11 Plus Exams Forum

Hello all
I found this fantastic forum 3 years ago when DD1 was doing 11 plus. She is now in year 9 having passed then. This year is DD2's turn so I have lurked all year and got lots of useful advice and materials. Second time around is definitely more stressful so have finally registered for a bit of handholding. DD2 is April born and consistently getting 65-70 on Bright Sparks, Walsh and GL, so aware we are on the edge!
My query is regarding the Pack 2 GL Assessment papers - what do you all think of them? I got them thinking they would also be "close to the real thing" so useful in this last lap but they are riddled with errors - eg answer sheet for paper 6 has no box at all for ques 6 - and some of the vocab is a bit odd.

Any views, thanks

EC

Everythingcrossed wrote:I got them thinking they would also be "close to the real thing" so useful in this last lap but they are riddled with errors - eg answer sheet for paper 6 has no box at all for ques 6 - and some of the vocab is a bit odd.

I think "riddled with errors" is perhaps an exaggeration. The answer box for 6/6 is indeed missing, but that is the only actual error I have found. I think I would describe them more as "slightly eccentric" compared to Pack 1.

They are valuable on two particular counts, which is that they contain HIKNOS questions, which Pack 1 does not, and they are also 80 questions when Pack 1 contains 85.

The eccentricities are that some of the papers have 4 Type Z questions on them, the order of the questions differs from most other practice papers and there are occasional questions that pose quite a challenge.

The vocab isn't particularly obscure - perhaps 4 or 5 questions that made me raise my eyebrows: haul+age, least - wet becomes "last" and "welt", "green is to envious" as "yellow is to cowardly". Some of it is challenging though.

The one thing that I didn't like about them is that the Type Zs on Paper 6 are in the format "Only one of the statements cannot be true". That creates some double negatives (e.g. "Maddy did not have the lowest mark") and they are very hard to get your mind around. As far as I am aware this question type does not appear in any other practice materials so I would be inclined to cross them off, reduce the time accordingly and take a child through them separately after the test.

P.S. I will move this to Verbal Reasoning so it can be accessed more readily by those from other areas.

Thanks for such a swift reply - I agree. I guess I meant oddities/eccentricities more than errors - my brain is starting to dissolve! We also thought the Zs were odd too....................but I guess if they were to throw one into the real thing then forewarned.............

Everythingcrossed wrote:but I guess if they were to throw one into the real thing then forewarned.............

If that should happen my advice would be to ignore the option that is a double negative and work with the remaining four. If all of those can definitely be ruled out, the double negative must then be the answer. If time permits the child can spend time trying to see why.

They also use some 3 stage type K bracket maths. I have started regularly showing my children examples so as not to throw them.

Patricia

We are also finding GL pack2 difficult. We are stuck on two questions in Test 6. One is question 24 Z type question that I was unable to explain to my dc. I do not know how three children cannot have same number.i.e. the group with even numbers.
Any clues please?

Since no one has replied.. I gave it another go.
Only 3 children can have same score are the ones with even scores. But One child(Chloe) has a score of 4 or less and there must be one with score of 6(as winner though question is not very clear on that) so three children with even scores cannot have same score.
Does anyone else has other ideas?

Hi ninja11

Sorry, I missed this post yesterday. I think you are pretty much there on solving it, although I think it is more through instinct than ruthless logic! For the benefit of others I will type the question out:

Freddie, Chloe, Finn, Jess and Anna are playing a game where you roll a die.
The winner had a score of 6.
Jess scored more than Chloe.
Only Anna, Freddie and Chloe had even scores.

If these statements are true, only one of the sentences below cannot be true.

Which one?

A Jess and Finn score the same.

B Finn did not get the lowest score.

C Three people got the same score.

D Jess scored more than Freddie.

E Freddie and Chloe together scored 10.

It is a nasty question, but there is a quick trick to solving it, which is that you can rule out all the options except C simply because you do not have enough information to prove them either way.

If time permits it is then a matter of verifying that C really is the option that cannot be true. Laying the information out in a quick grid as follows makes it clearer. Each child could score 1 - 6:

Only Anna, Freddie and Chloe had even scores, which reduces the options as follows.
Add to that the information that the winner scored 6, and therefore must be one of Anna, Freddie or Chloe, and it is now clear that three people cannot have got the same score.

Hope that helps,

Sally-Anne

P.S. Which is the other question you were stuck on?

Dear Sally-Anne
Many thanks for your detailed reply. It was helpful indeed.
It is tricky to rule out each option within a minute or two. I had to think hard over it.

ninja11 wrote:It is tricky to rule out each option within a minute or two. I had to think hard over it.

As did I when I first saw it, and also question 23 above it! I glazed over with both of them at first, possibly because of the "cannot be true" statement.

The one advantage with the questions that are in the format "one of these statements must (or) cannot be true" is that you can often narrow down the options simply by using the technique of saying "I know I don't have enough information to prove that".

It can often provide enough certainty to reduce the odds of a successful guess to 50/50. As an emergency tactic it is worth remembering.