11+ book mine-field

Go into any of the book stores and the one area which is full of different books and revision sets is the section marked 11 Plus, but which ones would be good to go for and which ones are the best? It can be such a worry, after all you want to give your child the very best chance and yet at the same time you don't want to make it too much of an ordeal. You want to remain 'mum and dad' and yet you feel you have to be teacher as well.
There are several options open to you;

• get a tutor and let them do all the work for you and provide you with either their preferred book-list and then follow their direction or they provide virtually all the paperwork and all yo have to do is centrally time the tests. A good option if you have the finances to be able to do it and have found one who not only has a good reputation, but a good pass rate and is liked by the children. Bad side, you often have to go to them because they are popular and operate from one location. This means taxi-parent is involved weekly or fortnightly.
• join one of the numerous web-sites who offer 11+ tutoring via the net. A good option because you ca monitor what the child is doing and it involves little or no travel. The down side is, you have the responsibility of 'chasing' your child to do the work.
• hope the school will do something on the 11+ and leave it to them, maybe get a few books and have a go at home with some of it. Good side is it involves, potentially less outgoings but could end up with the child getting no real learning of the skills needed.
•  join a centre in the local town and let them take the strain. Up side, they do the work, downside is financial and of course the taxi-parent is in full swing again.

Whichever way you go it will involved books of some description and I will give you an idea of the one's I use so if you fancy following my lead then please feel free to do so.

OK, so let's start with the books which do some teaching. These are;

•  Verbal Reasoning, Technique and Practice books 1 - 4 by Susan J. Daughtrey

• Bond Series:
• How To Do 11+ Maths
• How To Do 11+ Verbal Reasoning
• How To Do 11+ Non Verbal Reasoning

For the Testing, then I would suggest you go for the new version of the Letts/NFeR papers and possibly the Learning Together series as back up.

• Letts, The Official 11+ Practise Papers
• Learning Together Series: 
• Non- Verbal Tests, book 2
• Verbal Tests, book 2 + 3
• Mathematics Tests

 If you are coming to me for tuition in 11+ then please DON'T GET ANY OF THESE, I WILL PROVIDE ALL OF THEM FOR YOU.
If you're not and want a good broad spectrum then these are the books I use and have a good knowledge of. They have proved over time to be the ones which reflect the standards of the 11+ the closest and as such give the child the best opportunity to evaluate their own areas of strength and weakness. The How To Do books are very good and I tend to suggest parents buy these as a matter of course because whether you go to a good tutor or not, its always good to have a reminder to dip into if you or they forget how to do something. I have just checked on Amazon and they have all the books available now, so if you are interested in getting them, then I would check it out.



So, you are in W H Smith and you pass the 11+ isle. You notice a mother looking stressed, not knowing what to take. Suggest these ones and look fantastic, or give them this blog address and get them to read this article. Either way you will be doing someone a favour and they will be relieved.
Have a great last few weeks, I am off on holiday next week so this will be the last article until I get back in the middle of September so see you then.

A website for education

In my last post I talked about a website I adore for the sheer pleasure it brings children and adults alike who play it. This post is about another website that isn't as sophisticated in its games as that but holds many which are more obviously mathematical. This website is called Maths Playground and houses games and teaching aids which will be of use for children between the ages of about 6 - 15 years.
You will notice there are several areas on this site; two of which are games pages and others which are Word Problems, Math Videos and Logic Problems.

There is also a reference to IXL a maths practise site which offers targeted work for different years. This is an excellent resource but you must also be aware that this is a subscription site and although there is some free-ware there, you have to pay to get into the site properly. If you are interested in controlling much of what your children do in maths, or want to give them a boost without having to leave home, then this is a good reference point and will have a lot of very good work to use. I know it is used in American schools and there are many children who are home-schooled who use this as their major input for their maths learning. If you are interested then I would suggest a stroll through the free intro work and make sure you know what you are paying to get involved in. The pre-school stuff is good however.

Right so let's get back to the web-site I use, the math playground. Like the cool maths site there are no chat rooms or any interaction with others, so the chances of the children being groomed is removed. There are adverts, however, and I have no idea where they lead, so if you allow you child to use this or any site then teaching them not to trail adverts is probably a good idea.
A good place to start playing is with Stay Sharp Arcade where you will find loads of basic arithmetic skills in the form of arcade games which they will enjoy and do, but be aware these will not hold their attention for more than a couple of games, so give them the opportunity to choose. What I do is to give them a restricted choice [the whole page to choose from is like putting a chocoholic in a chocolate factory and saying 'take one lick only'] of say 3 games and give them 10 mins to play then take them off  the computer a do something different. It keeps them motivated to go back and play again without getting them to O.D. in one sitting then tell you they're bored.There is a lot on that page and covers all 4 rules of number in whole numbers, fractions and decimals; a nice way to do arithmetic revision. During the summer, how about doing it as a competition? Spend some time with them, and create a competition, them against you. Have a prize of a packet of sweets or whatever is their favourite - nothing huge like a MacDonald's meal or anything, just a little something they can eat there and then if they win, and of course they will win most of the time won't they?

Let's quickly talk about the origins of this web-site; its American and therefore talks about the American

AMERICAN GRADE	AGE OF STUDENT
1	6
2	7
3	8
4	9
5	10
6	11
7	12
8	13
9	14
10	15
11	16
12	17

grades/year groups. They are different from ours so be careful. As you will see from the table above, the grades talk about specific ages groups, as they are in September of that year, so our 9 year olds would be in grade 4. On the whole its pretty similar but as a rule of thumb, the work done in the grade one less than their UK school year group is similar standards to that which they will come across in school.

