Bond books and Kent Test

[mystery]

I don't know - but I'm assuming that it would be better than not to be prepared to be level 5 in reading comprehension and SPAG by the end of year 5 - not writing of course.

It sounds impossible from our school!

The GL English practice papers don't look a million miles different from this though. Oh well.

[anotherworriedmum]

My view was always that it is eleven PLUS so we did the books aimed at age 11 onwards.

[DaddyOh]

My feeling is they are unlikely to include any advanced topics. I think it more likely they will differentiate based on speed and accuracy on the topics that all children are likely to have covered, I think anything else would be very unfair especially since there is no fixed KS2 topic order so it's impossible to know what will or wont have been covered by the end of year 5 in each school.

Personally I'd concentrate on the earlier books and getting 100% confident with those. If it's like previous years you will only require around 50% on the paper to pass so the time spent learning advanced topics that are unlikely to be more than a single question, if they come up at all, may be better spent on making sure they can get everything in the earlier books correct and not make silly mistakes or panic.

All of that assumes you are looking for a pass, if you're looking for top marks to get into a super-selective then I guess you will want to be 100% confident with earlier books and cover more advanced topics too.


DaddyOh

[fatbananas]

If it's like previous years you will only require around 50% on the paper to pass DaddyOh

Thanks DaddyOh. I had no idea it was around 50%. That seems a staggeringly low figure? Presumably, you have to be incredibly quick, which is why it's a low passmark?

[Oblique]

Looking at previous threads in the Kent section which discuss raw scores in relation to standardised scores, it seems that a maximum standardised score could be achieved with a raw score in the region of 75-80%. I have also seen stats somewhere (can't find them now) which relate scores of 120 to raw scores of around 55%. I am therefore working on 60% as being a minimum that DS1 needs to achieve!

But back to your original question, FB.... We don't use the Bond books, simply because I had already purchased Maths on Target 5 and 6 before finding this site, as they had been recommended by DS1's year 4 Maths teacher. They seem to be broadly curriculum based and cover most of what I have seen in the GL practice papers. There is a lot of repetition of the basics, presented in a variety of ways. I didn't buy the answer papers initially as I thought I could work out the answers myself. However, the time to do so was an issue so I have recently invested.

Comprehension is DS1's weakest link so I am trying to get him to read widely. We bought him a Kindle for Christmas and the dictionary function allows DS to look up words without spoiling the flow of the story. What resources are you using to prepare for English?

May still seems an awfully long time away, yet September feels frighteningly imminent!

[mystery]

Yes, the Judd website used to give details of all this kind of thing and the raw score to pass is low and around 50% ish.

Don't know in the new test if this will have changed. I think it would be sensible to try and cover level 5 material if you can for lots of different reasons.

[fatbananas]

Well, I've just had an email saying Bond have been bought by OUP, just to add to the confusion about publishers ....