Track how elements exchange places or move through ordered positions.
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
The tall square moves the same number of places each time. Count the move, then pick the track that comes next.
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 move
Count how many places the marker moves, then move the third one the same way.
The marker does not change. It moves one level lower.
a small pale grey bead on level 4 → a small pale grey bead on level 3, so a small pale grey bead on level 5 → ?
a small pale grey bead on level 4
a small pale grey bead on level 3
a pale grey bead on level 5
a pale grey bead on level 4
Answer: a small pale grey bead on level 4
How you get there
The only thing that changes between the first two figures is the level the bead sits on: a small pale grey bead on level 4 becomes a small pale grey bead on level 3, so the change is one level lower. Making the same change to a small pale grey bead on level 5 gives a small pale grey bead on level 4.
Why the other answers tempt
A marker one place out has not followed the rule, even though it looks close.
If they are stuck, say this
Work out both how many places the marker moved and which way it went, then apply the whole move to the third figure.
The tall square moves the same number of places each time. Count the move, then pick the track that comes next.
In the first track the tall square is in place 7. In the second it is in place 5, so it has moved 2 places to the left. Nothing else about the figures changes: they are the same pictures in the same order, and only where the tall square sits is different. Moving 2 places to the left again from place 5 lands it in place 3. The ends of the track do not join up, so a move that would run off the end is not an answer at all, and counting the gaps between the figures instead of the places they sit in is what puts the tall square one place too far.
Step 1. Count the move. Look at the two tracks. How many places does the tall square move, and which way?
Step 2. What comes next?. Now pick the track that comes next.
What to say if they get stuck
Find the tall square in the first track and again in the second. Count the places it landed on, not the gaps it jumped over.
Which way did it travel? The move keeps going the same way, so start from where it is in the second track and count on again.
The tall square moves 2 places to the left each time, and the ends of the track do not join up.
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
How track order and position differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises one other skill, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: track how elements exchange places or move through ordered positions, and it stops where element attributes remain fixed unless separately stated.
Compare shape, position, angle, number, size, or shading across figures. One named or inferable attribute change.
Questions parents ask about track order and position
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 how elements exchange places or move through ordered positions. It is one of 22 named non-verbal reasoning skills in the 11+, in the position strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
A marker one place out has not followed the rule, even though it looks close. 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. Work out both how many places the marker moved and which way it went, then apply the whole move to the third figure.
The skill map draws the line here: Element attributes remain fixed unless separately stated. 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 skill map connects it to complete a visual matrix. A matrix may compose a positional exchange rule. That skill has its own page here.
Use The Marker Track, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to track order and position, 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.
