books a few weeks ago.

Dd is in a crap school though which is struggling and has had a string of supply teachers this whole year. She is already hugely disadvantaged to others.

Wow thanks For all that info!! Vocal is the biggest issue- so have found list on elevenplus website so think will try working through that & see how we go!

Rainbow - thank you for taking my comment in the right way, I meant personally chills me (ie I'm not doing enough) not that you are wrong?

I made a 'vocab book' (just a notebook with A-Z indexed pages) and then whenever they read to me (three times a week required by school) I would ask them to define two or three of the longer words. If there were words that they were unable to define correctly, I made them look those words up and write the definitions in the book.

Reading books written more than a generation ago really helps with the sort of vocabulary that comes up in these tests. Swallows & Amazons, that sort of thing. The vocabulary they need to learn is a post-war middle class one, as that's the background of most of the people who write the questions. If necessary, they can use one of those electronic dictionary bookmarks to look words up while they're reading.

Oh, don't worry. My blood has run cold numerous times over the last year when I hear the extent to which other people are going to with their dc who are the same age as mine and going for the same school.

THIS is good for vocab.

do use the elevenplus website, it has lots of help.

and some of those who have tutored for 2 years will get in and then struggle. True VR should be able to be done by bright children who haven't been tutored. So familiarising them with questions and practising up to speed is most important thing

i found the 11plus website scary - lots of very determined parents, it was like their job was getting through the 11 plus?
anyway. i guess you have to learn the stuff in order to stand a chance.

"It was like their job was getting through the 11 plus?"

Yep, that sounds like me a couple of years ago. In our area, it's not a case of choosing between a grammar school or a comprehensive school. Most of our comprehensives are partially selective (including two out of our three nearest schools).

So to get a place at the local school, DS1 had to either live within 300-400m (we don't), have a sibling there (he doesn't) or score higher than nearly all the other children in the test.

Because of this situation, most children in our area sit the test, and if a few start tutoring in Y4, then nearly everyone feels they have to. 2500 children sit the test, and at each school there are fewer than 50 academic places.

beegee I don't envy you. Its like a snowball - I just can't get my head round it, and I don't have time to do as much as I need to, when you look at everyone else. Awful system.

i found the 11plus website scary - a seriously scary site. Not for the faint-hearted. Whilst I don't deny its competitive and that some preparation for these tests is needed (by way of familiarisation, timing of papers, and so on), the people there take it to extremes.

ThreeBeeOneGee - if all the schools have partial selection, why worry about it? Won't there be a decent enough cohort of bright children that it doesn't matter if you get in on other grounds?

There aren't any other grounds left. After the academic places and siblings, there aren't enough places left at our local schools for all of the local children, some of whom end up having to go to schools miles away.

the website is scary, but go to the help section and look for DIY tutoring. There are some helpful outlines of what you needs to do and how to do it. they suggest which books eg there is a good book which has an explanation of all the VR question types and how to do them. Very straightforward