Here’s something which can turn up in either the maths or VR part of an eleven plus exam and many year 5 students don’t know this information – does yours?
It’s learnt via the old rhyme that most (of us) adults have learned, in one form or another, to remind us how many days are in each month of the year.
11+ memory test
The eleven-plus (along with its younger sibling, the seven-plus) is a memory test as much as anything else.
With that in mind (no pun intended), the more facts, drills, tips and techniques that your child can pack away into their grey matter for quick and easy recall, the easier they’ll find their actual exam day(s).
That’s why learning some facts and figures, and patterns of words or shapes, by rote, will help them tremendously.
How will this recall/memory skill help them?
Entrance exams are very time-sensitive so the easier that your child can move from question to question, without stopping to have to ‘remember’ how to deal with each change in the question, will result in higher marks.
There’s also less ‘cognitive bandwidth’ tied up with not having to remember everything – it just falls into place, as and when required.
Example questions
Examples of questions where quick recall of this info is required
- Arman saved £3.00 every day for the first three months of a leap year. How much money did he save in total?
- Siena had her birthday put back by a fortnight from the original date of 22nd December. On what day will it now take place?
There are a few variations to some of the words as quoted below, but here’s a commonly accepted and slightly modernised version.
“Thirty days has September,
April, June, and November,
All the rest have thirty-one,
Save February at twenty-eight,
But leap year, coming once in four,
February then has one day more.”
Some informal ‘games’ around this could be having them find out the dates of birth for all of the members of the family and work out the gaps (ignoring years to cover modesty!)
There you go – some ’11+ prep’ all whilst not ‘really’ revising for their 11+.
Every day is an opportunity – don’t waste it.
If you’d like to find out more about tailored 11-plus tutoring for your child, click the button for more details.