11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi

I'm looking for some advice re solving these cubes and nets questions. I'm working with my yr 5 daughter on 4th Bond NVR and we're stumped by these! She has constructed a cube to try and help her when answering these types of questions but is still finding them hard. Other NVR she is fine with.

Please can anyone give us some tips... is there a method which can be used to work out which cubes either can be made or cannot be made from the given net, depending on the question asked.

Thank you to anyone who can be of assistance.
Regards
Clarendon

Developing spatial awareness is often hard- even for very bright pupils - it's noticeable when teaching trigonometry that some struggle.

I would look at drawing six squares in as many different ways as you can - i.e. a long row of six etc - then cut them out and try to make into a cube - hopefully this might help.

http://www.numeracycd.com/contents/acti ... s/nets.htm

My son found Bond NVR cube questions very difficult even after he had made a cube,drawn the shapes onto it and thought very hard about the question. With practice he did eventually start to get them correct. However, if your child does NFER NVR papers this type of question does not come up. Its worth checking what sort of tests your childs potential school/s will be using.

I tutor for gs and all of my pupils, without exception, have found these hard. Mostly I tell them not to worry about them because a) they're not going to come up and b) nobody else can do them either.

The only quick tip I have ever evolved for them is to eliminate the ones which can't be made because they will be opposite each other when the thing is built.
E.g. New Fourth Papers, Paper 2, number 53
It can't be A because black blob can never be next to black and white blob because they will be on opposite sides of cube.
Iit can't be B because white blob can't be next to crossed blob.
It can't be C because there is only one stripped blob.
This way you are down to just 2 to pick which makes life slightly easier.

Using same technique for 54, it can't be A, D or or E due to opposites being next to each other, so that narrows the choice down to B or C.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for all the replies. It's a comfort to know that others find them equally difficult! We will look at your suggestions togther later today.

Re the liklihood of them coming up in the test, we live in Birmingham and DD wants to attend a KE foundation school. I was of the understanding that some similar type questions were in the test last Nov.

Thanks again for your kind replies.

Clarendon

I tutor for Birmingham and the feedback I got from my pupils was that they were given various (4 or 5) 3D shapes made out of cubes (think lego) and then they were given a list of 2D views and asked from which 3D model (if any) they came. While they may sound similar to the Bond cube questions, they weren't really. You might want to get Lego out and build some constructions, then draw some 2d views yourself--nothing too complicated, however. The other non-verbal section was on hexagons and the nearest to it would be matrices, only with 7 components rather than 4.
Hope this helps

Thank you, fm, for your response.