Eleven Plus Cognitive Skills

Eleven plus children, who want to go to a grammar school, `need’ to pass the eleven plus. We know that children have basic needs – along the lines of food, water, sleep, clothing and so on. Children also need some form of education in order that they can survive. But why do children `need’ to pass the eleven plus?

Parents, teachers, schools, family and friends are all making assumptions about a child in the build-up to the eleven plus examination.  Parents, of course, are planning and specifying educational needs and objectives. Some parents will allow any eleven plus objectives to take care of themselves. “If my child can pass she will do it on her own. We do not need to have to work through eleven plus books and papers.”

Other parents will be adopting a far more formal agenda. One way and another they may be following at least parts of Bloom’s Classification of Objectives. Bloom divided objectives into three categories – the cognitive, the affective and the psycho-motor. Cognitive objectives lie around the intellectual skills while affective objectives are to do with awareness and the last with organising and structuring.  

Why should an eleven plus child studying mathematics need to know how to find ten per-cent of a number? It is reasonably simple to show an eleven plus child how to find 10% - but it does involve several elements. A child has to be able to understand what a `per-cent’ is. He or she must also be able to interpret and understand the `%’ sign. There is also the question of the size of the number. Finding 10% to 24 is reasonably easy. Finding 10% of 0.0045 is possibly a little more difficult. Understanding the implications of a 10% discount is, possibly, even more demanding.

Do we really need to teach percentages? At the moments any eleven plus children, for the mathematics part of the examination, need to be able to work out 10% of a given number. What is really important is that they can use this skill to be able to deduce a worthy eleven plus answer.

Developing and testing numerical reasoning questions suggests that certain types of grammar schools require children who can think and reason. The children may also need to be able to solve simple problems – but it is in the application of the processes in arriving at an answer that we find the higher level cognitive skills.

The Eleven Plus Emotional Adjustment Guide

You notice that your child appears to be eager to `hit the eleven plus books’. You start to worry. It is the duty of all eleven plus parents to worry about everything. Eleven plus parents worry about their child passing the examination, but they also worry about every single minute detail.

You ask your respective friends for help. They all seem to praise the `Eleven Plus Emotional Adjustment Guide’. Parents in the know call this the: `EPEAG’. The guide covers questions for your child to answer and questions for you to ponder.  You may even share some answers!

Question	Yes	No	Not Sure
Are you as good as most other people?
Do you feel guilty about eleven plus work?
Do you think of yourself as a failure?
Do you keep calm when the going gets tough?
Are you pretty confident about your life and work?
Do you get blamed when it is not your fault?
Can you do most eleven plus work?
Do you often argue?
Are you a happy person?
Do people around you like you?
Do you read a lot?
Are you easily embarrassed?

There are only twelve questions in the preliminary assessment. You may wish to add a wider and more interrogative set of questions to cover the particular circumstances of your family.

An Eleven Plus Bill

There are changes coming to some eleven plus areas. Children and parents are going to be faced with unfamiliar questions.  An example for eleven plus children could be:

Many years ago men and women were placed in the Debtors Prison if they were unable to pay debts. By all accounts this was a grim and soul destroying. Suppose someone owes your mother and father £500 and is not required to pay for three months. Your parents, however, have to pay their own bill of £400. How will they raise the money?

Sell the family cat?

Sell the accumulated eleven plus books?

Have a garage sale?

Borrow?

There is an option that your parents could `sell the bill’. Your parents could be offered a percentage a little above the current bank rate – at 6%.

Your family only need the money for 50 days. Your parents want to borrow the full £500 – even though the only need £400. (Just to be safe)

£500 x 50 x 6

365 X 100

= £4.11

Your mother father are given, by the bank, £500 – £4.11 = £495.89.

Eleven Plus Question

Select the right answer:

A Yes – it is fair for a bank to charge interest

B No – 6% is too much interest to charge

C Partly – because banks need to make money

D Should we bring back the debtors prison?

An Eleven Plus Dialogue

A bright and able girl arrived home late one afternoon. “Mum, we were doing some mathematics at school today and met this problem.”

“Well, I hope I can help.”

“If everyone had only two names, a Christian name and a surname, how many distinct pairs of initials could there be?”

“Were you given this question in your eleven plus booster class with your head teacher?”

“Yes, there were only three of us today, and we had to wait for quite a long while.”

“What other sums were you given to work on?”

“We had a work sheet with square numbers, square roots and numbers to the power of three. We also did some work on probability. That was easy.”

