Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

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Manana
Posts: 710
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 3:22 pm

Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by Manana »

I'm just being nosy and seeing where we're all up to!

DS is in Y5 and sitting the Essex exam this year. At the moment, each week we're doing...

Maths
We've been through the 3rd Bond Maths books and are on paper 5 of the 4th ones. His times tables are pretty secure, but I'd like to get him faster at long multiplication. This is probably his strongest subject, but he can sometimes make silly mistakes and needs reminding to read the questions properly!

English
We've worked through the Bond second and third English papers and done the third comprehension ones. We're on the 4th paper of the fourth English Bond book now. We're also doing some spelling work and trying to play word games, too.

VR
We've worked through the IPS question techniques, the starter papers and the 30 minute tests as well as the AFN papers and the first (yellow) Learning Lab paper. He's just done his first 'timed' 50 minute paper today-which was the first Tutors paper from this site and he got 62/80. I don't know if this was good or not really for a first effort, but he was happy about doing it and pleased that he finished with a little time to spare which was a good confidence boost! There were none of the long code questions that he detests and slow him down though...! I think we'll carry on working through the Tutors ones for now.

Can I ask what other Y5s are doing for 11+ prep to see if I'm on the right lines (this is my first DC to take the test). I am leaving the Maths and VR to him to do and then working through errors together afterwards which seems to be working well, whereas we've been doing the English together if I can to try to get him to talk through his answers as we go. I don't know if this is right or not!

Those of you that have tutors (or are a seasoned pro!)-can I ask if this is what your children are doing? Or should I be setting him 3 independent papers a week and then do separate intensive 'tutoring' with him on top of this?!!

Many thanks if you made it to the end of that lengthy tome!
willow_catkin
Posts: 144
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 4:49 pm

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by willow_catkin »

Good grief, you are miles ahead of me! We are just thinking of starting and certainly will not progress to full papers for a while - DS' attention span would not last that long!

Planning to do lots of short bites, go thro the 21 types of VR and work out his strengths and weaknesses and focus on the latter primarily. I have lots of 10 and 15 min papers for him to do; we are planning 1 hour a week to start with and then will ramp up in September to full test papers every day (homework will be abandoned for the first weeks of term).

Best of luck :)
Manana
Posts: 710
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 3:22 pm

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by Manana »

willow_catkin wrote:Good grief, you are miles ahead of me! We are just thinking of starting and certainly will not progress to full papers for a while - DS' attention span would not last that long!

Planning to do lots of short bites, go thro the 21 types of VR and work out his strengths and weaknesses and focus on the latter primarily. I have lots of 10 and 15 min papers for him to do; we are planning 1 hour a week to start with and then will ramp up in September to full test papers every day (homework will be abandoned for the first weeks of term).

Best of luck :)

Oh dear-I've probably started far too soon then; I said I didn't know what I was doing! The Essex exam has been moved from November to September which has panicked me-when is your exam?
Reading Mum
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Location: Reading

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by Reading Mum »

We are working through all 35 VR types in Susan D as that is relevant for us. No Maths or English tested here which is a shame as DD is a Maths geek!
have various NVR things that we are sampling at the mo. we have done a couple of test a day and 10 min tests but that is it so far. We test on 1st Oct.
Manana
Posts: 710
Joined: Wed Mar 09, 2011 3:22 pm

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by Manana »

Reading Mum wrote:We are working through all 35 VR types in Susan D as that is relevant for us. No Maths or English tested here which is a shame as DD is a Maths geek!
have various NVR things that we are sampling at the mo. we have done a couple of test a day and 10 min tests but that is it so far. We test on 1st Oct.
Thanks for the reply;it's helpful to see what others are doing.

Do you mean you've done a couple of full tests a day!?
Reading Mum
Posts: 1841
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:44 am
Location: Reading

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by Reading Mum »

Nooooo! There is a book of 'test a day' which only have about 10 questions in. Just used when we really don't have time but I don't want it to get forgotten :)
willow_catkin
Posts: 144
Joined: Wed Jan 05, 2011 4:49 pm

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by willow_catkin »

Our test is Oct 6th.

Did not start til May with DD last year but she was much more highly motivated.

The bribery seems to be working well with DS for now tho .....
heartmum
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Joined: Fri Oct 02, 2009 1:35 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by heartmum »

We are working through the 21 VR types as that are relevant for us in Bucks. In addition, DC is learning the recommended words (thanks Patricia for a fab list :D ) to help with his vocab.

Our test in Bucks is the beginning of October :shock: , so I'm now starting to up the practice papers to help with speed and accuracy. I haven't moved onto the harder papers yet, i.e. Susan Daughtrey as I don't want to zap his confidence.

I've also put together word lists of my own, i.e. capital cities, old currency, oceans, rivers, languages, etc; words that he may not come across in his reading books but may crop up in the 11+.
Heartmum x x x
DIY Mum
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Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2007 10:08 pm
Location: Not in a hole in the ground but in a land where once they dwelt-the Beormingas

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by DIY Mum »

My dc4 has her exam (for B'ham KEGs) in the second week of September.

So far, she's been going steadily through the Bond books (maths, eng and nvr); developing her vocabulary and spelling and doing a couple of tests per week.
earleymom
Posts: 48
Joined: Fri Feb 18, 2011 2:45 pm

Re: Nosy question-what are your Y5 children currently doing?

Post by earleymom »

Hi All,

Hope its alright to re-open this thread to find out what other Y5 DC are doing at the moment.

DS does a daily 10 min test (bond/IPS) on all 4 subjects in the morning.

Other than that, reinforcing topics in Maths, Punctuation, grammar, spelling and of course Vocab :x - keep looking back at the long list of unknown words we've collected.

VR - gone through the types and doing similar type questions from various books. NVR - some more types to cover, but again doing similar questions of the same type from all the books I've hoarded.

Have not started proper papers yet, but, trying various short tests(Inde and other free practice papers)

Is that good enough?
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