11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to all of this, as we probably started looking at the whole 11plus idea in July. My dd is a very bright girl, and is driving the decision to go to Grammer herself, as we are more than happy with the local comp. We do support her, and want to give her a fair chance at passing, however our main concern is the journey time too and from the grammer school, as she will end up having to leave the house just before 7am, and will not get home until 5.05pm. Far too long in our opinion. Anyway, all that said, since July we have been working with her to show her the types of questions that come up in the exam, and she has done really well. The thing that we notice the most is that she is not working fast enough to answer the questions. What are your tips to get their speed up? On Saturday, she sat for the Warwickshire schools exam, as a sort of trial run. It showed us that she was often leaving 6 or 7 unfinished questions at the end. The school she wants to go to which is King Edwards Camp Hill in birmingham, is meant to be even worse on time, and so she really needs to work hard in the next 5 weeks to get this up. Please give me any tips you may have to help with speed. Many Thanks

Hello, not very used to this, so if the link below doesn't work, cut and paste into the address bar.

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... php?t=9238" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It contain's Patricia's tips for building up speed.

hth!

Also, as far as I could work out from my DC last year, the time pressure was no worse in the B'ham test than it was in the Warwickshire test so don't be overly concerned about that. Having said that, it is really important to answer as many questions as possible (accurately) so I would spend the next few weeks working on speeding up. I did this by looking at the time allowed for any practice paper and shaving a certain amount off. Although they hated this at first (particularly DD who liked to work slowly but carefully) they soon got used to the extra time pressure and probably benefitted for it in the exam.

Good Luck!

Thanks so much, however, what are all the things Patricia mentions in her message?
IPS
type D H Q and E
Many Thanks

Den De, how did your DC get on with comparing the results for both tests? Did they score higher in one test than the other?

I don't actually know. They both passed for both so we have the Warw scores but as they took up places at the Camp Hill schools, we don't know how well they scored in the B'ham test.

As fo the type DHQ and E that Patricia mentions, I believe they are types of verbal reasoning. They aren't used in the B'ham test so don't worry about that.

Sit with your DD while she does an Nfer test and time each section, that way you will know what is slowing her down. Work on that type of question until she is able to do them more quickly. Best of luck.

I don't think working on timings from NFER to identify problem areas will be useful. Patricia's tips are also very specific to an NFER verbal reasoning exam, a completely different type of test, and will be of no help to you at all. DenDe's advice is probably your best bet. If you run short of suitably quick-fire practice material, download some past papers from the Manchester Grammar school website (English 1 and Maths 1).

It's common for children to miss big chunks of these tests and it doesn't necessarily imply disaster, as you can tell from trawling through people's experiences on this site. Our daughter (who also got qualifying scores for both Warks and B'ham last year) seems to have missed large chunks of (at least) the maths and non-verbal in the B'ham test and came out quite flustered, unlike the Warks test from which she came out feeling very confident - but her overall scores turned out to be practically identical.

Mike

Yep, sounds like best thing at this stage is to train child to multiguess and not be flustered by not having enough time - explain it's supposed to be that way and it's the same for everybody so it doesn't matter. But yes, in the meantime if you can identify one or two things that would "speed her up" then do so but if the papers are designed to be time pressured for everyone then you are really on to a loser with that approach.