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#1
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Exam prep disaster
R, the 10yo, will be sitting his 11+ tomorrow. UK readers will know
that is the exam that decides which school he goes to next year. Will it be the fast-paced academic school - known as a grammer school - or the school for the less academically able. The exam tests "verbal reasoning", or how well you can do certain kinds of word puzzles. R's strengths lie in his maths ability, although he has good results in past verbal reasoning tests. He's been working really hard for the last couple of weeks: he is certainly capable of doing well at the grammer, but some of the kids will have been practising for months. You can even get books for 7yos, "working towards the 11+". We had a calm evening: he practised a few more techniques. He couldn't go outside because it was raining, but he did get his favourite supper, and a dessert he likes. He was in bed at a reasonable time, and everything was going fine. Until a few minutes ago. One of his baby teeth has come out. An hour after bedtime. On the night he really needs to get a decent night's sleep. Oh well, the other school gets good results too. -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#2
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Penny Gaines mentioned in passing :
Oh well, the other school gets good results too. oh dear. maybe that was the bad thing on rehearsal that makes the show flawless. How did things go? When do you all hear the results? I'm thinking of you! -Aula -- Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. - Ronald Reagan --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.775 / Virus Database: 522 - Release Date: 10/8/04 |
#3
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I truly don't understand why this is a disaster? Most kids I know don't
have a terribly good night's sleep prior to a very important exam. My children have written equally important exams at the same age and we didn't put in half what you did. The evening before was treated like any other evening. Marijke in Montreal "Penny Gaines" wrote in message ... Until a few minutes ago. One of his baby teeth has come out. An hour after bedtime. On the night he really needs to get a decent night's sleep. Oh well, the other school gets good results too. -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#4
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Marijke wrote in :
I truly don't understand why this is a disaster? Most kids I know don't have a terribly good night's sleep prior to a very important exam. My children have written equally important exams at the same age and we didn't put in half what you did. The evening before was treated like any other evening. [snip] I suppose it is mainly because it the first exam any of my children have had to do. It is also the only one you can't retake: either he ends up at the academic school (known over here as grammer schools), or he goes to the non-academic school. Unfortunately, although he is a bright kid and has really good maths skills, but the exam measures his verbal skills. He is reading well above his age, but a lot of the questions are based around spelling and combining letters to make words. Actually the bigger factor, which we weren't really aware of until a couple of weeks ago, was that the majority of parents who get their kids to grammer schools have made sure their kids have had extra coaching. We knew that some would have done, but it seems that we underestimated the amount other people do. Our feeling was that it would be a mistake for R to do a lot of extra coaching, because it would put too much pressure on him. Anyway, I wasn't overly surprised he was awake an hour after bedtime. I just wasn't expecting him to get up, need a bit of TLC and a glass of water, and then have to start going to sleep again. -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#5
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just me wrote in :
Penny Gaines mentioned in passing : Oh well, the other school gets good results too. oh dear. maybe that was the bad thing on rehearsal that makes the show flawless. How did things go? When do you all hear the results? I'm thinking of you! He didn't say much about what he'd done: in fact all he said was he thought he'd done "quite well" and only guessed a few. His friend (who is not that academic) said he'd worked out half of them and guessed the rest. I haven't really wanted to ask the other parents what their kids thought of it. Mainly because the parents I know well aren't expecting them to go to the grammer school, and the ones whose kids might do well tend to be a bit competative. We find out what his score was on 29th November, but don't find out what school he goes to until March. It is less of a wait then it seems, because we are only putting down the two local schools on the form, so he is guarenteed to go to one of them. Once we know his score, we will know whether he has a place at the grammer school or not. If we were putting down a school that was further away, he might not get in. I've found a site with a lot more information about the 11+ test: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/aboutus/amd7.asp The bit that really interests us is the table that shows the verbal reasoning scores by age: http://www.nfer.ac.uk/aboutus/amd766.asp The mark he needs is about 122 (it varies from year to year), so given that there were 80 questions on the paper, he needs to get about 62 right. Actually, there were two papers, and they take the best mark. But the other one was last week, and we had done only a small amount of coaching then - because the information we got said that the kids shouldn't need any extra preparation work - and he had quite a bit more practise between the first and the second test. I know this all makes us sound quite pushy. The thing is we *know* from verbal/non-verbal reasoning scores in the past, that he is well above average (not genius, but in the top 10%), so he would do well at the academic school. Its just that in the past he wasn't being compared to people with masses of coaching. Luckily for us, the alternative school gets very good results too. For those that know what it means, 75% of their students get at least 5 A* - C GCSEs when they are 16yos. I'm too tired to explain what that means now (it is 11.30pm here), but it makes it a good school. For other non-academic schools in our area, no more then 40% of pupils get that sort of level of achievement. (Of course at the grammer school, it is about 100% of students.) -- Penny Gaines UK mum to three |
#6
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sorry if a double post appears. My mailer is acting weird and told me that
the first one wasn't going out. "Marijke" wrote in message ... I truly don't understand why this is a disaster? Most kids I know don't have a terribly good night's sleep prior to a very important exam. |
#7
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sorry if a double post appears. My mailer is acting weird and told me that
the first one wasn't going out. "Marijke" wrote in message ... I truly don't understand why this is a disaster? Most kids I know don't have a terribly good night's sleep prior to a very important exam. |
#8
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sorry if a double post appears. My mailer is acting weird and told me that
the first one wasn't going out. "Marijke" wrote in message ... I truly don't understand why this is a disaster? Most kids I know don't have a terribly good night's sleep prior to a very important exam. |
#9
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"beeswing" wrote in message
... The night before that particular test, she had trouble sleeping and went to the test tired and uncooperative. I'll never know how she might have performed on a more typical day, and I found it very frustrating. Over in the bicycling newsgroup, there's been a discussion about how many of us get a bad night's sleep before a big cycling event. You know you're going to ride a 100, 200, or 300 kms starting in the morning, and it's going to be a big strain on your body no matter how much you've trained. And yet, there it is, 2:00 AM, you can't seem to get back to sleep, and you know you have to up by 4:00 AM to make it to the start line. If we complain about it as adults, and it's only some dumb bicycle event, not A TEST THAT WILL DETERMINE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, it's natural that kids would suffer from the same symptoms. -- Warm Regards, Claire Petersky please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply Home of the meditative cyclist: http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/ See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky |
#10
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"Claire Petersky" wrote in message ink.net... "beeswing" wrote in message ... If we complain about it as adults, and it's only some dumb bicycle event, not A TEST THAT WILL DETERMINE THE REST OF YOUR LIFE, it's natural that kids would suffer from the same symptoms. Of course there will be sleeplessness for most people/children before writing an exam of such enormity, but it's up to us parents to try to put it in perspective. When my oldest slept terribly before his such exam at that same age, we just said, "well, do the best you can and if you don't get in to that school, we'll look at our options." And, that happened. He didn't get in to the school he wanted and we did look at our options. However, by saying exam prep disaster because a baby tooth came out and then perhaps the child didn't sleep as well as one would have hoped - to me you're telling the kid "OMG!! You didn't sleep well!! You'll do terribly. Oh well, the other school isn't *that* bad." That's not the message I want to send to my kids. Marijke |
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