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completing papers in time?

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 9:31 am
by wizard
My son has just done his first full length paper and it took forever. I have read some of the tips for speeding up, but wondered from people's experience (as Tutors or parents), how many full practice papers does it generally take before they are able to complete one within the set timescale? Does this differ for different subjects? We are doing maths and VR at the moment.

Any thoughts welcomed.

Re: completing papers in time?

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 10:40 am
by vasu
If you have just started then it will be a bit of a task for your child to complete his papers in time. I use on-line time-bomb resource. We use that as a timer. It is fun and keeps my son motivated.

http://www.online-stopwatch.com/bomb-co ... ll-screen/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

My son sets his watch for 10 minutes before the actual time ends. But there is a counter side to speed and that is silly mistakes. You have to balance them out. Papers should ideally finish with few minutes to spare for rechecking. Practise makes perfect. It gets better I promise. :)

Re: completing papers in time?

Posted: Mon Jul 04, 2011 4:40 pm
by andyb
wizard wrote:My son has just done his first full length paper and it took forever. I have read some of the tips for speeding up, but wondered from people's experience (as Tutors or parents), how many full practice papers does it generally take before they are able to complete one within the set timescale? Does this differ for different subjects? We are doing maths and VR at the moment.

Any thoughts welcomed.
Stop timing him (or at least tell him you are not timing him :wink: ) With both DS's they could not finish a paper if they knew they were being timed. They were so concerned that they would run out of time that they spent longer looking at the clock and calculating how quickly each question needed to be done than actually doing the questions!

With DS1 I secretly timed him - if he finished in time I told him how much he had to spare and if he didn't then I told him he almost did (irrespective of how far over he went).

Going through 11+ again this year with DS2 and he is told to work fast but accurately and I have the timer in another room. He is now generally finishing with time to spare even after checking his work and scoring quite highly too.

We started with 10 minute papers (3 or 4), when these were done in the time limit progressed to 30 minute papers (again 3 or 4) and then to 50 minutes. I think practice and confidence play a big part in finishing in time.

With VR learn the shortcut techniques and leave out questions that need alot of working out for just one mark - in Bucks these are the infamouse Type Z's.

Re: completing papers in time?

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 12:39 pm
by menagerie
Andy, are there specific VR shortcuts?

Re: completing papers in time?

Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2011 1:24 pm
by andyb
Things like - you don't need to work out all the letters in a code question. Use the answer sheet to decide which letters you need to decode to get the answer. e.g. if all the answers start with an "A" then you are wasting your time decoding that letter.