I'm new to the site, my daughter is going to be taking the verbal reasoning (21 Qs) type test.

Her older sibling is already at GS and so I'm learning from mistakes I made first time around!

So far we have covered all the question types one way or another, to see what needs most attention. This we've been doing by breaking down the question types and seeing how they work.

Recently, we've started on some daily 5 minute quizzes in the car to brush up times tables. If you have any ideas on how to keep this going, make it fun and add some vocabulary work, that would be a great help (not just to us, I'm sure.) I'm not so great at thinking on my feet with mental maths/ spelling, so I think I'm getting tested more than my daughter. (No bad thing!)

I like your idea for saving time with comprehensions, Phil. Can you share your ideas for the VR type questions?

OJ,

Everything you posted warms my heart....

Learning from mistakes, EXCELLENT!

Attacking each topic one at a time, EXCELLENT!

Finding out what ones need more work, EXCELLENT!

5 minute quizzes, EXCELLENT!

You make a great tutor, give yourself a pat on the back.


.....and now you want me to divulge all my trade secrets.....?

Well when it comes to the VR questions that have vocabulary knowledge at the core of its intention (meaning and spelling) it is very hard to find a short cut. There are some tips and some general hints to avoid the nasty traps set by evil examiners - so feel free to ask away on particular question types.

We printed off a list of words and stuck them up on the dining room wall going through 4 or 5 words at meal times but in order to get new words to stick in the right context you cannot beat the medium of reading an enjoyable book (I should have this as my footer). Being an avid reader gives children a HUGE advantage over other children.

VR Maths and the code breaking ones have some pretty good cheats - again, which ones are the tricky ones for your daughter??

Thanks It helps that I've done this before, and my daughter is the organised one. Her reading is really great, in fact I usually have to prize her from a book to get her to do anything else, and I have a hard job supplying her with enough interesting reading material, other than that no worries there.

The question types she has the most difficulty with are 19 and 21, and to a lesser extent 1, 4 and occasionally 9. She can do them, they just take her the longest and if there's a really tricky question there she just won't let go and leave it. I've suggested she leaves type 19 and 21 to the end, which has helped a lot. before we try short timed tests to get her time down, I just wanted to check if we're missing some extra short cuts.

Hiya...my girl will be doing the tests this year and I think I'm more concerned than she is!!!

My daughter took the progress 5 test (with the 21 question types) last night and I noticed she was taking extra time between giving her answer and clicking to go to the next page. She said it was because she didn't want to press 'submit and end test' button. This was annoying as it presented her with a problem she won't face in the 11+ and she had no way of compensating for it.

Also our computer is very slow, so that meant that she couldn't finish the test in time. I can see on the blog that you want to use all the data submitted to compare the statistics you accumulate, but if some entrants are not completing papers due to their computers being slow, this will skew your stats, surely?

Hi there,

Thanks for the feedback. The online testing area isn't perfect, we know. We use an open source system called Moodle to deliver the online tests. It is used in schools and universities all over the world, however, I personally hate it! We are looking at upgrading our online tests in the near future but until then you'll just have to put up with Moodle I'm afraid. Sorry I can't be of more help right now.

Kind Regards

S