11 Plus Exams Forum

I just wondered if people know the make or break parts of the test.

EG NVR is hard - if any child was presented with that without any former warning it would present an issue for them.

I know they try and trick students with similar sounding words someone mentioned popular and poplar.

Is there anything on the Maths side or any other area where its notoriously hard please.

People also keep mentioning for DIYers a time table.
What sort of time table?

We have printed off some past papers - and intend a bit nearer the time, giving dd one to go through on a weekend. Then any issues that crop up - she can learn there and then what to do eg, not sure about missing angle size...
I intend on giving her lots of nvr to do - so she feels 100% confident on those..But aside from this I'm not sure what else I should be doing?

She is already avid reader - brilliant spelling, words fabulous - I have 11+ high frequency words we go through as well ...

I feel in limbo because she graps things really quickly, she works quickly but If we start to do too much now - she may forget it by the time of the test!

I don't think anyone will know because the test is new this year so going by what was perceived to be hard before isn't going to help. It is of course a standardised test so relative difficulty is sorted out in the standardisation process anyway.

The general advice is to keep it relatively light-touch, so little and often. You might want to consider a timetable but if you go down that route, construct your own with your daughter's help and buy-in. Far better than imposing a daunting set of strict times that quickly becomes a chore. You will find that there are times when a little bit of preparation (10 minutes here and there) fits seamlessly into family routine and when your daughter is willing and times when it doesn't and she isn't, so go with the flow. I put up a big whiteboard in our kitchen and put a few questions on it every night and my daughter would sit and do them in her head over breakfast. She clocked up hours that way but she never really considered it to be tuition, it was just part of the breakfast routine. That whiteboard has seen us through secondary school and is currently full of chemical equations and maths problems ahead of A level!

Don't worry about her forgetting things, she won't. It's not a memory test, it's more about making her comfortable and confident with how to approach the question types and to remain calm when confronted with something she won't have come across before.

Thanks Another Dad - the white board idea is a revelation!

TheHurdle wrote:Thanks Another Dad - the white board idea is a revelation!

Yeah, it was for anothermum too. Any spare space around the chemical equations and algebra is taken up with instructions for me. The equations might be balanced but I'm not convinced the workload is:

"Empty the dishwasher"
"Clean the toilet"
"Vacuum the living room"
"Collect the parcel from the sorting office"
"Love you x"

Just think of all the room on the damned board when my daughter goes off to university. I won't be on here as much, that's for sure...

You can write on it too anotherdad!!

I suppose I could try.

Actually, I've missed a trick. I'm taller than anothermum and good at DIY

Actually, I think your daughter will need it at uni as she's found it so useful

I know that my DS found one invaluable to keep a track on assignments and any shopping he needed.

A large hallway mirror seems to double up as a white board in this house.

As for the test, no one knows what the Bucks test will bring, but every DC will find different bits easy and other bits hard. My own DD didn’t need any explanation of NVR stuff really and just dived straight in. Some of the VR stuff however she just needed to understand what the question was about, and then was fine, other VR questions she had to practise. One of her friends never really took to NVR.

Tinkers wrote:A large hallway mirror seems to double up as a white board in this house.

Especially good for reflective learning, I suppose?

I'll get my coat

I third recommend the white board! Anotherdad recommended it to me last year when I was preparing my DS for his 11+. It was great to brush up on his vocabulary and we chose a couple of new words everyday and discussed their meanings. Some words stayed on the board for weeks

I DIY’ed my DS and didn’t really focus on the hard/easy questions as such. I just wanted to cover all the topics that he needed for the test. I did that by using the Bonds books as a guide and roughly worked what needed to be done by when. Also my DS still hates NVR and still doesn’t ‘get it’.