Reading Grammar School

[All is well]

Hi
My DS seems to be fine uptil now with the preparation although I am still focussing on methods and techniques rather than practice papers. Peter Robson books have really been helpful with maths.

I shall appreciate if someone could guide me with specific publishers and books for Berkshire grammar schools.

Also, any guidance for Reading Grammar school with specific books and papers will be helpful.

[Complete Novice]

My DS passed Reading this 2009 and remembers quite a bit about the papers however, Reading are not as specific as Kendrick as to the nature of their tests so they could be very different next year. However, my DS's description of it all is like this:

It was a Verbal Reasoning paper this year (you do not know until the day which you are likely to face, VR or NVR) but it did contain a couple of NVR questions and a couple of number grids. There were only 50 questions in an hour so it was not the usual race against time. It did however contain (according to my DS who seems to have wasted time counting them ) 14 of the very long type Z questions (word problems) and a couple of them were certainly more challenging than we had encountered in our practice papers. They required careful reading and contained grammatical tricks like double negatives. They were largely of the "which of the following MUST be true" types. Other than that, the paper was quite straightforward and not as tricky as many of the practice papers we had used. As Reading School Reasoning papers are multiple choice, we practised with Nfer, Susan Daughtrey papers 1-8, IPS 5 min daily tests, Walsh Books 1-3 and finally Madeleine Guyon Learning Lab series.

For Maths, as it is also multiple choice, my DS did the 10 IPS 11+ Practice Papers as well as the NFer Multiple Choice papers. He felt the Maths was a very straightforward paper, certainly no harder than either the IPS or the Nfer. Again, it was 50 questions in an hour.

English consisted of 2 multiple comprehensions with a 20 question "choose the right word" section. One example I remember him saying was that they had to select which spelling of "Palette, palate or pallet" was the appropriate on for an artist. The English paper was in my DS's opinion, the trickiest one. I was surprised that it contained a question on the "active/passive" voice which was not something he had encountered before. There was also a section where in each question they had to choose which of 4 sentences was correctly punctuated. Generally my DS found it no harder than the Nfer multiple choice comprehensions or the Bond comprehensions which was the only practise he did for the English paper. I think he said there were 65 questions in an hour but again, did not feel time pressured.

Of course if could all change next year and be back to a race against time to complete loads of questions, you just never know. Although my DS did not have to do NVR on the day, we practised with Bond Assessment papers first, followed by Bond 11+ NVR papers Test pack 1 and 2 and finally Nfer papers 11 A -D

I hope this helps. Good luck!
CN

[All is well]

Thanks so much for a lovely, detailed and first hand reply. I can understand that the style of questions can change this year and hence I am still stressing on methods and techniques rather than practice paper.

All the best to your DS.

[stevew61]

Hi All is well,

Welcome to the forum.

Sound and recent advice from CN on the exam last year. I will add some advice when I am back at work and have more time. My older boy took the exam four years ago and Bewildered completes the set with two boys taking the exam two and three years ago.

Have a look back at older Reading/Kendrick threads for information.

I am working on DS2 for this years exam, we have covered techniques and short papers or sections of papers but have found full papers a step to far at the moment and so have gone back techniques looking at harder questions and variations working side by side to solve them.

Just a quick point your profile indicates you are on the outer edge of the designated area so hopefully you have checked your postcode at

http://www.readingschool.reading.sch.uk ... ions#Areas

Reading give out little information but we know it will be three multiple choice exams of approx. one hour each covering

English
Maths
VR and/or NVR

For the past few years Reading have set their own maths paper, most boys report it is ok. In previous years Reading used Nfer English and VR/NVR but it now looks like they are producing their own papers in a similar style, this gives them room to vary the content and style.

Reading also state the exams are built on KS2 and require no preparation

Three papers on one day covering four subjects is a big ask, so the ability to keep going on exam day is more important than very high scores.

I have noticed that if we ignore a subject for two weeks (xmas!) then scores drop back, keeping going over the summer will be a big challenge!

Next week I will list some of the resources we have used.

Good luck for November 2010, March 2011 and lets hope our DS's are classmates in September 2011.

steve

PS any lurkers watching sitting Reading or Kendrick exams 2010 please join us.

[clarexharris]

Hi Everyone, i am looking for advice really. i have been tutoring hard for VR 11+ to be taken in Oct and am now considering the Reading Boys entrance exam in November. Is extra/different tutoring required? if so any ideas where i might find a good tutor as my current one does only VR. Maths skills are high in general as already acheived a level 5 early in yr 5 , but will the maths be different to what is on the national curriculum?
Thank you.

[stevew61]

Hi Everyone, i am looking for advice really. i have been tutoring hard for VR 11+ to be taken in Oct and am now considering the Reading Boys entrance exam in November. Is extra/different tutoring required? if so any ideas where i might find a good tutor as my current one does only VR. Maths skills are high in general as already acheived a level 5 early in yr 5 , but will the maths be different to what is on the national curriculum?
Thank you.

Good news, based on recent years maths won't be a problem it is very much KS2, and unlikely to change as the school state based on KS2, but they might decide to pick out the peripheral parts.

Not so good news, the VR is more varied than the Bucks? I believe you have been doing but based on the 21 NFER types as it is multiple choice.

And then you need to plan for NVR coming up and the English paper.

Tutors for Reading/Kendrick are hard to find a small market, a bit of a gap in the market there , try a bit of DIY?

[muvvalac]

Hi Everyone, i am looking for advice really. i have been tutoring hard for VR 11+ to be taken in Oct and am now considering the Reading Boys entrance exam in November. Is extra/different tutoring required? if so any ideas where i might find a good tutor as my current one does only VR. Maths skills are high in general as already acheived a level 5 early in yr 5 , but will the maths be different to what is on the national curriculum?
Thank you.

please be reminded that they have catchment policy so make sure you are in their catchment,

for tutors : refer to **************** and enter ur post code then u will find suitable ones.

or you can use *************but they are quite expensive, around 35£/hour

[clarexharris]

Thank you very much for your advice much appreciated

[Bewildered]

Agree with all advise given by Stevew61 and CN.
Maths is pretty much KS2, English was the hardest paper, NVR pretty straight forward just the usual types. DS learnt VR but that didn't come up, so can't comment.
Although the Walsh books were available at the time, we didn't go with them as they were reportedly at a higher level. Having ordered some harder Tutor papers from this site, it was very disheartening for DS and me to find he started getting lower results. So avoided this, too much and the moral levels dive. Not good!

Good Luck!

BW

[pndt.snl]

Hi! All
New to the forum
trying to collect information & guidance...
My son is in yr 4 now..I wish to start preparing him for entrance exam for Reading Boys .
Not sure regarding study materials & which papers to buy/download for practice.

also, not sure about how the score is calculated & how does the month of birth affects the score.. ( My son- Jan born)..

Do parents staying in Reading opt for entrance exams for schools out of Reading ?
Thnx