Exam technique
The answer sheet transfer drill
GL papers are not marked from the question booklet. They are marked from a separate bubble sheet, and the machine reading it cannot tell that the maths was right.
Almost every child who loses a large number of marks in the 11+ loses them here, not on the questions. They leave one question to come back to, forget to leave its row blank, and every answer after it goes in the row above where it belongs. Thirty correct answers become thirty wrong ones.
It is a clerical skill, not a reasoning one, and it is practised almost nowhere — so this drill hands you the answers. You are not working anything out. Your only job is to copy them into the right rows, and to notice if you lose your place.
The habit worth building: check the printed question number against your row every five answers. It takes a second and it turns a lost place from a catastrophe into a one-mark slip. This drill will tell you exactly what that habit would have been worth.
Start the drill
You will be shown a page of answers, as if you had already worked them out in the question booklet. Copy each one into the answer sheet. Some questions were left blank — those rows must be left blank too.
The question number is printed every 5 answers. Use it.
On the day
- 1Transfer as you go, not at the end. A child who saves it all for the last five minutes has no time left to notice a mistake.
- 2If you skip a question, mark the booklet clearly and count the blank row out loud in your head as you pass it.
- 3Every five rows, check the number on the sheet matches the question you just answered. That is the whole technique.
- 4Fill the bubble fully and rub out completely. A faint second mark can be read as two answers, which scores zero.