Day dreaming - expected 9yr old concentration span

[Dollydripmat]

How much work is your DD doing per week? In Y4 I only did a little extra maths, possibly 2 x 30mins sessions per week, however I sat with her going over any tricky parts. It wasn't until Y5 around May when we did more each day consisting on 10mins sections(had tutor homework too), at the weekend we worked on depth/problem solving etc. and dealing with speed. It wasn't until the summer when we did actual practise papers which were more lengthy . I'm sure others may give you a little more professional advice as I'm just a parent with a little knowledge . Dollyx

[kamenrider]

She does a kumon english paper, a schofield and sims and a small VR exercise per day. Sometimes the schoefiled and sims is swapped with an English bond.

It may sound a lot but we have a lot of lost ground to make up for purely because her primary school is really bad. What they teach there is no where near what is needed for 11+. Dunno, if i had my time again, I would have put her into an independent primary school.

[equilibro]

It may sound a lot but we have a lot of lost ground to make up for purely because her primary school is really bad. What they teach there is no where near what is needed for 11+.

It is my understanding that all local authority-maintained primary schools teach what is required by the national curriculum, and it is therefore wrong to classify a local authority-maintained primary school as bad if it is correctly doing this. The fact that the 11+ requirements in any particular location may differ from those of the national curriculum is one of the main reasons why 11+ tutoring, DIY or otherwise, is commonplace.

[yoyo123]

You are right, Equilibrio
Local authority schools are not allowed to tutor for the eleven plus.

[ginx]

Ds is in year 4. He is quite good at maths but also makes silly mistakes. He does his homework (after a lot of nagging) on his own. When Dh goes through it with him and tells him an answer is wrong, Ds will often realise himself he has made a mistake.

Or we all talk about it as some just is too difficult for him. I think 28/36 is quite good for year 4. I am not sure my Ds will ever agree to doing any extra work so I am leaving it till end year 5 unless by some miracle he wants to do some.

[loobylou]

My experience was that those "silly" mistakes continued right up till the end - but that dd was better at spotting them when checking her answers by the end. I never noticed her concentration particularly improve if I'm honest. I am sure it did but not to any noticeable degree.
I think the biggest barrier to improving concentration is boredom - I would really be concerned that your dd would peak too soon. She is doing an awful lot for this stage (we were doing maybe an hour every 3 weeks at the end of year 4) and don't forget that no school prepares them for the 11+ so all the children are in the same position....
We were lucky in that dd always ups her game in exams and the silly mistakes seem to stop when she's doing the real thing so maybe don't worry too much about them. If she can do the questions then that's the biggest issue.

[equilibro]

and don't forget that no school prepares them for the 11+

I know of indy preps that do.

[yoyo123]

and don't forget that no school prepares them for the 11+

state schools are not allowed to, indies and academies can

[kamenrider]

It may sound a lot but we have a lot of lost ground to make up for purely because her primary school is really bad. What they teach there is no where near what is needed for 11+.

It is my understanding that all local authority-maintained primary schools teach what is required by the national curriculum, and it is therefore wrong to classify a local authority-maintained primary school as bad if it is correctly doing this. The fact that the 11+ requirements in any particular location may differ from those of the national curriculum is one of the main reasons why 11+ tutoring, DIY or otherwise, is commonplace.

OK, I may have worded it badly and thanks for the clarification but its a moot point really. The point I was trying to get across was the rationale for why we're doing these early preparations.

I think the biggest barrier to improving concentration is boredom - I would really be concerned that your dd would peak too soon.

So we tried asking DD to do only one section out of the schofield and simms mental arithmetic and the results have shown that she can easily still get 2-3 wrong. Although there were also days where she got 100% right (granted on those days we had gone back to the start of the section). So what you say may be very applicable to my daughter. I will bear that in mind.

[Rosy Pippin]

Little mistakes can be SO infuriating! Same here with our DD when she was prepping. In case it helps - I would do the same test as DD at the same time, then we'd have to look through our answers and make our own corrections. When she saw me correcting my own work, she started paying more attention to her own. Then we would swap tests to see if we could spot any mistakes left over in each others work. Then, and only then, would we look at the official answers. I know it sounds tedious but we only did it maybe ten times in total and it really worked. Good luck! love Rosy