Reading Boys - What was the pattern this year?

[earleymom]

Hi all,

Could you please tell about the friday's tests?

Was it VR/NVR or mixture of both? English is usually tough. How was the paper this year?? Were there cloze tests this year? And how many comprehension passages? Were they easy(!)?

Thanks for sharing the info..

[aliportico]

We'll be able to talk about it more in January, after any late tests and the boarders' test has been taken. I've taken a few notes from DS

[earleymom]

Sorry, didn't know that the exams are not completely over. Will wait..

[pndt.snl]

@ aliportico

I believe the Boarders exam is done on 5th jan
Can we start discussions on the test pattern & diffiulty level.
Would appreciate inputs from parents ..
Thnx

[Bmumof3]

Dear earleymom,

My DS sat the Reading exam on November 18th. He said the reasoning paper was all VR (all those hours spent working on NVR!!) and was relatively straight forward but had a lot of those long logic type questions - but it was about 40 questions to complete in approximately 1 hour so he had sufficient time.

The English paper had a comprehension segment (a poem and a short information text), followed by a section where they had to pick out incorrectly punctuated sentences, a section on synonyms and another in which they had to select the correct word to complete a sentence.

He found the Maths paper the most challenging (although it was all KS2 material) and thought it was harder than the IPS and GL Assessment papers we had used for practice.

Best of luck to all of you preparing for the exam this year!

[eka]

Hello,

I dont have much to add on the previous email as I had the same feedback from my son on what the papers contained. However my sons strongest subject is maths and he found the paper 'easy' however was challenged by the other papers!!! he said compared to practise papers we had done in maths he found it less of a challenge. I guess it goes to show they are all different! But he was disappointed with no NVR again a stronger of his subjects......so I am not holding my breath that he has done enough in his VR and English!!

All the best.

ps. I found the poem online that was used in the comprehension, so if you would like further details I can look for it again and let you know.

[stevew61]

Bmumof3 and eka,

Welcome to the forum thanks for the feedback and good luck for 1st March!

[eka]

Thank you stevew61.

[aliportico]

I jotted down the numbers that my son gave me:

Maths - 50 q's, 1 hour, 4 choices
English - 50 q's, 45 minutes, 4 choices
Reasoning - verbal + maths/logic - 40 q's, 40 minutes, 5 choices

He thought the Maths was simple (but he got a gold medal in the PMC final in Y5, so in theory shouldn't have had any trouble with it!), and the reasoning was fine (several logic-y questions about e.g. x people painting half a house in y days and so on - maths in his mind, therefore no problem).

BUT the English sounded tough and I doubt from what he's told me that he can have done well enough overall to get an offer. He found the 'fill in a word' questions really difficult - e.g. Mary's refined pallet/palate/pallette/pallatte meant that she enjoyed fine foods. Definitely harder than the practice questions we'd done.

Anyway, good luck everyone - I have done very well ignoring the issue for the last couple of months, but I can feel the tension mounting again now as 1 March approaches.

[Complete Novice]

Just thought I'd mention that it looks like they are reusing papers or at least questions as the question you mentioned was one that my son also had on his entrance paper a few years ago! My son got it right but my friend's son ,whose father is a doctor was so used to seeing the word palate that he got confused. I wouldn't worry too much Aliportico, my son was found that paper tough and still got a place. I'm sure that most of the boys will have much lower marks on that one.

Best of luck

CN