11 Plus Exams Forum

Exam's in Jan and we've been practising since Sep.

According to his school/teachers etc, he's pretty bright in Maths and will achieve Sats Level 5 with no problems. Always tops his class etc

For that reason we'd only been concentrating on NR and NVR. He now gets pretty high scores in these.

So tried the first Maths paper on Saturday (11D) and he got less than half right. I was gutted. I thought he would not struggle in Maths hence leaving the paper to the end.

Sat him down and went through the papers. I think he struggled to understand the wording of the questions but once i explained to him what they were asking he knew what to do.

So sat the same paper again today and he only got about 4 wrong.

Is this the correct method to approach this? i.e. let him do the paper, go through the ones he didn't understand and get him to do the paper again.

What's your view on this folks?

Ta muchly

Hi Yus,

We didnt have to do maths, so I may not be the best person to give advice. However, I think its very important to go over mistakes, and find out why they are happening, so that reinforcement can be given in areas that are weak.

With maths I think its even more imprtant to do this, as with maths, the more you practice the better you get.

Welcome muchly.

Practising some KS2 test papers might help with the problem solving I will PM a link to you.

Hi Yus786

Ouch - that's a nasty surprise at this stage!

You should certainly go through the paper with him to look at the errors, and check that he understands what went wrong.

With time being so short, I would tend not to get him to do the same paper again straight away, but move on to another one and then check that he is still applying principles that he has learned.

That will give him maximum exposure to the different question types and techniques.

For reassurance though, you might like to slip one or two papers back in a week later, to see if he can do better on the second occasion.

Sally-Anne

How about after you've gone through the paper and done the corrections with him - you leave that particular paper for a couple of days and then reintroduce having amended the numbers on it?

That way he still needs to think about the question but the caculation process and the wording is still the same, also I got my DS initially to underline certain/ crucial words in the question so that we were sure that he had read the whole question.

There is still time for him to improve so don't stress otherwise you may find he picks up on this which may dent his confidence which, at this stage, you don't want him to doubt his own ability.

Try doing maybe 10 or so questions each day for a week till he gets the hang of understanding what the questions are actually asking then get him to do them timed.

Regards
Coolomum

Hi Yus 786

Have sent you a PM!!

Coolmum

Thanks all for the advises.

I'm gonna leave maths for a couple of days and then maybe do half or a third of 11C

Don't know about Maths but VR and Specially NVR 11D papers are very tough, more difficult than other three. Try Maths 11A, your child might find it easier than 11D.

sats level 5 is easy....DS could do all the three sats papers and the mental maths in about 1 hr without a calculator....wouldn't rely on what the teachers are saying....11+ and sats are two completely different ball games....

Should have been practicing maths a while ago

Hi coolmum and guest55 could you both pm the link to me,I need resources to help my DS with word problems.
Thx.