Year 3 and onwards preparation for 11+

[Doblinski]

In all honesty any bright child who is GS material should not need prepping from year 3.

By all means put their name down for a tutor early - some suggest year 2, but that's for a year 5 start and this should be more than enough. If your child was only so-so and you did 3 years prep, I'm not convinced that this would push them into the bracket where they'd get in.

DD starterd in year 5 had a month off in the summer holidays and made it, she did not do that many papers in the run-up either - a few a week in the last weeks before the exam. The 4 papers a day for years thing is not really necessary - and can be expensive.

[doodles]

I heard from a friend of a friend, who is a tutor, that she is giving some of her year 2 children Bond 9-10 maths papers to do, which ALARMED me, on a number of levels ! ie, Was this the standard I was supposed to aspire to for my DS; what were these DC doing in their spare time?!!

Aaah but did she say whether they could do them

Don't get stressed by what other people tell you they are doing. You will find lot of playground gossip goes on, just keep your head down and ignore it is my advice.

My DS2 is yr 4 so will take the Kent 11+ in September 2012. I have just booked a tutor for him to start in January '12, but would probably have done this earlier had they not been DS1's tutor and I was pretty sure they would take him. Workwise all we seem to be doing is a few Bond papers/puzzles, some mental maths etc and we play a lot of number and word games. Luckily he loves reading. We will start in earnest from September

[ThreeKids]

Hi,
I heard from a friend of a friend, who is a tutor, that she is giving some of her year 2 children Bond 9-10 maths papers to do, which ALARMED me, on a number of levels ! ie, Was this the standard I was supposed to aspire to for my DS; what were these DC doing in their spare time?!!

Further to the post above - also remember that Maths is the one subject in which you can do practice and many kids can be advanced beyond their years. That's why it's nearly always maths when you hear of a child passing their o'level/A'level or going to university at an unusually young age. Sure they need aptitude, but you can bring on maths to a higher level quicker. HOWEVER the tests are not at an incredible level - having degree level maths is not going to make you score any higher than a child that has good yr 6 level maths under their belt. In simple terms you don't need a degree to get the right answer to the sum 2+2.

Secondly the tests are not all about maths. It's about verbal/non verbal ability too, and this is the separator. So taking their maths up to some wild level is not going to help here. Better to get them reading some books, chatting to use vocabulary etc etc

[fatbananas]

Thanks Threekids and Doodles. What you've both said makes a lot of sense and I'm glad we seem to be on the right track. We, too, play a lot of word/ number games and DS is an avid reader. His teacher recently told me that he's on course for a level 3 in his KS1 maths SATS, which I guess is also encouraging because, while I get the impression there are a lot of DC in his class/ year who are on course for a level 3, it does at least indicate that he's got the fundamentals in place.

As for playground gossip I'm not missing it this week, I've noticed