Timing issues!!

Advice on 11 Plus VR papers and problems

Moderators: Section Moderators, Forum Moderators

Post Reply
GemmaB
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2006 7:11 pm
Location: Bucks

Timing issues!!

Post by GemmaB »

Hello

Bucks 11+ looming large....

Does anyone have a rough idea of how long each type of VR question should be taking please?
My daughter is getting "bogged down" with a couple of types and thus affecting the timing significantly as she will persevere until she has an answer rather than move on and come back to them

Worst are take a letter and put into another word and the maths ones - she's not as fluent with maths as the vocab.
I think I need to sit with her and watch and provide timing hints for a paper - what does anyone think?

Would appreciate any help Thank you
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Post by yoyo123 »

not sure how long questions should take, some are harder to crack than others.

perhaps if she is having difficulty, get her to mark teh question, go on to the next one and come back to the problematic ones at the end.

I explained to my daughter that she can never get more than the mark for that question and so by trying for ages to get that one mark, she is missing the chance of getting another 5 or 6 marks elsewhere by never gettting around to finishing the paper. We found that doing timed papers really helped her. In fact she did a lot of timed essays as A level revision recently to get her used to teh pressure..

(does that make sense? It seemed so easy before i tried to put it into words!)
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Post by patricia »

Dear Gemma

Never been a believer in the 30 second per question.

Each section takes a different amount of time. Long codes [ C ] will take between 5 and 6 minutes. A section of finding a letter that fits all 4 words about 100 seconds to 2 minutes. A section of maths about 2/3 minutes.

Tell your child it does not matter that they are spending a long time on codes because she will make up time in other sections.

Do NOT leave out whole sections at a time. False sense of security creeps in, they think they are near the end BUT OH NO they have to go back to those dreaded questions, mistakes appear under panic conditions.

If unsure of one question, take an educated guess and MARK IT ON THE ANSWER SHEET, RINGING THE QUESTION NUMBER ON THE QUESTION BOOKLET. They may have time at the end to go back, if not at least there is an answer there.

I DO NOT allow my children to guess on maths and codes and where does the letter come from [ IPS/ types O and R] because ALL the information is there for them.

Encourage the use of a watch NOW so they get used to it. Might not be able to to see a clock when testing under test conditions at school and every school has a variation on what time is left.

Patricia
yoyo123
Posts: 8099
Joined: Mon Jun 18, 2007 3:32 pm
Location: East Kent

Post by yoyo123 »

Good point Patricia. At least an answer of some sort has a chance of a mark.

I too am not keen on teh 30 seconds per question approach.

I suppose it all boils down as usual to practice, practice and more practice
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Post by patricia »

Dear YoYo123

My children [tutored and my own ] HATE IT when I say PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

But it is so true...

Patricia
patricia
Posts: 2803
Joined: Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:07 pm

Post by patricia »

Dear Gemma

Re the maths make a concerted effort to get her 4 operations up to scratch. They have to be very quick at adding, multiplying, dividing and subtraction.

Everyday lay out 10 sums for breakfast, tea and supper [ left out lunch because they will be back to school next week.]

Make each set a mixture for example

36 + 53
63 - 34 - 12
double 17
1/2 of 52

etc etc

Moving 1 letter over, does she use the tip of her pencil to cover up each letter eg POINT pencil over P would leave OINT, pencil over O would leave P INT word found.

When moving the P over to the new word, if she cant see it then needs to put the P in between the letters given.

Knowledge of letter combinations come in handy here if the 2nd word was RELY the letter may go in front of a P because PR go together, but wouldn't go after R because RP do not go together.

A section of these should take between 60 seconds and 2 minutes

Patricia
ah

Post by ah »

If not sure of the answer she MUST move on and come back to the question later as she could lose valuable marks, you must stress this to your child.
Waddle

Post by Waddle »

I advised both my boys to leave the long worded question (type Z?) to last as it took too long to read and was only worth one mark - if it had to be guessed due to time running out, it was better to guess one question rather than a whole row at the end of the paper.
GemmaB
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Nov 27, 2006 7:11 pm
Location: Bucks

Post by GemmaB »

Thanks for all the support and suggestinos I really appreciate the time taken to reply!
TraffordMum
Posts: 593
Joined: Thu Feb 22, 2007 3:29 pm
Location: Trafford

Post by TraffordMum »

We got to a point about 4 weeks before the exams where my daughter was consistently struggling with a couple of types of questions on the maths papers, which took a disproportionate amount of time and which even then she wasn't sure of getting right. We discussed it with her and she decided that if one of these types of question came up in the exam then she would leave it until the end of the exam and then come back to it if she had time. This tactic worked well for her.
Post Reply