Help and advice needed please

Eleven Plus (11+) in Kent

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raymae
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:51 pm

Help and advice needed please

Post by raymae »

Hi everyone, My son sat his kent practise test today in verbal and non verbal reasoning. All summer he has been studying so hard with the gl books 2 to 8 (we were told not to get book 1, due to being used for the practise). He has come home in pieces. We have been working on mainly maths, and some verbal over the last few months as the 3 mocks prior to breaking up for the holidays, he had passed with flying colours (140 plus) on the non verbal test. Today he got near on a 140 pass in verbal (fab improvement, so all his hard work very worth while on that) But would of failed at his non verbal ???? (eek) Don't no whats gone wrong? He scored 28 out of the 60 questions, and is really angry and dissapointed in himself, to the point of not wanting to take the test. Ive tried to get him to focus on how well he has done on his other test ... so worried the way his feeling is going to have an impact on his maths test tomorrow and make things even worse on his confidence. (Argh ... what to do) Ive no idea why his finding the one he was strongest at a problem, his saying he just dont get them? Yet scored so high previously, and had no problem with the papers done at home. I think its all just got on top of him and his not thinking straight. God, dont no how to get his confidence back. :cry:
dottie1974
Posts: 192
Joined: Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:36 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by dottie1974 »

Hi raymae.

What great verbal results your son had! Do you know what practice paper it was he did for nvr? If it was nvr paper 1 (or what was previously known as 11a) then that is a really nasty paper - if you death for 11a on here you will see plenty of threads asking for help with it.

Maybe spend time at he weekend doing a different nvr paper to boost your sons confidence.

Lots of TLC and reassurance needed for your son.


I thought the oractpapers were not marked?

Sorry for any errors in typing - i'm trying to do it on my phone..!
raymae
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:51 pm

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by raymae »

Hi, Thanks for the reply. Yes it was paper 1. We only have papers 2 to 8 at home. Is it the most like the actual test then as to why that one seems to be used and harder then the others? They were marked by the school and sent home for us to view x
dottie1974
Posts: 192
Joined: Thu Nov 12, 2009 2:36 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by dottie1974 »

Not that I have sat the 11+. but I am led to believe that 11a is harder than the propert test.

As there is no set pass mark, if it is a pig of a paper then the pass mark for it will be lower anyway.

I don't know why that paper is so hard. strange :?
scarlett
Posts: 3664
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:22 am

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by scarlett »

Was he used to the timings ? My eldest DS ( took the test 2 years ago ) was great at the practice papers , but did really badly in the school practice test taken a couple of days before..I think he just panicked ..interestedly the whole group did the same. However the whole group went on to score 140 in the real thing ...so take heart !

The worse thing is the knock to his confidence and all you can do is remind him that this is a one off. Hopefully he will be back on form with his maths tomorrow and that will give him a boost. Keep us posted !

Oh and pleased to meet you ! :)
raymae
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:51 pm

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by raymae »

Pleased to meet you too :D At school he had a set time (the first 3 tests he took prior to this gl assessment test today) But apparently he is saying those first 3 tests were not multiple choice.) At home I was giving 40 minutes for the whole thing, didnt realise i needed to split each section up into 6 minutes. (feel bad) :( And then when he had such good scores at school and at home, i spent the entire summer hols concentrating on the verbal and maths. x
penguin
Posts: 264
Joined: Fri Oct 21, 2011 3:49 pm

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by penguin »

Hi Raymae - I'm sorry that your son is so upset.

My daughter' NVR scores dipped over the last couple of weeks of the holidays. they're still not as high as some say on this site, but because I always make her do the papers strictly to the allowed time, I'm a lot more upbeat about it now - so is she.



If you and he are confident on the VR and maths scores, then use the remaining time to go over NVR methods and techniques using a time of 6 mins per section - so 30 seconds a question.
If you can, use the NVR app from this site, that lets you choose sets of questions to go over according to their type. it doesn't matter if he gets them wrong initially - you can look at the explanation given for the correct answer and use it to try and apply to a similar question later on. As accuracy improves, move onto addressing the speed of answering.

I have my daughter choose the answer with three diff (made up) speed settings

1) when (we) are learning then describing to me in any silly words what is going on in the pictures and why she's chosen the answer she has

2) no sentence explanation

3) gut guess - 5 seconds max.

I ask her if she has time - does she want to make sure that's the answer she's going for?

I also see that she sometimes has eliminated 1-2 answers because she's not looking at them and I ask her to tell me why - quickfire - then I point to something else and say 'What about this?'

My daughter also had the the GL paper 1s for her assessment - I didn't know that it would be the familiarisation paper otherwise I may have held off giving it to her to do in the holidays to do. she has sat a mock paper elsewhere.

she seems a lot happier about the actual test - which is a good thing.
scarlett
Posts: 3664
Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:22 am

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by scarlett »

I'm sure it's the timings then. The first time I timed DS2 he scored terribly too , and I think with the NVR if you panic it's easy to miss certain things such as shading or direction . We have discussed NVR quite a lot on here and I ( and DS ! ) have come to the conclusion it's better to concentrate and perhaps miss out a couple of questions..but get the others right , then rush to finish and get a lot wrong . It isn't uncommon to miss out a lot of the questions and still score 140. You'll have to practice over the weekend...but if he scored 140 before at least you know he can do the questions !!
raymae
Posts: 74
Joined: Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:51 pm

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by raymae »

Thank you everyone. This is such a stressful time for us parents, crikey no's how stressful it must be on our kiddo's. How do i get to the nvr app on this site? x
Reading Mum
Posts: 1841
Joined: Tue Oct 04, 2011 9:44 am
Location: Reading

Re: Help and advice needed please

Post by Reading Mum »

We have only done 2 GL NVR papers so far and DD scored 68% on paper 1 and then 95% on paper 2 so I have to believe that paper one is a real stinker.

I hope it hasn't knocked confidence too much
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