It is sooo quiet in here!

[serendippyty]

Anyone else around and using the forum? Anyone else got a child sitting this September and how are you feeling?

[Reading Mum]

My DD is sitting 11+ 1st October this year - not in your area though. It is very quiet on the forum as people already have their places for the coming year or are in the midst of appeal ****. Those of us working towards next year probably don't have much to say yet - apart from how many more grey hairs they have than they did at Christmas

[yummycool]

Hi I was thinking the same...its all prep and more prep at the moment for us

I have a dd sitting in Sept and it seems like a long way away - but in reality with the time left to prepare, not long enough!

We are trying to find as many pockets of time to do a little bit whenever we can - we're reading, chatting and laughing so not all stressful or bad. Infact dd said we are spending more time together than before the 11+ prep (have to admit this made me feel guilty).

All the postings for places will be us next March!!

[ginx]

There don't seem to be many comments in the Warwickshire region.

Maybe there aren't many children sitting the 11+ ... or maybe they are all so confident they don't need advice!

My dd is not looking forward to it, she scores 70-85% VR/NVR Bond, but only 50% on maths and GL papers. I'm wondering if she has a chance ... or not. I've posted on another page, are there any practice books particularly helpful for Warwickshire. I'm planning to practice in the holidays (presumably like others) but have got to negotiate first! RHS first choice, Ashlawn Grammar second, Ashlawn third choice ... any views on Harris? We don't go to church so don't think we'd get in, I'm not sure about its academic results either. Does anyone know if Harris is starting a sixth form?

[Okanagan]

Maybe there aren't many children sitting the 11+ ... or maybe they are all so confident they don't need advice!

Just a byproduct of not knowing much about what's going to be in the exam / the format of it I think. So we all know we're just as much in the dark as each other! According to ds's school they've got more taking it this year than they've ever had before - so expect the number of candidates to be high, although the number of places has increased too for all the Warwickshire grammars except KES Stratford.

Not sure about particular practice books - our approach is just to do a bit of as many different styles/formats as possible and assume that they'll come up with something new in an attempt to throw everyone who has been practising using the traditional books/formats. The 3d cubes / nets have been around for a few years now, so perhaps they'll introduce something else from the spatial reasoning type of questions which are sometimes used in aptitude tests - 3d rotations or broken shapes maybe? Or the orientation type questions they use for the Army/Air Force officer recruitment tests? Or anything else you can think of which isn't part of the conventional 11+ repetoire. "Expect the unexpected" probably sums up the approach for the Warwickshire tests.

Practice over the holidays for us too - but more on the time management / maintaining concentration through the length of the exam / oddball question types than much of the conventional practice material. Plus more of the comprehension and cloze work, and you can never have enough vocabulary - so sites like freerice and synonym toast. And random related words lists - e.g. came across a question this morning which had gallery, stalls and wings as parts of a theatre, which ds didn't get - so will be devising some other lists along those lines.

[ginx]

Hi okanagan, how nice to know somebody else is looking on here.

Thanks for the advice. I think you're right about 3d rotations for NVR. My dd reads a lot and doesn't seem to find clozes too difficult ... I shouldn't say that. To be honest I don't think she will pass anyway, so we're just encouraging her to get as high a score as possible so she goes into a top/near top stream of whichever school she goes to. This is all new to us! Interesting you say you think more children than ever are taking the 11+ - how do you know? I am interested to hear from my dd's friends that they all think they are going to a grammar school. I've told my dd not to discuss papers (as I've read on here, it's all very secretive). She said all the girls discuss which papers they are practising! Most (not some!) girls in lower groups think they will get to a grammar school too. Many have tutors. This is not a private school so it seems competition is high just within our primary school. My dd continues with Bond 10 minutes, GL papers. Sometimes she does very well and gets 90% ... sometimes she gets 50% ... she says it's just luck if questions come up that she finds easy. Which will be the case in the actual exam.

For a lazy child, she is surprisingly keen to practise. She doesn't want to fail if her friends pass, and of course she would like to go to the same school as her friends.

Thanks for just proving to me there is someone else in Warwickshire on here!

[Okanagan]

Interesting you say you think more children than ever are taking the 11+ - how do you know?

I don't on a wider scale - but our primary head said they'd never had to sign so many 11+ application forms in a single year before.

[ginx]

It's worrying if there is so much competition!

The sample questions in maths and vr look fine; the nonvr looks impossible. Better get my dd to work harder!

[madparent]

I get the feeling that the numbers applying will be higher this year. In part, because I have heard of at least two families who are trying to move their children out of fee-paying schools because of the strain of paying the fees.

[Okanagan]

It's worrying if there is so much competition!

The sample questions in maths and vr look fine; the nonvr looks impossible. Better get my dd to work harder!

As well as the Warwickshire sample question papers you can find another short 2012 CEM sample here. The format may vary a bit to the Warwickshire one, but it has some NVR matrix type questions which are different to those which have been on the Warwickshire samples up to now so maybe worth looking at for familiarisation.