11 Plus Exams Forum

Hi there,

Can some experienced parents give me some advice on which one would be the best bet?

Gameon

Cgp do some very good Cem style non verbal books.

My DD did mostly Bond until summer when I started to vary it a bit with others maybe IPS or CGP, to be honest she found them all very similar.

Thank you cocoa0101 and guest201. Much appreciated.

We did GL assessment papers - not necessarily a reflection of CEM content, but quite hard and tough timings which were useful concepts to practise.

Speed the essence, so if you use bond ten minute tests seriously think about doing two in the ten minutes, you can of course build up to this.

I got everything I could find.... madness. Younger siblings will reuse...

Bond
Letts
CGP
FirstPastThePost (normal +3d)
Non verbal reasoning challenge (Eduvix wriiten by JTLee)
TestTeach
AE
Even got nvr book for adults from amazon. Can't find it now. Maybe my ds burnt it...

I also got online nvr. And searched the internet for free sheets.

I'm in Bucks and had no idea about speed/diffuculty since last year was the first year w cem.

I thought the questions would be very difficult, but I think it turned out being speed they were after. We put away the bond books very soon, since we found them easy -- but I honestly never timed him to the extreme. I thought he would get away with 30s-45s/question, which seemed ok. Instead, I tried to find the hardest questions and work on those which turned out to be a pretty bad strategy. I recall my ds shedding quite a few tears in the "challenge" book...

I was convinced they wanted to choose the children who could manage the hardest questions... I applied the same strategy for maths. He learned a lot, but I never really timed him much. Just assumed he was ok with time.

He did fine in the end.

My advice: buy a stop watch.

Bless your honesty ccl....it was so tricky to pitching last year wasn't it. Amazon have done very well out of us too!

Ds2' s teacher pointed out than nvr must have been his personal nightmare, once we discovered his eyes were squiffy. I felt awful, as I remember saying over and over, that is was no use sussing out the hardest puzzle in the book (I never could) if it took him so long! What a bit*ch I felt later on, I always made allowances for his poor sight, but even then did not realise how much he was struggling, as he had got used to seeing blur, he just battled on. he was brilliant at the 3d ones, they had far less squiggles, patterns and dashes.

Moral of the story....if your kid is bright, but slow on nvr, check he is not looking at blurry patterns, even with his specs on!

Ds3 whizzes through them...although he does tend to leave a few gaps in gl type papers, he enjoys the bond, so at present I stick with those mostly.

ccl wrote:I got everything I could find.... madness. Younger siblings will reuse...

Bond
Letts
CGP
FirstPastThePost (normal +3d)
Non verbal reasoning challenge (Eduvix wriiten by JTLee)
TestTeach
AE
Even got nvr book for adults from amazon. Can't find it now. Maybe my ds burnt it...

I also got online nvr. And searched the internet for free sheets.

I'm in Bucks and had no idea about speed/diffuculty since last year was the first year w cem.

I thought the questions would be very difficult, but I think it turned out being speed they were after. We put away the bond books very soon, since we found them easy -- but I honestly never timed him to the extreme. I thought he would get away with 30s-45s/question, which seemed ok. Instead, I tried to find the hardest questions and work on those which turned out to be a pretty bad strategy. I recall my ds shedding quite a few tears in the "challenge" book...

I was convinced they wanted to choose the children who could manage the hardest questions... I applied the same strategy for maths. He learned a lot, but I never really timed him much. Just assumed he was ok with time.

He did fine in the end.

My advice: buy a stop watch.

So what you're essentially saying is: don't worry too much about the difficulty/complexity of nvr but the speed? ie doing as many relatively-straightforward questions in a short space of time?

[quote="southbucks3"]Bless your honesty ccl....

I will second ccl honestly too

I do wonder as last year was the first CEM test for Bucks, they might make it harder for this year. I hope not.

What percentage you are aiming for these papers? Mine is floating around 68ish to 85ish.. not above that so far. I am keeping it cool, when I see any thing below 75% I tell him "we are just learning at this stage". How long I can keep this coolness? I don't know...

Gameon.