Can anyone tell me if there is any advice given on this site on how to tackle the questions whereby you are given an unfolded dice with 6 different symbols on it and you have to work out which of the 4 solid dice shapes matches. these are the ones my son really struggles with!!

Unfortunately these questions do actually seem to test an inbuilt sense of spacial awareness which is hard to teach. We find that students either find these questions very easy or very difficult.

In the past we have tried to help children tackle these questions by physically making the nets of the 3D shapes and putting them together. Obviously you can't do this in the real exam but it's the only way we have found to teach these questions to students who find them difficult.

As the nets can be different each time, there are no special tricks to help solve these questions.

I would also advise playing games which test short term memory. Don't just play them once. Do them regularly. Visit our brain games section and play

Memory Madness
3D Memory
Non Verbal Set Game

There are a couple of net questions in our online maths tests. If everything goes to plan today we should have downloadable versions too.