Relative difficulty

Advice on 11 Plus NVR papers and problems

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yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Relative difficulty

Post by yoyo123 »

I know this has probably been asked before :roll:

but..

Bond
Learning together
NFER

non verbal reasoning

how do these compare in difficulty.

Bond seem far more complicated to me, lots of different elements (she really loves those loops and twiddles!)

any opinions and which do you prefer for the last few weeks 'push' to the test. I'm in Ken btw, so NFER is teh standard we are aiming at

Thank you
:D
Bexley Mum 2

Post by Bexley Mum 2 »

We're in Bexley so I've tended to concentrate on the NFER NVR and dip into the Bond papers, missing out some bits that didn't seem too similar to the NFER papers. But, be warned, I've found with my two eldest sons and have heard others say, that the NFER NVR paper A is the hardest of the four. So, if you start with this one, as I did on both occasions, it can be a bit disheartening! The thing to focus on with NVR is speed and the ability to move on quickly if the answer doesn't come to you fairly rapidly. My middle son did the Bexley NVR yesterday - 75 questions, split into 4 sections with 9 minutes per section. It's hard to practice speed without unnerving a child. A lot of people will talk about getting children to do timed tests. I found it more helpful to get my son to practice (just one or two sections at a time) and keep a furtive eye on the clock. He speeded up naturally the more familiar he became with the different types of questions. We also turned it into a game to see who could get the answer first - me or him so that also speeded him up and focused his mind. We kept the NVR D paper until the end and did 1 or 2 sections at a time in the week before the test. And, I encouraged him to play on Brain Academy in the run up to his test as that has a lot of things in it like spotting the odd one out as quickly as possible and I felt it was sharpening his reactions. Good luck! It still amazes me that there are so few posts about NVR - it's the paper which has always alarmed me the most!!
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Post by yoyo123 »

Thank you so much for that.

I've found it also helps for teh children to try and see why the right answer is right (if that makes sense!)

Someone suggested playing Tetris as it helps orientation of shapes.


I agree with you about the lack of nvr posts, may be because with teh others you can type a question out, but with nvr it is really taxing teh powers of speech to explain!
fm

Post by fm »

I would say, in order of difficulty, you would have Learning Together followed by AFN followed by NFER and Bond roughly on par. At one time or another I have used most types of non-verbal papers but find these are the best for preparation for a straight NFER paper.

Some of my students sit for a school which does NFER tests. I used Bond Assessment Papers first to familiarise them, then did Learning Together. For more practice I then used the Bond Test Papers--but not as tests. I'd get the children to practice all of one type (e.g. matrices) until they really knew the techniques, then all of another type (e.g. codes) until they were fairly profficient. I would not necessarily pressurise them for time at this point.
Only at the end would I use the NFER practice papers. I also tended to give them 7 minutes instead of 6 for each section because our local school actually has 2 x 20 questions to be done in 2 x 12 minutes which is more generous than 12 questions in six minutes for the commercial papers. I have seen a copy of an actual papers NFER used in the past and it was definitely easier than Test A.
Should the child still have problems, I have used some of the IPS papers as a last resort.
Hope this helps.
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Post by yoyo123 »

it does thank you!
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