Please help Indie Verbal reasoning year 5

[11plusnightmare]

Hello all,

Please could you advise? Ds is at a prep school in year 5 and the school told us he was doing well (top 3 in English, top half of the top set in Maths) and not to worry about doing any extra tutoring. He recently sat a 10+ and really struggled with timings. In particular, he did less than half of the Verbal reasoning paper. I know that the school had started teaching them reasoning in Year 4 but it was only 30 mins a week and no homework. I now see that was nowhere near enough and we need to do extra outside.

We really can't afford to tutor over school fees and am worried it's too late to find a tutor anyway. Ds said the paper he sat was nothing like what he has done at school. Can anyone advise please? I had rather naively thought of putting him for the grammars too but at this stage that seems like madness, but would like to prep him. He is quite well read although there are gaps in his vocab, the biggest issue is technique and finding ways to speed him up.

We are looking at Dulwich, Alleyns and Kingston Grammar (I feel like the Grammars are too much of a stretch at this stage).

Any advice very much appreciated!

[Ladymuck]

Hopefully you got him a place at the Sutton mocks? If not then get a Wallington mock place. This will allow you to pitch him against 100s of others who are all prepping for the tests. I would say that it is far too early to rule out grammars at this stage.

VR and exam technique can be taught at home, by following advice from elsewhere on this forum. I found the Susan Daughtey books to be useful for techniques (as Alleyns certainly used GL VR/NVR papers).

[Daogroupie]

I would imagine that your prep school would be very reluctant to teach your ds how to pass the 10+ and leave them at the end of Y5 with a Y6 place to fill.

It is a real shame that a well read ds was not able to finish the paper because that is simply getting used to the exam format.

There is no reason at all why you can't have a go at the grammars, you just need to invest in getting to grips with their exam format.

You will probably find that a lot of your classmates have been preparing for exam formats and don't rely on the school telling them how academically strong they are.

Most preps seem to tell the parents not to tutor. As another poster said, it shows that they are not going the "prep" job they are being paid for.

Sign up for some mocks and start doing timed papers at home, he will soon get used to the format. DG

[11plusnightmare]

Thankyou so much LadyMuck and DaGroupie. Yes, I am quite irritated that the prep gave us a false sense of security re ds's likelihood of success at 10+. It was actually a deferred entry place so they had nothing to lose, but I asked them for anything extra we should be doing over Christmas and they said his Xmas homework (3 10+Maths papers and one short English grammar exercise) was plenty . Even so I went through a couple of English past papers with him and we did a few extra Maths papers too but had naively assumed that he had done enough with VR at school but the format was totally unfamiliar to him and he really struggled.

I looked at the DIY GL VR Assessment which looks really helpful. When you say the Susan Daughtrey books do you mean the actual papers listed by Patricia or the books 1-7 which she didn't recommend as that particular scheme?

Luckily I did manage to book him in for the Sutton Mocks, so hopefully that will help us get a gauge of where he is. Thanks both for the advice and reassurance that perhaps I can help him turn things around as this 10+ has been quite a shock to all of us.

Thanks again!