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Advice for Redbridge and Essex preparation

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 4:30 pm
by fabmum
Dear All
I am a mum preparing my daughter who is currently in Year 5, for Woodford and Chelmsford. I am looking for advice on the best materials and the order in which you recommend they are used. Apart from the commercial resources I would also welcome some free web resources. I appreciate some sites cannot be advertised on the forum but if you will be kind enough to pm me I would appreciate it very much.
Thanks
fabmum

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:00 pm
by Chelmsford mum
Hi Fab mum,
I know nothing about Woodford but something about Chelmsford.

I recommend that you look at the thread on home preparation, especially Moving's post on the amount of prep most people do.
It will depend on your daughter's primary school what you need to do in Maths.My daughters were at very ordinary, not high achieving state primary schools who , more or less, worked at the pace of the class as a whole.Therefore the gaps for them were algebra(of a simple kind), volume, more complex probability, harder percentages, BODMAS,more complex area questions , calculating the size of missing angles and pie charts with percentages.I am sure others will step in if I missed anything.Their class only gets round to some of this at the end of year six.

For English , there is little on the market like the Essex papers so get as many past papers as you can afford and make up your own similar papers based on the classics.E.g make up a comprehension based on say an extract from Dickens in the manner of the papers you have.Read lots with her and keep a vocab book for unknown words.

For Verbal reasoning I did IPS papers first, then bright sparks and then the real GLA assessment papers.(formerly NFER)Else where on this site,on the general preparation pages(left hand menu on home page), you will find all the question types listed.
The real paper contains more of the most time consuming questions e.g the code questions, so lots of practice to get speedy and accurate at the same time.
There are other free websites just google eleven plus free resources and other sites will come up.
Good luck :wink: I am sure others will join the thread to help you.

Posted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 5:09 pm
by fabmum
Hi Chelmsford Mum
Thank you so much for getting back to me so quickly with such useful info. Your advice is a great help. :D

Posted: Thu Apr 16, 2009 1:26 pm
by moved
Make sure you teach your daughter how to use the answer sheet for the VR. It takes around 10 mins off the test. A lot of children are encouraged to do the questions "properly".

Posted: Sun May 24, 2009 3:43 pm
by fabmum
Thank you moving.

Fabmum

Posted: Wed Jun 10, 2009 9:38 pm
by cie72
"Make sure you teach your daughter how to use the answer sheet for the VR. It takes around 10 mins off the test. A lot of children are encouraged to do the questions "properly"."

Not to sound stupid but what do you mean ? lol ! :?

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:46 pm
by moved
The multiple choice answer sheet that the children write on is marked by a computer. Each question has five choices, the children have to put a horizontal line in a box.

As there are a limited number of choices it is quicker to only try those 5 choices.

e.g.
Find the missing letter
boo_ _ool
no_ _on
choices given are
k
t
p
n
s

It is quick and easy to try these 5 letters rather than trying to work out which of the 26 letters of the alphabet should fit. There are many other instances where the sheet can help. Most children struggle to complete the test within the time limit so there is no point in not using the choices given.

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 12:52 pm
by cie72
Thank you ! :oops:

Posted: Thu Jun 11, 2009 1:47 pm
by mitasol

Posted: Fri Jun 12, 2009 2:08 pm
by fabmum
Many thanks for all your contributions. fabmum :) :)