Hi
One of the main things which I think helped was knowing how the test / pass mark worked and for us it was the overall mark that mattered and there wasn't for example a pass mark for each of Maths, English, verbal reasoning etc. separately. So once I figured that out he felt better about it as knew a lower mark in spelling would be compensated by say strong maths. If a pass was needed in each separate area then may have approached a bit differently.
In the end though he actually got pretty good at spotting the spelling mistakes, he didn't necessarily know the right spelling but knew it looked wrong. Somehow it just seemed to click in the week or so before the test and think it must have been down to simply lots of his efforts doing practice tests using the style of papers the school had linked on their website (GL in this case). I also got similar practice books GL style from CGP and Collins.
Grammar as I suspected was easier as it's mainly rules based and again he just practised from the practice tests and books.
Never did manage to get him reading a lot despite him being a naturally good reader, although he would read some non fiction about wildlife, geography etc. but not loads! In the end it seemed to work best we did comprehensions together and took it in turns to read a paragraph each and then talked through the questions. Again just practice tests seemed to be the trick.
Hopefully that helps a bit, we just tried various things and found what worked for him and just plenty of practice!
One of the main things which I think helped was knowing how the test / pass mark worked and for us it was the overall mark that mattered and there wasn't for example a pass mark for each of Maths, English, verbal reasoning etc. separately. So once I figured that out he felt better about it as knew a lower mark in spelling would be compensated by say strong maths. If a pass was needed in each separate area then may have approached a bit differently.
In the end though he actually got pretty good at spotting the spelling mistakes, he didn't necessarily know the right spelling but knew it looked wrong. Somehow it just seemed to click in the week or so before the test and think it must have been down to simply lots of his efforts doing practice tests using the style of papers the school had linked on their website (GL in this case). I also got similar practice books GL style from CGP and Collins.
Grammar as I suspected was easier as it's mainly rules based and again he just practised from the practice tests and books.
Never did manage to get him reading a lot despite him being a naturally good reader, although he would read some non fiction about wildlife, geography etc. but not loads! In the end it seemed to work best we did comprehensions together and took it in turns to read a paragraph each and then talked through the questions. Again just practice tests seemed to be the trick.
Hopefully that helps a bit, we just tried various things and found what worked for him and just plenty of practice!
Statistics: Posted by Annie42 — Wed Mar 27, 2024 10:48 pm