FSL 11+ Course - Week 3

Week 3 - What We Cover

This week, we cover the following:

Maths: Properties of Numbers (FSL Red book, page 11)

Students should be clear on the meanings of the following: factors, multiples, primes, square numbers, the ‘product’ of two numbers and the ‘sum’ of two numbers. If they are unsure of any and need reminding for their homework, the definitions can be found on page 11 of their maths book.

Non Verbal Reasoning: Pointing (FSL Red book, page 12)

This subject is quite self explanatory, but students needs to count the number of arrows pointing a certain way carefully, and be clear on the difference between clockwise and anticlockwise too.

Verbal Reasoning: Synonyms and Antonyms (FSL Green book, pages 7-11)

This is often challenging because of the vocabulary involved, but their work on Memrise so far should help them with their homework. Nonetheless, there are a few important tricks to remember with these questions: 

 

  1. The words must always be in the same tense to be correct – e.g. charge + attacked are not synonyms – one word is in the present tense, one in the past (but charged + attacked, or charge + attack would be okay).

  2. They must be the same part of speech (nouns/adjectives/verbs/adverbs) to be synonyms/antonyms – e.g. ‘she was happy’ and ‘she was merriment’ doesn’t work in a mini sentence – they can’t be synonyms because one is an adjective, one is a noun. Getting them to think of sentences like that can really help them to check their answers.

  3. They need to be careful of putting words that are associated with each other, but are not similar/opposite – e.g. they almost always put pepper + salt as opposites in their homework, but they’re just often paired together – just like bucket and spade – but they are not in fact opposite at all. It’s a deliberate trick to misguide them, and the fact that they’re quite easy words to start with is a bit of a warning sign. 

For a list of the homework this week, please see below:

Week 3 – Homework

  • FSL Yellow Course Homework Book (pages 17-22)

  • Any incomplete classwork (as listed above)