Hi everyone
Looking ahead to VR, NVR, English and Maths in September 2018...

Just wondering if anyone can give guidance to
1. Topics/ areas for revision/ study for Kent Test (particularly wondering how Kent differs from other counties)
2. Best resources/books for Kent Test


Also - just wondering what people think about Schofield and Sims 11+ books for preparation for Kent Tests.

Thank you all for any help and suggestions.

Hi
I typed a reply yesterday and it seems to have not made it here!

Try the sticky thread on this forum - Kent test materials.
They give very useful tips!

In general bond and cgp practice books are good to build an initial foundation.
Our tutor used AE books and they were good too.
Once the basics are firmly in place most kids do the 10 min tests ...again bond, cgp, first past the post all good.

Last couple of months (we started these middle of July) it's the full test GL papers. 32 in total and we'll worth the time spent in getting the child to do them especially going over corrections.
We also did a few CGP full papers.
So far for Kent, GL have been the exam provider so their papers are a Bible.

There is a lot of material and test packs out there sometimes overwhelming but in the end you will find what suits your child.

Any questions do shout.
We are done this year but happy to stay on and help as others did

Good luck!
Mintan

Thank you

If your child is sitting in 2018 they're not going to have itme to do Bond, CGP all these different publishers.

Bet the test is still set by GL in2018 so buy all 32 gl familiarisation papers and the Practise and Pass series books 1 and 2 for each subject as they teach the GL papers, and also get the GL assessment "how to" ...

I fyou need more maths then yes use Schofield and Sims mental arithmetic series if your child doesn't lose the will to live every time you get the book out. Buy the teacher's manual to help you skip through the series and focus on weak maths topics.

No particular topics to focsu on overall though - just the ones you discover by working through this lot need working on.

Then if it turns out to be CEM you'll have time to do some of the CEM stuff that crops up in the summer holiday if you've done your GL prep well you will be in good stead.

If I'd known then what I know now...

I used data from last year to turn GL paper raw data into standardised scores. Most of our gains were made in the first two or three months, after which we reached a very good plateau. But we could have saved six months of hard work by starting later. The later months were good for exam technique. They either have the basic intellect to do the test, or they don't. No amount of tutoring will change that.

Although Sparklecat that does assume that there are no gaps in the teaching, for some children you might find gaps which need to be filled before you start practising. I think that this particularly applies to maths and there might be some questions on algebra and ratio from yr 6 syllabus. I agree though that once gaps have been plugged there are diminishing returns with lots of practice for normal grammar school, for the highest marks for a super selective you might want to work on more practice papers to iron out the tendency 10yr olds have for silly errors.

I think the CGP books are v good and more stretching than, say Bond, but Bond VR more relevant for the Kent test (still worth doing the CGP books but do keep in mind that the % scores are likely to be significantly lower on CGP than either Bond or GL). The greatest gains in scores we saw was during the Summer hols.

Agree, should have spent more time on the GL papers; we did a fair few but could have done more. The 10-minute (CGP) books are good to have up your sleeve during the Summer. Doing 1 each of Maths, English, VR and NVR - 40 minutes plust 20 minutes time to go over corrections is not too taxing or boring for the kids.

The GL papers don't, as far as I recall, cover any spatial reasoning so worth looking into this separately. Also found the First Past the Post and Lett's tests good for getting a feel for the speed required and how the tests are generally structured. Most of the tests are split into shorter sections - i.e. kids will not be expected to do 50-minute English in one go.

I wish I had focused much more on vocab. Although DC is a good reader he never asked what words meant and he would have hated to stop in mid-flow reading to make a note of unfamiliar words. So focus on vocab to help comprehension and with the VR sections (including Cloze). We found the Whizz card games good and easy to use (doing this whilst eating breakfast!).

It's been said before but make sure that you go over any mistakes properly. It's easy to fall into the trap of just wanting to move on quickly but getting the basics drilled down is key so that you don't waste time on getting your child to do questions he or she is good at but instead focusing on their areas of weakness. Common sense but easy to forget how important this is so as not to waste your time.

Good luck!

Why bother with Bond? Why not just get all the 32 familiarisation papers instead? Yes, forgot to say throw in some spatial work too. It is the surprise element of the GL papers in Kent tht is not covered in the familiarisation papers.

I don't think you can turn the work you did at home into standardised scores either nor know how your child would have done on the day if they hadn't practised.

One could debate long and hard whether to work for it or not, but if one does, it makes the most sense to use the papers which have been designed to include all the question types there could be in a test set by GL (other than spatial).

I give the children post-it note tabs to put in the margin by any unfamiliar words and then we go through them together another time. Helps with pronunciation too.

We used the CGP books more earlier on, particularly worded maths and comprehension. They are quicker than a whole gl paper but still highlight gaps. For the maths I identified questions which she got wrong on a gl paper and then rewrote the questions - e.g. swapping sweets for apples and changing the numbers so she could have more focus on the weaker topics. I think that is one of the key skills for the GL maths - learning to ignore the noise.

Great idea with the post-it notes though not sure my DS would have actually done it! I wish we had read more together but he so loves reading on his own;) We did find having a Kindle Paperwhite e-reader (i.e. no other functionality than reading) really useful as you can press a word and a definition pops up. This word is then saved in their own vocabulary list which you can go through afterwards.

Still think some of the Bond VR e.g. code questions etc useful but we almost entirely used CGP until the Summer when we mixed things up a bit with FPTP, Letts etc. Only doing GL papers might get a bit tedious for the kids although we probably should have started doing them earlier (maybe around April/May whereas we only started doing some of them during the Summer hols) but then as DS was also sitting Bexley (CEM), we didn't want to focus too much on GL/Kent! Also bear in mind that some GL test packs are older plus they do differ in level of difficulty. On the whole, DS would get between 20-30% higher score on the GL papers compared with the CGP.

Meant to say that the GL familirisation papers really useful (shame we only discovered them very late in the day): https://www.gl-assessment.co.uk/products/11plus-series-11-plus-practice-papers/11plus-familiarisation-materials/