11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi all,

I know you are doing a great job contributing to this forum and helping/suggesting tips ,tricks,materials ..what not ..all the useful info u can share.

I am sorry that I m asking for more.

Could any of the moderators take a lead and post this year exam content or rough guidelines (like I have seen in Birmingham forum) so that this would be so helpful for future kids what and how to prepare for this exam??


Tx
Deepti.

There were 3 papers this year (this info is all available on the KCC website)

English
Maths
Reasoning.

There was also a writing piece that is unmarked unless needed for appeal

The Reasoning paper contains, Spatial Reasoning, Verbal and Non Verbal questions.

As for the actual content, good luck getting that - i'm not sure any of the kids will remember any content, other than to tell you that it was hard, wordy and the time pressures were tricky

I am afraid I am much in the dark as you about the content.

Yes...time was the key this year i think!!! My ds certainly won't remember exact content: not that this would help for next year though as Kent have said the whole point to the new style is so it can be changed every year!!

Maybe I missed something but was the contract not awarded for one year only? If so who knows what the test will look like next year.

According to my DD teacher, the english was very subtle. It seems that KCC may have cracked this as the questions and answers were designed to show children who had deep and broad litteracy skills, rather than children who had been tutored in a particular "style".

Teacher described it very elloquently and it made sense. It was much more about understanding text, interpretation, context and the general litteracy skills rather than "data extraction".

The maths questions however were not overly difficult according to teacher. What was challenging was that kids only had less time to answer questions compared to 1 min in previous tests. Parents seemed to get freaked out that DC did not finish the tests as all their revision papers were structured differently. However, its still relative. Maths results in DS cohort accurately reflected ability across the group. Teacher also said that the maths questions were very varied so children with a broad maths skills, and sound mental math abilities at KS2 would score well.

Colmans wrote:According to my DD teacher, the english was very subtle. It seems that KCC may have cracked this as the questions and answers were designed to show children who had deep and broad litteracy skills, rather than children who had been tutored in a particular "style".

Teacher described it very elloquently and it made sense. It was much more about understanding text, interpretation, context and the general litteracy skills rather than "data extraction".

The maths questions however were not overly difficult according to teacher. What was challenging was that kids only had less time to answer questions compared to 1 min in previous tests. Parents seemed to get freaked out that DC did not finish the tests as all their revision papers were structured differently. However, its still relative. Maths results in DS cohort accurately reflected ability across the group. Teacher also said that the maths questions were very varied so children with a broad maths skills, and sound mental math abilities at KS2 would score well.

Thanks for the info Colmans, if this is a true account of the test this year, it sounds as if this test has suited the naturally able whilst stretching their ability. Which is exactly what the grammar schools want.

My DS's English is his weakest area, so the fact they had introduced English was a concern here! We focused on plenty of paper practice and building up of vocabulary by reading more books (he loves reading thank goodness) He was a 4C at the end of year 5 and managed to score 118, which we were happy with under the circumstances.

Apart from the spatial stuff, the other material, so far as I can glean from my child was no different from the type of stuff in the gl assessment familiarisation papers in maths, vr, nvr and English. The maths was faster than the timing in the familiarisation papers with 30 question in 25 minutes.

Thanks Mystery. What about spatial reasoning? Was it the same type as the one on the familiarisation paper?