Eleven Plus Guessing

When you are working with your child towards the eleven plus you will sometimes advise your child to work the answer out logically. At other times you actively advocate the idea that a guess is somehow necessary. After all some of the answers to some eleven plus questions show that an inspired guess is just as likely to be right than actually understanding how to do the questions.

Try a little experiment with 20 Questions. Start with asking your child to guess a number between 1 and 20. Of course some children with quite naturally guess numbers at random. Other children may attempt to formulate a set of rules – based around the 20 Questions numbers and who else is playing.

When your child has the hang of the game and is playing energetically – and largely correctly – then throw in that the rules are going to change. Instead of numbers between 1 and 20 you want your child to guess a number between 1 and 2 million.

Does you child follow a similar set of rules – or is the change enough to ask your child to formulate a new method of dealing with answers.