11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi

My boy who will be sitting his 11+ exam this year is making many silly mistakes? I hope someone from this furom can give me some advice.

He just sat a hard maths paper, finished in time but got 78% looking at it he made 7 (out of 50 questions) silly mistakes which would have given him 92%. He does this all the time, when I give it back to him, he corrects them all. What can I do reduce his silly mistakes. Shall make him redo the paper later if he does not get over certain % say 85% or above. May be then he will not make as many silly mistakes. He know that he can do it so silly mistake does not bother him. Please advice.


Mr Zee

I am no expert,I'm sure one will be along soon,but i would suggest talking with your son, explaining the importance of checking his work.


If this doesn't work you could try an incentive scheme,this always works for my DC. It doesn't need to be big rewards for high percentages, little rewards,(tub of ice cream, paperback) If he is aware that there is a carrot dangling it just might do the trick!


you could do this once a week, to encourage a little more care,good luck.


PM x2

make sure that he leaves enough time to check his work.

Show him the difference in marks, explain that he has lost marks by making this silly mistakes.

It is quite common, I had 2 pupils last year who regularly lost marks because they didnt read ALL of the question carefully.

You could exxplain that the examiners won;t know him and so won;t be able to give him the benefit of the doubt.

I think yoyo123 is right. The children need to begin to develop a more mature attitude towards the test and understand that a complete stranger will be marking their work.

Until the principle of checking her work was well established, at the end of a test, my DD was "allowed" to switch to the most garish gel pen she could find and, yes, she often found places to use it! (maybe a boy would prefer a novelty pen).

Lulu

Mr Zee - boys and silly mistakes - doesn't it go with the territory?!

My eldest son was quite capable of getting anything from 50% to 95% in practice tests. We would go through papers together; I would start to point out that he'd got something wrong and he would interrupt me with the right answer - infuriating!! But, as he regularly said to me, "it's only practice mum, when it comes to the real thing I'll try harder". He was true to his word and managed a surprisingly high score. You say he knows he can do it so it sounds to me as if you may have a similar situation! It's human nature I think to pull out all the stops when you know it counts and to be a bit lazy when you know it doesn't.

What you could do to help him focus is perhaps look through the paper yourself first and tell him that there are, for example, ten wrong answers, but not tell him where - and leave him to find out.

Personally I wouldn't make too big a deal out of it. 7 silly mistakes out of 50 questions isn't that bad and I'm sure he will improve with practice.

78% is good at this stage - especially for a very hard paper. Are you looking for particularly high scores for a super-selective?

Silly mistakes or school boy errors?

Make him show his working out or at least the steps towards the answer, most of our silly mistakes came from trying to do it all in the mind and not writing down steps which force you to think and check as you go along.

Hi

Thanks to you all for the advice. I will try some of these out.


Regards
Mr Zee

Just thought I'd tell you about my son who sat his 11+ last september. Was always making loads of silly mistakes on maths even though he knew exactly how to answer the questions. I was assured on this website that he would be ok if he really knew his stuff. Guess what, he passed for both the schools he was trying for and his best scores were for maths. It seems as if they do focus on the day - yes they need to check their work, but time is tight. I think if they understand the maths they seem to be alright on the day. Hope this stops you worrying quite so much. (we were all pulling our hair out with worry.)

Tell them that EVERY mark matters. If they're not bothered about it, make them be, otherwise they will get ones wrong in an exam and will be regretful about not listening to you!

LQ

Hi
Well when i took the 11+ in September, I was very scaed that i was going to make too many mistakes; as in other practice test i took i found myself in the exact same situation as you.

Really I just think it is nerves and the best thing to do is to keep looking back at questions he got wrong and discussing the appropriate answer with him.

If all else fails have a chat with him and ask him how he feels about the 11+ and how he is coping.

I found the thing that helped the most when i took the test was that at my school, there was a club on every Tuesday moring that went through some of the test with us. Maybe you could ask the schools head what they think of the idea!!!

Happy Testing