11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi -

These may sound incompatible but are the two places my daughter really falls down.....

1. Speed.... She isnt yet fast. Apart from practice, are there any key techniques for speeding up??? Im teaching her quick ways of multiplying things eg... x 25 is easiest if x 100 and divide by 4...... but am wondering what else I can do

2. Accuracy. She quite often on simple ones will get a handful wrong because she's forgotten one stage of the calculation.... as soon as I say, do check that one, she catches this. What advice would you give about checking in the exam? And therefore practising now.... Im thinking it would help if she writes her working out out very clearly and then only checks it all when she's finished the paper - putting little ? next to those to check first, as I imagine she wont have time to do them all

Love your thoughts - especially as this is my first time and so many of you are very expert!

Thanks

Love your advice

This is a current challenge

My daughter is relatively good at maths - 4c/5a at the end of year 5.....but goes into a panic when she cant easily see how to do a question.

Im trying to encourage her to have a voice saying .... hmm, Im sure I can do some of this... I wonder which bit I can do.... but it aint working yet!!!

When I do slow her down and explore it with her, she often works out the solution with very little prompting.... tis just a question of calming her mind and giving herself to think around it I believe....

Recurring challenge... and of course my fear is she will panic in the exam!!! What advice for both now.. and of course a lifetime of challenges!

Huge thanks

loveyouradvice wrote:My daughter is relatively good at maths-4c/5a at the end of year 5.....but goes into a panic when she cant easily see how to do a question.

Do you mean 4a/5c?

4c is low level 4

5a is high level 5

Which level is she at?

She needs to estimate any answer before doing calculations. The school should be teaching problem solving strategies e.g. looking for key words.

When checking through her work she doesn't have to do the every sum in detail for a second time, it is easier (and quicker) than that.

For example if she was checking the answer to 38 x 43, she could round it to 40 x 40 so the answer is roughly 1,600. So if she looks at her original answer and finds it wildly different to this, then it needs a very detailed check to get it right.

My old physics teacher drummed the phrase "is it of the right order of magnitude?" into my head, what he meant in simple terms was if the answer should be in the 1000's then an answer in the 100's is clearly wrong.