complete panic, help! which papers, which way to prepare

[goldengirl]

Hi everyone.
After being quite chilled out about prep for 11+ I am now in completely up the wall
!
Been supporting DD with verbal and non verbal reasoning books by Peter Williams. DD seems ok with non verbal.
Gets good marks going through the books, but I have received helpful advice from the Lincs forum that I should abandon the books and just do the papers. I tried a paper with her yesterday=it was good advice as she struggled with time and generally sitting for a length of time without having answers checked.She seemed disheartened afterwards.
I am still worrying though that if I concentrate on the papers it might just make her panic and that the books will increase her confidence..
Running out of time and completely beside myself that I have failed her=started preps in June and seemed to be going well at just one set of questions a day but now realise that I should have done more.
Please advice re emergency prep!
Very many thanks and good luck

[ginx]

Hi goldengirl

In a similar situation ... we've done lots of 10 minute Bond papers and some GL papers in all areas ... but my dd has lots of weak areas and I don't know what to concentrate on. Somebody suggested on here to concentrate on NVR at this late stage.

My dd consistently achieves 50-60% in GL papers. I don't think that is enough to pass. But she doesn't struggle with time, just races through a 50 minute paper in half an hour or so.

I'm not sure anybody can pass with 60%. But I am glad to hear you've received advice to do papers, I think that's what we should do too!

I can't help you, but thank you for your advice to abandon books and do papers. It's going through the papers that seems to take so long ... do you have maths and english too in Lincs?

[Stocky]

Ginx - I had the opposite problem, DS would still have one section of 6/7 questions left + the 2 type Z's when the time was up. But accuracy is generally good 75-85% (in Lincolnshire we have a standardised pass of 220 out of 282 I think). I broke it down section by section and timed each section, it transpired that some sections he was doing very quick and accurate and he 'banked time' if you like, some he used the 30 secs per Q and there were only 3 types which he was using more than the allotted time and more than he had 'banked' from the faster types, so I have focussed on speeding up those 3. I would be inclined to do the same with your DD - it maybe that the sections she is doing well on (if she's getting 50-60% then there are obviously some) she is spending that bit more time on and getting the accuracy and there may be a link between sections she is rushing/completing quicker and losing marks. Basically, you need to find out which types/parts of the paper are causing the issues and focus on those bits for a few days.

[Dinky]

I have a similar problem to the two mentioned above. Haven't done much practice, as just wanted to familiarise DS with the questions, and he was doing really well with the Peter Williams books. But now we're on the Letts practice papers and, although he's completing them within the time limit and is feeling quite confident, he's not scoring highly enough to pass (between 65-70% of questions right across the two papers). I don't want to dent his confidence, but I'm worried he won't pass and he really wants to go to the grammar with his brother. Most of the time it's just silly mistakes he's making, or the questions are almost ambiguous sometimes and I can see why he has answered in the way he has, and his main problem is the vocabulary questions e.g. 2 odd words out, or A is to B as X is to Y (relationship between words).

I feel as if I have left it too late to help him and just have my fingers crossed!

Does anyone know roughly what percentage of questions he would need to get right in order to pass? Would 75% be enough? He's hoping to go to QEHS.

Thanks in advance! And good luck to everyone