3 Issues that have come up in Round One (7+ Assessments)

Round 1 of the 7+ Assessments is now nearly over for 2024 entry. We still have a few Round One Assessments coming up this week and then we will officially be done!

Our students have worked every so hard and shown so much determination.

Here are some of the issues that we have encountered this year specifically. These are things that I’ve heard from some of my own students and from some new students who I am currently preparing for their second round. I’ve also spoken to parents who are not our clients but who called me to feedback to me about Round 1 at certain schools.

Issue number 1

Story Writing

I think that story writing has been the biggest issue that we have encountered this year. The quality of story writing expected at 7+ is even higher than usual (and it is usually very high!)

These top schools expect the highest quality of writing at 7+.

Students are marked according to the quality of their writing.

Story writing needs to be given a lot of time in the lead up to the 7+ Assessments. Children need to be given the opportunity to explore a variety of different story titles, picture prompts, story continuation from a comprehension etc. They need to be given the opportunity to write as many stories as possible. They need to understand the quality expected from them in order to be able to pass at Round 1.

Issue number 2

Not completing the questions in time.

Not completing all (or at least most) of the questions is a big problem. Children need to be taught how to answer the questions in timed conditions so that they have the best chance of completing as many questions as possible in the Assessments. As you can imagine it is very important that children compete as many questions as possible. After all we want all of our students to score the highest marks possible. I heard from several parents that told me that their child left one full page because they didn’t check that there were more questions. When they went back to check their answers they realised that they had left out several questions but they didn’t have enough time to complete it by the time they had realised. I always teach my students to check that they have completed all of the questions before moving on.

Issue number 3

More complex maths questions and two and three step worded problems.

We spend a lot of time in our lessons teaching our students strategies for solving two and three step worded problems. Some of our students feel overwhelmed when they see too much writing on the page of a maths paper. We teach them how to break it down so that it is more manageable and we show them how to clearly show their working out to each step. More complex maths questions that have come up this year have included - double digit multiplication, bus stop method for division, fraction of quantity of larger numbers.