Kent verbal reasoning

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mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Kent verbal reasoning

Post by mystery »

Do you practice all the GL assessment question types, or do you miss out 6 types of question - the H I K N O S questions as suggested on this site as being missing from Kent papers?

Thanks
bondgirl
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Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2011 11:30 am

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by bondgirl »

We've been covering all question types, mystery just in case. They could always change the format so best to be prepared IMO.
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by yoyo123 »

they have cropped up, so as I have mentioned before, I cover them briefly just in case, but don;t spend too much time on them, Just use them as puzzles
mystery
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Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by mystery »

But Yoyo how would anyone on here reliably know whether they crop up or not? Or is that an awkward question for someone to answer do you think, if you see what I mean? Neither GL assessment nor KCC will confirm or deny whether H I K N O S questions are generally not included in the Kent paper.
yoyo123
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Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by yoyo123 »

can't remember exact details but a year or 2 back,reports back from a few pupils were that there had been type O questions.

probability is they don't crop up often and if you do plenty of practice, word puzzles etc then chances are a child could do question without intensive, belt and braces coaching..after all the supposed point of the exercise
is to test reasoning powers n'est ce pas ?
scarlett
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Joined: Fri Jul 16, 2010 10:22 am

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by scarlett »

I didn't realise until recently that we didn't need to cover all types in Kent , and as I said to you earlier Mystery , my boys just did the whole lot, it didn't seem to be a waste of time as it's all practice , isn't it ? Isn't one of those types the closest meaning or something which is still helpful to cover and some of the others seem more maths based which is good to at least have a bit of a look at ?

Anyway, Mystery you have a few years to go, so am sure you will fit them all in :P
Sally-Anne
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Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:10 pm
Location: Buckinghamshire

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by Sally-Anne »

I meant to post earlier that it would probably be worth a few Kent parents sitting their kids down straight after the test, showing them HIKNOS-type questions and asking if any of them cropped up.
yoyo123 wrote:can't remember exact details but a year or 2 back,reports back from a few pupils were that there had been type O questions.
The one health warning I was going to flag is that, as yoyo knows, Type O and Type R are very similar, so it may be that the children are confusing the two.

The others should be fairly obvious, although I would caution all Kent parents to make sure that they alert the children to the possibility of Type H coming up - Opposite Meanings instead of Closest Meanings. "RTFQ - Read the Flippin' Question!"

I will now retreat to Bucks and leave you in the capable hands of yoyo! :D
mystery
Posts: 8927
Joined: Tue Jul 21, 2009 10:56 pm

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by mystery »

Well I'm just really wondering if that chart should be up on this site at all which shows that H I K N O S questions are not included in Kent? Or is it a gem whose provenance we should not query?

If it were based on interrogating children after the event I think it could be a little unreliable. I worked my way through the GL Assessment book "VR explained" during a recent school concert rehearsal. It covers all 21 question types. If someone had grilled me afterwards on the 21 types I don't think I would have been very accurate on what was in there. So I'm assuming some kind 11 plus invigilator submitted their knowledge for the chart on this website some years ago, or that NFER as it was then or Kent were happy to declare that H I K N O S were not included.

Now, they quite rightly won't give any clues (apart from GL assessment of course producing more and more practice papers for sale and booklets in the 11plus explained series!!)

Ah yes Scarlett, we have plenty of time, particularly with DD2 in year 1, and any child we have not yet conceived.
Twinkle
Posts: 580
Joined: Tue May 05, 2009 10:26 pm

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by Twinkle »

Hi Mystery

So far I have taken two children very successfully along the 11+ journey. We just used the Bond books and the GL assessment papers and very little else. Shortly before my first child took the Kent test I discovered via this site of the existence of the different types of VR questions. I had no idea what they were but found a document that I think that Patricia had created which is /was available to download off this site which gave examples of each of the different types. In a slight panic I got my child to work through the examples and found that he could do them all ( including HIKNOS). Although he didn't necessarily get every one correct ( I can't remember now), none of the questions were " new" to him. He had either seen questions which were of the same type or sufficiently similar for him to be able to deal with them. For my part I think that the key to successful VR is to READ the question!!

You will never know whether the HIKNOS questions ( or indeed any other - eg nets in NVR) are going to be in the test. Best to give your children general exposure to as much as possible and not to be too fixated on particular types IMHO. Then your children will not be phased if new things come up. I recall that one of my children said that some NVR questions came up in the test which he had never seen before - however they were sufficiently similar to other types he had seen that he just got on with them.

Twinkle
SSM
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Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2009 12:09 pm

Re: Kent verbal reasoning

Post by SSM »

Agree wholeheartedly Twinkles.

At the indie school by DC attended (which has a very good reputation of getting kids through 11+) they used to get a whole mixture of papers. Sometimes they were given papers in which they would be expected and would get 95-100% and other papers in which they'd be lucky to get above 50%. The point of it was to not only get them to see lots of different types of questions, but also not to be phased by finding something new or difficult.

I think if you only had a few weeks or months in which to prepare for 11+ then it would make sense to stick to what you know is like to come up, but if you have time then just do as many different questions as possible.
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