11 Plus Exams Forum

Well, only just under 2 weeks until the first exam, beginning to panic (who am I kidding been stressed for months)
Any ideas on how to relax??!! Oh, then we've got to wait until 2nd March for the results
The grammar school isn't an obvious choice in our part of the country, so been getting the "why aren't you opting for the local school" comments from the playground gaggle-wish I could hibernate!!
On a more positive note, DS seems to be taking it all in his stride, don't want him to feel undue pressure so have wound things down re papers, but he's a boy and still making mistkes in maths, "I can do it in my head mum, don't need to work things out on paper"-AAAAGGHHHHHH

Some words of calming wisdom needed please

Best wishes one and all

Hi losing sleep

If it's any help my son is exactly the same. He's very good at maths but we really have been encouraging him to write things down as he is making silly mistakes. He seems to get the harder questions right but the easier questions wrongs because he's doing it in his head and missing bits out. Just to slow him down is a task in itself!! We just keep practising and practising and try to make the "writing it down on paper" second nature. Good luck to your ds in his upcoming tests.

I've found it's quite effective to mark the paper with them , pointing out where silly mistakes were made, you quite often find they actually know the correct answer as you are marking. Then mark again and contrast what they actually got with what they might have achieved if they had read the question properly or resisted the urge to think they knew without checking. It can have quite an effect!

Remind him that the paper is marked by a computer, it has no idea what he really meant to put.

Hi Losing sleep

I also let my dd mark the sheets herslef. I read out the answers and she then marked them. It really helped as she would be rather surprised with mistakes she had made and I guess took it in more because she was seeing them rather then me marking and then telling her about them whih seemed more negative. Also we were able to go through the mistakes straight away which was better.

Mel

Ouch! Five days to go for us, on Saturday I made the mistake of going through our son's maths answers. I wish I hadn't! Silly mistakes - not reading the question properly (not the complicated ones, of course!) - apparent total amnesia about all aspects of fractions and division...

Mike