Please help-worry over Bright sparks verbal reasoning

[daofan]

Can anyone whose child has been practising or done vr papers please help? My son was doing ok on the athey vr papers so I made him do the bright sparks (paper 4 multiple choice-but I didnt give him the answer sheet to make it more like dame alice owens standard type). He was unable to complete the paper in 50 mins and did not score very well.
Are the bright sparks meant to be harder than the athey?
How can I help him improve?
Please help. Thank you.

[yoyo123]

I've not used Athey but the Bright Sparks are at the harder end of the range. Patrica has posted a list of papers in the order which she tackles them in somewhere (poss Bucks)

[yoyo123]

http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... ers#p78305" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Athey are not on here , all these are multiple choice, i presume Athey is not?

(and apologies S-A it was your list!)

[chicko-mum]

My DD found Athey were more straightforward than Bright Sparks, as yoyo says these are at the harder end of the scale. There are lots of other papers to work with in between. Using a range of papers will get your DS used to coping different styles of questions and presentation so he won't be thrown by anything new/unknown in the actual test.
I also tried DD with 100 questions in 45 mins to reflect the timings for DAO as most papers are 80 questions onver 50 or 60 mins.
HTH

[daofan]

Thank you to you both.
The link was really helpful and a bit reassuring really to know they are at the harder end!
I will try some easier papers to make us both feel better.

[bucks mum1]

According to DS - he thought Bright Sparks papers best mirrored the difficulty of the real tests that he took for the Bucks 11+ although I guess you might be using them for a Herts exam.

I hasten to add though that he also found them hard when he first tried them and was only able to score highly on them close to the real day!

[Daogroupie]

Bright Sparks are hard and they are a slightly different style. Our marks went down quite considerably when we first did them but by the time we finished the set we were inside her head and could score well on them. They are great prep for DAO but not to be used too soon because there will be dip in marks at a time when confidence will be key. DG