“Is there a clue with the work on numbers? You mean if you start with the letter `a’, how many combinations can there be?”

“I suppose 26 – because there is a, b, c, d and so on.”

“So if we add `b’ we now have another 26?”

“Mum, I know the answer, 26².”

“What is that?”

“26 times 26. Just wait. I know. It must end in 6 because 6 times 6 is 36. It must be 6 7 6!”

“Well done, dear!”

Did the Eleven Plus Rule at This Grammar School?

I was up in Durham yesterday and came across this fascinating plate.

The Almshouse came in 1666 - but the Grammar School dated back to 1414.

A Wonderful Eleven Plus Tutor

The Near Year has started. Parents are thinking seriously about the eleven plus. To tutor or not to tutor, that is the question!

Playground gossip tells of a wonderful eleven plus teacher. She only takes on a few eleven plus children every year – but she does get results. She decides that she is going to have to change her methods because a new eleven plus examination is being mooted. She divided half of her ten pupils to use the `New Eleven Plus Teaching Method’. She teaches the rest of her children using her `normal’ methods.

The next year she only wants to tutor eight children. Her daughter, who is studying to become a psychologist, offers to do some form of statistical analysis to try to help her mother interpret the eleven plus results.

Eleven Plus Pupils	The New Method	The Normal Method
First	81	72
Year	59	70
	48	63
	46	51
Second	92	97
Year	87	95
	65	88
	61	70

The daughter comes home for the weekend. She gGreets her parents and asks to see the results.

A blessed silence falls over the house. The `almost’ psychologist daughter announces: “Mum, there is not much difference in the two different methods of teaching. You will need to continue with the same methods next year. We will then look again.

A new parent calls. Will her much loved daughter be taught using the `new’ or the `old’ methods. The daughter who is studying to become a psychologist has gone back to university. The well respected eleven plus tutor welcomes the new family. Parents are happy. The child is happy.

What will the end result be?

An Eleven Plus Rock

When parents are working with their eleven plus children do they sometimes wonder if the eleven plus is simply a metaphor for Sisyphus?

You have explained how analogies work in a verbal reasoning exercise. You have listened to your child complaining that he or she has never seen an analogy question before. You have carefully gone through the instructions at least twice. You have looked back and found a similar exercise. Not the same but remarkably like one managed easily the previous day.

You mutter under your breath: “I hate Sisyphus.”

Your eleven plus candidate mutters: “Not that nutter again.”

Your youngest, with but three years to the examination, gives the explanation: “Sisyphus rolled a big rock to the top of a mountain. The big rock was then rolled down the hill. Sisyphus had to return to push the rock up the hill – again.

The candidate, who is inclined to show off sometimes, asks for the spelling of the word. The word is written down. You are then told that there are lots of three letter words in Sisyphus. You know that this is just a technique to stop you from blowing your top – but you go along. After all, some work on words is better than none at all.

`Hip, his, shy, spy and yup’ are offered.

An intense argument then breaks out. Is `yup’ a real word?

Little know-all argues that yup is not a word. The older candidate says that yup is a real word.

You try to get out while the going is good. There are some rocks that don’t need to be pushed.

Your spouse enters the argument explaining definitively that yup can mean yes, and that some people are called yuppies. You wonder if you should point out that a `yuppies’ is not a little yes, and that you think it is funny that yuppie should rhyme with puppy.

Little know-all wants to know why yuppie does not end in a `y’ like puppy.

You declare defeat and retire gracefully.

Eleven Plus Passes

In one year, in one school, thirteen children passed the eleven plus. So the head teacher, the teachers, the governors and the parents all voted for the teacher to be offered promotion. The next year, with a different teacher, only five children passed. Assuming that an equal number of children in the school sat the examination, do the new figures suggest that the head, the teachers, the governors and the parents were all wrong? Is the reduction in the number of eleven plus passes down to chance?

One of the parents, in Year One, is a statistician and is co-opted to look into the potential problem. After all no one wants the same thing to happen.

X, the smaller number of children who passed = 5

Y, the number who passed in the previous year = 13

N = x + y

= 5 + 13

= 18

Because the number does not exceed forty the statistician looks at what is called the 50% Probability Test. This shows that if x = 5 and y = 13 – with a total of 18 then there is a probability of 10%.

The difference between the two eleven plus pass rates is not statistically proven.

The head can relax.

The teacher keeps the job.

The governors can be proud of their school.

The parents can maintain their support.

The children can rest easy. (Not that they worried much anyway!)

