We found the best way forward was to cover a couple of maths topics per week. I would sit down for half an hour and talk around the topic, then half an hour the next day – perhaps on a Kahn Acadamy (see resources page). Once my son understood the topic he would make a crib of the main points. We would revisit the crib a week later, and again a couple of weeks after that.
Sometimes I would make the crib sheet for them and encourage them to enrich it, Other times they would make their own.
Typical 11 Plus Questions
They expect candidates to know the maths syllabus for their school year but there are some typical types of question that they layer on top of that. Looking at practice books and past papers you should be able to identify some types of question that come up time and again. Here is a list of a few…
| Clock hand angles | The thing to remember here is that the hour hand moves by a small amount to reflect the movement of the minute hand: https://www.varsitytutors.com/sat_math-help/how-to-find-the-angle-of-clock-hands |
| Converting recurring decimals to fractions | |
| Clocks gaining and losing time | This is a great blog on the topic: https://www.ukstudycentre.co.uk/blog/eleven-11-questions-2-mrs-varmas-watch/ |
| Simultaneous equations | No – I’m not kidding, these do come up: https://www.ukstudycentre.co.uk/blog/eleven-11-questions-1-cows-chickens/ |
| Roman numerals | |
| Highest Common Factor and Lowest Common Multiple | Using primary factor trees |
| Frequency tables | Finding the mean and mode, including ranges |
| Metric conversion | Linear, area and volume. We made a metric caterpillar to make it easier to remember – see James’ blog. Remember for area to square the multipliers and for volume cube them. |
| Summing consecutive numbers |
Here are Some of Our Crib Sheets
These would only make sense once you have studied the topic with your child – hopefully they will inspire you to make your own.
