Caistor - types of questions in test?

[FluxCapacity]

Hello.
My child had been mostly practising with Bond books till recently, and the school has done some work with them. Recently tried IPS ones... and they seem a lot harder, especially with regards to the timing. With only a week to go, I'm a bit panicked about how to help her feel confident as it threw her getting test types she hadn't encountered before.

I haven't found any information on what types of question are in the Caistor VR tests - any knowledge out there? By comparison, the consortium has given a lot of information!

Help! Wish I could do the tests for her because she just doesn't have any experience of having to do tests within an allotted time, other than what we've practised. Is the time really tight in the "real thing"?

Cheers for any advice.

[FluxCapacity]

Ok we're doing ok with IPS as well now, and I know that the Lincs consortium recommend Letts for practice. Is this the best comparison/practice for Caistor too?

[yoyo123]

a bit of information here

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/school ... re-11-plus" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[FluxCapacity]

Thank you for that, yoyo. I have already read that, but nowhere seems to go into more detail on the Caistor contents rather than the consortium. I guess that's deliberate.

[RaineB]

DS sat the test for Caistor two years ago and got offered a place so whatever we did worked that time . DD is sitting it this year so fingers crossed.

Our experience of Caistor was that the school don't say anything about the test other than they are both VR and we couldn't find out very much from anywhere else. As a result, we tried to cover as wide a range of question types as possible from as many different publishers as possible. We used the Bond books, Letts, IPS and used the free downloads from this website and others. We have also used Athey Educational this time as they seem to have a very wide range of question types. This is partly because when I had a look through them I saw they had a question set based on a diagram and I seem to remember DS saying he'd had a question like that. They also have 100 questions for a 50min test which I think is what they have in the Caistor test.

I hope this helps.

Good luck to your DD.

[FluxCapacity]

Thank you, Raine, that's really useful! I'll be squinting round looking for you on Saturday. Red rose in the lapel?

Can you explain the diagram question at all please?

[RaineB]

We'll be the ones looking ill. DD seems to have lost any sense of timing at the moment I will be so glad when the next couple of weeks are over.

The diagram questions are simply a set of questions based on a drawing of some sort. So, for example, the diagram may show a railway network with a number of towns on it. The questions are then based on things like which town would you go through to get from A to B, or which route would you take to travel north, etc. I've only really seen them in the Athey and the Bond papers.

[FluxCapacity]

Mine is now refusing to move on until she has answered correctly, only 100% will do... sigh. Sleep sleep and more sleep is what I'm aiming for now for her!

So, how many questions are in Caistor test in 45 mins? I was thinking it was 50 mins, with 100 questions, but that can't be right, and the NfER and GL papers are 85 in 50 mins. I'm sure I've seen this information somewhere, but can't find it now.