Tips for the Following Question Type

Advice on 11 Plus VR papers and problems

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Colourful-Rainbow
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:07 pm

Tips for the Following Question Type

Post by Colourful-Rainbow »

In GL Assessment papers there is a question type called 'Solve the Riddle' (it's a problem solving type), the questions end with: 'If these statements are true, only one of the sentences below must be true' Which one?'. There are usually only 2 or 3 of them in the entire paper. They often take a long time to work out so does anyone know some tips for this question type? Thank you! :)
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Re: Tips for the Following Question Type

Post by patricia »

As only 1 mark is given per question, and these questions [known as Zs] often take a long time, always take a random guess and leave until all other questions have been answered.

Be careful of the wording, some say which statement MUST be true and others which statement CANNOT be true.

Use diagrams and tables showing all the information. Ring key words, must, cannot, year after next, twice the amount, all but Alice , all except john etc etc.

Practice, practice, practice.

Patricia
Colourful-Rainbow
Posts: 70
Joined: Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:07 pm

Re: Tips for the Following Question Type

Post by Colourful-Rainbow »

patricia wrote:As only 1 mark is given per question, and these questions [known as Zs] often take a long time, always take a random guess and leave until all other questions have been answered.

Be careful of the wording, some say which statement MUST be true and others which statement CANNOT be true.

Use diagrams and tables showing all the information. Ring key words, must, cannot, year after next, twice the amount, all but Alice , all except john etc etc.

Practice, practice, practice.

Patricia
Thank you, we'll do that. :D
Sally-Anne
Posts: 9235
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:10 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: Tips for the Following Question Type

Post by Sally-Anne »

A few more thoughts. For any questions in the format "one statement must be true" that require the child to add up all the numbers (e.g. "the children picked 98 blackberries between them"), ignore the option and only come back to it if no other option works. The addition involved is designed to slow them down.

Where the questions are not in the format where you have to find the one true statement out of five, the following helps.

- Go straight to the question to find out what you are being asked for. That often eliminates superfluous information such as "John went the the gym 3 times a week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday." If the question is "Who went exercised most often?" the days of the week are irrelevant. The extra information is given simply to make the question harder.

- "Find the fact." In the vast majority of these questions there will be a fact buried somewhere, e.g. John got £5.00 pocket money. From that you can build to find the rest of the facts you need, but children do need to be taught what a "fact" is - they will often light upon a relative inference (e.g. Alice got twice as much as Susan) rather than an absolute fact.

BTW, these questions are often described as "Type Z", and if you search the VR section that may dig up quite a few past posts about them.
Marylou
Posts: 2164
Joined: Sat Feb 25, 2006 2:21 am

Re: Tips for the Following Question Type

Post by Marylou »

Sally-Anne wrote:"Find the fact."
We also use this technique and have found that it saves a lot of time. My DS and his friend preparing with him look for the "killer statement". :lol:
Marylou
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