As a proof-reader here at Education Quizzes, I had the dubious privilege recently of checking 50 Non-verbal Reasoning quizzes before they went live. Having not been an 11-plus student, I hadn’t really come across these questions before. I’d seen them in those fun quiz books one gets at Christmas time. Lateral thinking puzzles and so on to see how intelligent one is – I was never very good at them!
As I began, I was really enjoying them – they make an interesting change to the usual ‘wordy’ questions. There were many shapes, squiggles and codes to work out. Some of them I thought were really hard – and I am still amazed that 11-year-olds are expected to understand them – especially the ‘Odd Ones Out’.
We tried our utmost to be as unambiguous as possible with the multiple choice answers. However, it was also important that the questions were difficult enough to challenge our students. Some of the questions stumped me!
The teacher who wrote the quizzes explained that of all the subjects in the curriculum, Non-verbal Reasoning is the one that gets the most complaints. Having done my job, I can now see why! These quizzes really do teach children attention to detail and patience. Many a time, I thought I’d got the answer only to find I was wrong. The key to these questions is to really look and think about them. Elimination helps rather than finding the first similarity and assuming that’s the correct answer. Of all the subjects covered at EQ, this one has been the most interesting, the most fun and the most frustrating – all at the same time!
As a parent, it would be wise to play the quizzes first so you get an idea as to how they work. Our teacher has been fastidious with helpful comments, putting one in every single question so you get to understand how they work. Why not try one of the tricky Code Breaker quizzes, or even the challenging Odd One Out and see how good you are. If you get full marks – well done.
When you’ve had enough of non-verbal reasoning because your eyes are going square (we know the feeling!), you can always have a break and play some of our Fun quizzes. We have a variety of subjects, from Nature to People to Gardening to Books and plenty of General Knowledge to keep your brain occupied. The listing page for Fun can be found here. The especially nice thing about the Fun quizzes is that most of them are picture quizzes.
If your child is taking the 11-plus, why not play these unique and interesting non-verbal reasoning quizzes together? When you’ve tackled them, we also have a large selection of verbal reasoning that you can play. Good luck!
Now we’ve explained the mysteries of non-verbal reasoning, do you have any other questions about education? If so you’ll find the EQ Knowledge Bank a valuable resource. We have a whole host of articles, written by teachers and educationalists, each one aimed at answering a specific question asked by parents. And it’s not all about education – we also cover children’s health, their safety and important issues such as protection from bullies. It’s well worth a look!