The purpose of this post is to stop you making the same mistake I did and wasting your money.
This year I had one son doing NAPLAN Year 5. Being a concerned parent, I bought him a cheap School Zone NAPLAN-style practice book from Kmart.
Let me say straight up that I don't think children should necessarily study for NAPLAN.
There's scant evidence for the efficacy of homework in the primary years, and practice books don't actually teach much, they just...er... provide practice.
But I was caught in a weak moment.
I did actually set my son some homework from the book over the weeks leading up to NAPLAN, but then we got to this page...
...and we stopped.
The layout and graphics of the book are both appealing, but unfortunately the book contains numerous mistakes.
On just this one page...
- all the examples under 'comparatives' are actually superlatives,
- one of them has no available correct answer, and
- some of the words labelled pronouns in the answers are possessive adjectives.
Interested to review other similar products, I bought these less visually-appealing Excel NAPLAN-style books from Big W.
I'm happy to report that the content seems to be much better, although we missed the bright colour scheme and graphics of the School Zone book.
I opened the numeracy section of the Year 7 version of the School Zone books and found more mistakes in that, too.
So, if you must buy a NAPLAN-style practice book, I recommend the Excel books over the School Zone ones.
Or just save your money. Shout yourselves to an ice cream instead.
Have you tried any NAPLAN-style practice books? Please share your thoughts about NAPLAN in the comments.
If you liked this book review, you might be interested in our favourite maths books or poetry books. New to the Afterschooling Blog? Try our A-Z of Afterschooling. As always, thank you for reading - and please use the buttons below to share this if you find it useful!
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