bond papers vs letts

[999 mum]

Are the bond set of papers easier than the letts? I have read about how difficult paper 11A is,but I couldn't find any info about comparative difficulty.

thanks for any info - really I should have asked the question months ago.

[muffinmonster]

By paper 11A I think you mean the NFER papers. These were previously published by Letts, but are now published by GL Assessment. Confusingly, Letts are now publishing their own papers with the same covers as the old NFER ones.

In answer to your question, the NFER papers are reputed to be some of the hardest available, and the usual advice is to save them until the final weeks of preparation for use as practice papers.

I did this, and my DS didn't find them all that much harder than the Bond ones - hopefully because he was well prepared. He did lots of practice with the Bond ones first.

[999 mum]

Do you think I should leave 11A till last (as it is the hardest)? or should I finish with an easier one to boost DC's confidence?

[muffinmonster]

Personally I would do 11A but then do an easier one to finish.

Another suggestion that I've seen somewhere on this forum is to 'massage' your child's score on the last paper they do (however hard or easy) so they feel confident. Then instead of going over all wrong answers, you ignore the ones that you know are just slips or silly mistakes, and do only the ones that you know are in areas of weakness. With that approach you could finish on a difficult paper if you like so that you get the feedback but your child's confidence doesn't suffer.

[Sally-Anne]

Do you think I should leave 11A till last (as it is the hardest)? or should I finish with an easier one to boost DC's confidence?

I think you may be getting confused with the GL Assessment non-verbal paper 11A which is considered to be particularly difficult. The verbal reasoning papers are all roughly of the same standard.

As muffinmonster says, you can always be "economical with the truth" if the score isn't brilliant.