I would suggest you have a good exploration of this site and have a look at what it offers. There is so much here, and it really is one for when they go back to school. Explore the videos: if you can cope with the American accent, then the videos are really helpful and some of the best I have found on the net.

The games sites as learning grounds

There are so many games out there now its hard to work out which ones will help and which ones do little except become compulsive. I use quite a few games when I teach and some of the sites I have shared with people when they have come to me.

As we are in the holiday season and we are getting to that point where, maybe they are running out of things to do, I have a few sites I would like to share with you, as well as some do's and don'ts regarding the games they get involved in.

I love maths games, anything where you have to think things through, develop strategies and accumulate knowledge about a place, a world or a wonderland of layers and extensions. In these sorts of games the children get the opportunity to utilise logic, progression, layering, postulation and conclusions. In fact they are given the opportunity to experiment, to use their spacial awareness and face consequences if it goes wrong. They learn by a series of trial and errors, using dexterity and ingenuity; if you are a lover of mathematics you will notice there are many words I have used here which refer directly to mathematical techniques, as well as scientific techniques of experimentation.

So what games am I eluding to here? Well, how about the games site; http://www.coolmath4kids.com
This one has a wealth of games which will push many children to very high levels of skill and confidence no matter what age they are.
Although I use many of these with the 10 to 11 year bracket, I know there are many younger brothers and sisters, not wanting to be left out, having a quiet go at home. It also works well with adults too, and they are addictive is so far as you want to get to the end. Piggy Push is a classic for this, as is Frizzle Fraz 2; so frustrating and with this one none of us have as yet got past level 2 and the spiders. If its compulsive, why, I hear you say, do I like it? Because it gets the child over the tendancy to 'give up' in their school work when things get tough. They are forced in a most pleasurable way to think things through for themselves and get there. When they do they get that endorphine rush of success and then start to crave more of it. By getting this into their mind-set you are setting them up to be try-ers rather than wait-ers.

 This is a superb website, and is well worth book-marking for use whenever they wish. What I like about it even more is there is no interaction with other players so there is no chance of any grooming - any parent's greatest nightmare! Another wonderful aspect of this site is the learning angle which has so many useful tips on the fours rules of number, fractions and decimals. There are games which push these skills, some old and simple others newer and a bit more complex. For subtraction, try Subtraction Blaster; not easy I can tell you, but real fun even for us adults! For times table practise, then it has to be Crazy Taxi but beware, you'll get into it and the screams can be heard down the road!!!

The website has just launched a sister site called, Coolified Games.com which I am just starting to investigate and this one certainly takes the whole process to another level. The adventure games are a challenge and many of the pupils I have been working with all year and have plenty of knowledge are finding these great fun and quite a challenge. I am at present trying to get a pig along a 300 mile challenge and as yet haven't made it past 47 miles! Its those damn birds! The game is called, 300 mile to Pig Island, and has us all riveted. We are trying to work out how to get the puzzles going at the moment, anyway try it, its great fun. I have been told the game below it, Chibi Knights is also good but I've not tried that one yet.

So, I have waxed lyrical about that website, and its certainly one to go for during the holidays, how about others? I will give you those another day...... but for now, go away, play these, and let your children have great fun.

And what are the don'ts? Well, one of the main ones is stick to these sorts of games not the ones where they go off and compete against one another in globally attended battles. They are too young, and many of these gaming sites are very addictive. There have been many an article about the compulsive addiction it can cause, so avoid them.
And the biggest don't? Well, don't have too much fun, it can seriously create noise and laughter.

The Desire Society

It is official, we have moved out of the 'need' society and we are now fully within the 'desire' one. There is still an age group around who will expound the virtues of buying what you need and not wanting/wasting such money on so many extravagances, but they are mostly over 50 now and the new society's standards are,

buy today for tomorrow there maybe something better.

So what does that mean to the children of today and their futures? How will that impact upon us as parents, and grand parents and how will this change the way children view the expectations they have of parents? I suspect the answer to that is beginning to be seen now, with phones costing upwards of £500 being in the hands of 10 year old, fashions which promote sexuality being worn by pre-pubescent and language changes taking the standard English into new dimensions.

Articles in numerous scientific journals record differences in the way children's brains are now being wired and they are putting this down to the change in the way we communicate as a species. No longer do we write a letter and wait for an answer, the correspondences are happening instantly and world wide. They don't have to wait any more to hear what so-and-so think, says or does and they alter the way they present themselves to the world accordingly. The innocence of childhood is gone and in many ways there is a return to the Victorian times when children began puberty and were married off at 13 years of age. When you consider Romeo and Juliet were less than 17 years old when they fell in love and then committed suicide, one can see there is a return to this, less than innocent time, a time before teenage and back to the historical times of child/puberty/adult. Let's face it, the teenage was a 1950s invention, a way of getting away from the horrors of the war, and a time when young people were fighting to gain an identity from underneath the oppression of a bankrupt nation, rationing and fear of being bombed. Teenage was a way of 'letting go' and moving into responsibility slowly. To them responsibility carried with it some uncomfortable truths; war, death, horror, hunger, being bombed out, grafting in dangerous places, the list goes on.

So, we are entering a new era and as parents we have to not only embrace this massive change, we have to make sure we instill into our children some of the values we had as children and as a family. We have to think what is really important to us and then involve our children in that so they can 'take part' and perhaps absorb some of that into their own social structure which is forming as we speak. 

To be influential in their lives we have to embrace the new technologies and be up to date, so we can, to some extent, speak their language, and not pass into the realms of those old people who know nothing because to enter that realm is a one way street and carries no respect from the Brave New World which is growing up around us and leaving some of us behind.