Eleven Plus and von Pirquet

We hear about some very strange eleven plus results over the years. We hear of children who pass unexpectedly – and of children who somehow do not reach the required standard. There can be little doubt that some questions suit some types of brains. Could there be an easy answer?

If we take a reasonably typical eleven plus question, aimed at an eleven plus high-flyer, we can expect a variety of responses. Do you remember attaching cardboard to the spokes of your bicycle so that as the wheel rotates you hear a variety of clicks and `burring’ sounds? Have you ever envied the freedom of the surveyors walking purposefully along pavements? These men and women are not bound by desks – but often have the freedom of the open air.

Back to our eleven plus question:

A sturdy surveyor is pacing out the site of a projected housing estate. A surveyor needs to know the horizontal distance between two points and uses a trundle wheel with a circumference of 50 cm. Each time the wheel turns it clicks. Two clicks equals one metre.

How many centimetres are there in six clicks?

How many clicks will there be in a typical `T’ junction?

This question requires a degree of calculation – but also shows the need for appreciation of the width of a road as well as car and lorry turning circles. How many eleven year olds have these skills? We can see that the centimetres question can be considered a `fair’ question – but what about the `T’ junction element?

Estimating answers to measuring questions can be highly personal. We know, for example, that a new born baby is measured and weighed on a regular basis. Some parents will even have kept these early records. Height, for example, is a linear measurement. Some earnest parents may have followed the course of testing the hypothesis that the relating height to the cube root of weight! Clemens von Pirquet was involved with the distribution of emergency rations after the First World War. He suggested that the cube root of weight could be divided by the sitting height in centimetres. A figure of 100 was considered normal. One below 94 indicated under-nutrition.

The problem was that if the height was measured just one centimetre too much or too little the whole formula was suspect. Please, if you have time, try this with your eleven plus child!

A child with just one mark above the `pass mark’ can pass the eleven plus. A child with one mark below can fail to win a place in a grammar school. Being one centimetre out can change a result – just as the appreciation of a few `clicks’ can alter a child’s future.

Eleven Plus Functional Skills

Eleven plus children need functional skills. All eleven plus children need functional skills. Some eleven plus children need functional skills. Some eleven plus children may need functional skills. It depends, we must suppose, on what is meant by the functional skills needed by an eleven plus child.

The functional skills needed by eleven plus children lie in English, mathematics and information technology. Children who have good functional skills are probably able to maximum advantage of the opportunities allowed by the eleven plus. Children will use these skills to develop the aptitudes, attitudes and behaviour patterns need by the extent and scope of eleven plus work.

By now the question must arise – but why does an eleven plus child need sound information technology skills?

To help mum and dad with the computer and the internet when necessary

To be able to address the computer using the mouse and the keyboard

To have the skills, and the confidence, to be able to apply competence in information technology to new situations.

In English eleven plus children must be able to read, write and listen. They also need to be able to reason orally and in writing. In mathematics the children need, at the very least to be able to process information as well as perform concrete and abstract calculations.

A simple eleven plus question can illustrate using functional skills – along with verbal and numerical reasoning.

A girl sells chocolate to her brother. She sells two pens for the price she paid for three. How much is her profit?

Ask your eleven plus child explain to you why the profit is 50%.

The `Pre Eleven Plus Quiz'

How do you know if your eleven plus child will enjoy the benefits of an eleven plus education? You could try a little `Pre Eleven Plus Quiz’. We know that the ambition of parents will play a large part in the pre-examination preparation – but there are other factors as well. The eleven plus child has to have some degree of ambition, common sense and motivation. Naturally sheer ability also helps!

Ask your child to rate the following:

Topic	Very Important	Important	Quite Important	Not Important
Wanting to attend the same school as friends
Enjoying Reading
Interest in computer games
An active sporting life
T.V.
Tidy Bedroom
Asking about career opportunities
Visiting museums
Drawing
Writing Poetry
Constructing Lego models
Looking after the sick
Planting and gardening
Visiting a cave
Arguing

There are many options that can be used in the` Pre Eleven Plus Quiz’. Parents could devise their own with questions on sport, school, interests and aptitudes.

The quiz could point to careers in veterinary sciences, becoming a doctor or a nurse.

Other questions could cover business, finance and economics

There are all the engineering options to follow.

Languages, psychology, physical education and beauty therapy could all play a part.

The one ingredient that may prove to rather useful is sheer self-belief. If your child believes that passing the eleven plus is both practical and possible then perhaps . . . . .