These question types popped up in our Gloucestershire CEM transfer tests two years ago. Missing sentences as opposed to missing words!
We had a lesson on things that may confuse students:
Some children struggle with the concept of what a quarter is; this may be down to some schools teaching fractions as ‘one fourth’ rather than a 1/4 and worry that it may be difficult to visualize what a quarter may look like!
The word ‘minus’ applies to column subtraction as well as ‘minus’ numbers.
There are degrees in angles and also in temperatures.
Some students have asked for clarification that angles can be ‘right’ angles even if they are physically located on the ‘left’ in a textbook!
Lots of children tend to express for example 4240 divided by 4 as ‘4 divided by 4240’ – we think that this is how they see the calculation written in ‘Bus Stop’ format?
Some primary schools teach children that it is impossible to divide an odd number by 2. Hence confusion when trying to calculate 7/2 if you have been told that it can’t be done!
