New Letts papers - Question for Patricia

[Josa]

Hi Patricia,

Need your expertise on this please.

We've just finished all 4 papers and wanted to know if you have any idea what the level of difficulty for these papers are. In all 4 papers ds scored 75/85, 88%. Going through the papers together I can see that the ones he got wrong were the vocabulary types, in his own words "I haven't come across these words so I don't know what they mean". In comparison with the NFER papers his scores varied between 96-99% and he did admit to finding these papers easier.

I thought the Walsh papers were the hardest papers but he still managed to score better in these. Have you worked through these papers and do your pupils find them more challenging than other practice papers?

Cheers
Josa

[Ang's mom]

My DD did both sets of Nfer papers and found the new VR ones def harder , mainly because of the vocabulary.
I mean there were words like "Campanology" - which honestly I had no idea either.

There are also some questions , whose answers were rather vague.
For example - in the questions where they give 5 items and are asked to choose two, that differ from the other three ; I have no idea how they arrived at some answers.

I have a feeling they intentionally made this new set harder to set it apart and to make it seem more challenging than the conventional Nfer papers. NVR and Maths seems okay.

Premium papers are as hard as Walsh ones and my DD definitely scored better on these two than the new VR ones.

[Cassandra]

Josa, if it's any comfort I also bought the new Letts papers and don't think the questions are as well thought out as Susan D or Walsh. In fact, after reading them through myself first, I decided not to give them to my son as timed papers and have just used certain questions for vocab practice.

[Josa]

Thank you Ang's mum and Cassandra for your replies. I did look through the papers too and thought the vocab in it were too difficult for a 10 yr or rather my 10 year old and in hindsight may be I should have just used them as practice instead of timed papers.

Will be good to hear other people's opinion of the papers.

[new2me]

My copy of the papers arrived yesterday and I too was shocked by the vocabulary. I'm worried that these papers will upset my DC as I'm pretty sure he won't know words like pith, girth, leveret, catty, archive and fungi.

[patricia]

Dear Josa

I have not reviewed the new papers yet. They are on my list for when my current cohort finish their tests. [after 6 October.]

Vocabulary will always be a problem. If you use a wide variety of papers many words will repeat, which I believe to be a good thing, children need to see words more than once to remember them.

Patricia

[JaysDarlin]

I thought the New Letts papers were the same as the old Letts/GL assessment papers?

Or am I confusing myself with the NFER "The Official 11+ Practice Papers" which were meant to be the same as the Letts Papers?

[mitasol]

Letts used to distribute the Nfer papers. These have been reprinted (exact copies) and are now distributed via GL Assessment (different isbn and cover).

Letts have produced a new set of papers which are not affiliated with Nfer/GL.

Someone has laid it all out by publisher so you can't go wrong! http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/books/index.php

By Publisher: NFER GL-Assessment (New for 2010), NFER Nelson (being phased out 2010), Letts (New for 2010),

[moved]

I have used the new Letts papers, but on each set I went through and deleted five questions to give the actual format. I chose to delete questions that were ambiguous. The vocab didn't worry me particularly and my pupils seem to have done reasonably well. I didn't find any of the horrible things in these papers that are in Walsh. My biggest disappointment was the number of ambiguous questions.

[JaysDarlin]

Hi Moved,

I didn't find any of the horrible things in these papers that are in Walsh.

Please could you elaborate which horrible things you are referring to in Walsh?