Track the direction of one or more oriented marks.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere.
Practise it now
Scrub the timeline to feel what the pattern is doing, then drag the frame that comes next into the empty slot.
This exercise practises track pointing direction alongside its own main skill, Sequences.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Following the turn
Find how far the first figure turns, then turn the third one by the same amount.
The shape does not change here. It turns, and the turn is a quarter turn anticlockwise.
the chair shape flipped over, in its starting position → the chair shape flipped over, turned 270 degrees clockwise, so the chair shape as it is, turned 270 degrees clockwise → ?
the chair shape as it is, turned 90 degrees clockwise
the chair shape flipped over, turned 270 degrees clockwise
the chair shape as it is, turned 180 degrees clockwise
the chair shape as it is, in its starting position
Answer: the chair shape as it is, turned 180 degrees clockwise
How you get there
The only thing that changes between the first two figures is the way the shape is turned: the chair shape flipped over, in its starting position becomes the chair shape flipped over, turned 270 degrees clockwise, so the change is a quarter turn anticlockwise. Making the same change to the chair shape as it is, turned 270 degrees clockwise gives the chair shape as it is, turned 180 degrees clockwise.
Why the other answers tempt
A flipped shape is not a turned shape. Turning can never swap which side the short arm sits on.
If they are stuck, say this
Decide how far the shape turned and which way round it went, then turn the third figure by exactly that much.
Scrub the timeline to feel what the pattern is doing, then drag the frame that comes next into the empty slot.
This engine’s own main skill is Sequences. It practises track pointing direction alongside it.
Hard sequences run two rules at the same time, so you have to track them separately. Here the arrows turn 45° further every frame (0°, 45°, 90°, 135°…) and the number of arrows climbs by one every frame (1, 2, 3, 4…). Frame five must obey both: five arrows, turned to 180°.
What to say if they get stuck
Drag the handle slowly. Watch the arrows turn - how far do they swing between one frame and the next?
Now stop watching the turn and count the arrows instead. Something else is growing.
Two rules run at once: the turn adds 45° each frame, and one more arrow joins each time.
How track pointing direction differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: track the direction of one or more oriented marks, and it stops where excludes whole-figure rotation unless all parts turn together.
Questions parents ask about track pointing direction
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Track the direction of one or more oriented marks. It is one of 22 named non-verbal reasoning skills in the 11+, in the attribute strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
A flipped shape is not a turned shape. Turning can never swap which side the short arm sits on. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Decide how far the shape turned and which way round it went, then turn the third figure by exactly that much.
The skill map draws the line here: Excludes whole-figure rotation unless all parts turn together. A question past that line is testing a different named non-verbal reasoning skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The attribute strand holds 3 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to track pointing direction are track fill and line style and track object count. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use Sequence Scrubber, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to track pointing direction, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Non-verbal reasoning is the paper families most often leave until last
A free diagnostic covers matrices, series, odd one out, rotation, reflection and the 3D questions, and shows where the time is worth spending.
