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 With the PSLE just two months away, we share some tips offered by experienced educators, parents and top-scorers on how to make effective use of the time left to prepare for the examinations.
1) Set your Targets
By now you and your child should have already set goals on what to achieve for the exam. Is it doing well enough to gain entry into a specific school? Getting a particular grade or score for each subject? Equally important is to build up your child’s confidence and self-belief– tell your child that he or she has what it takes and that you are there to provide your full support.
2) Zoom in on Trouble Spots
With only two months to go, your child’s revision plan must provide a balance of ‘overall’ revision and exam practice e.g. ‘SA-type’ papers and mock PSLE exams, as well as intensive revision for weak areas. Revisit topical assessments that will help your child brush up on areas of weakness, and if need be, go back to fundamentals in explaining concepts. Work with your child, teacher and tutor (where applicable) to identify the most important topics, and the types of questions that will help your child score the most marks.Due to lack of time during this period, some students resort to studying model answers for topics they are not so confidence about in the hope of recalling them during the exams – DON’T.
3) Learn from Corrections
At this stage, your child may already be doing mock exam papers or other schools’ exam papers on a regular basis. Where possible, you or a tuition teacher should mark the papers using a detailed marking scheme. Such papers that come with a detailed marking scheme will help you pinpoint exactly where and how your child is losing marks. Go through the wrong answers in detail to ensure that your child not only knows the correct answer but understands how to arrive at them. Where concept-based explanations are required, get your child to look at the model answer but also explain it in his or her own words, to test that your child really understands how the concept is being applied.
4) Draw up Exam Battle Plans
A major challenge of students is completing all the questions and sections within the time allocated to them. In particular, sitting down for papers nearly 2 hours long (e.g. Maths Paper 2) demands a lot in terms of mental discipline and pacing. Each exam paper must be approached differently, based on the structure of the paper and your child’s strengths and weak spots. Decide on how much time to allocate to each question in each section, and leave time for a final check. When doing a mock exam session, check that your child adheres to the time plan and doesn’t linger on questions he or she has problems with (however tempting) – marks can be lost if your child has no time to answer some questions.
5) Stop those ‘careless mistakes’
As any regretful student knows, careless mistakes turn an A+ into an A, and an A into a B. Tiredness and lack of confidence can contribute to the loss of precious marks, so make sure your child gets enough sleep (at least 7-8 hours) the night before each exam. Stick to the exam ‘battle plan’ and don’t spend more time on a question beyond the minutes already allocated to it, and time MUST be set aside for checking answers as well. When rushed for time, panic sets in and many students try to cram as much as they can into the paper. This is when a lot of careless mistakes happen. In Math, a common careless mistake is due to transfer error when the ‘brain moves faster than the eye and hand’ – this causes students to transfer a number incorrectly or in the wrong sequence. Though it may take longer, one way to reduce such errors is to transfer each digit one at a time, and follow the transferring movement with the eye.
6) Practise writing clearly and for understanding
Many students understand Science concepts but when they try to apply them to explain outcome of experiments and scenarios, they write long sentences that are often disjointed and ambiguous. Although grammar and sentence structure are not major considerations in the marking of Science papers, failure to clearly describe what one is trying to say can cause marks to be lost. If it helps, get your child to break down the explanation into short sentences, with each leading to another.
7) Understand, observe, apply
The PSLE Science paper will test your child’s application of Science concepts to various scenarios not found in textbooks or encountered during Science Experiments in school. Look for opportunities to let your child apply the concepts learnt to explain events and scenarios encountered in daily activities. Taking this approach, you’ll be surprised how much ‘Science practice’ your child can get by observing the surroundings during a short stroll at the beach, or cycling around the neighbourhood. Scour through assessment books, watch documentaries, surf the Internet, even re-enact simple experiments and challenge your child to provide the explanations.
8) Read diligently, read intelligently
At the core of every top scorer is a sound base of language skills and learning techniques that include a good vocabulary, effective reading skills (ability to read for speed and understanding), ability to summarise, analyse and recall, and creative writing skills. These take months and years to build up. However, in the weeks left before the exam, you can expose your child to various text sources on varied topics – a newspaper clipping, a magazine feature, an article in an e-Zine. Use them to create exercises that will help your child brush up on such skills – write a summary, check out the meanings of new words, ask questions to test your child’s comprehension of the story and so on.
9) Fit in time for leisure
With such intensive revision, your child needs time to take a break – physically and mentally. Many families block out TV and computer time altogether, or only allow it sparingly on weekends. However, a little can go a long way – half an hour of TV time each weekday can do more for your child’s overall well-being than 2 hours of free time during weekends. Importantly, know your child well and understand what helps him or her ‘relax’ – some enjoy cartoons, others computer games. If you child wants to watch certain programmes but these clash with your study schedule, try to compromise by recording these programmes and allowing your child to watch them at a later period.
10) Remember: One for all, all for One
No, this isn’t a suggestion to watch the Three Musketeers. But do embrace the spirit of these 3 heroes – that everything be approached with team effort and commitment. Your child is the one sitting for the PSLE, but full support from the family will go a long way in making your child feel that everyone is pitching in to help make this ‘project’ a success, and that all the sacrifices he or she is making will be worth it. This means not allowing your other children to ‘distract’ your 12-year old with noisy activities in the house, devoting full attention to your child during revision instead of trying to complete your office work at the same time, and so on.
These articles may also be useful to you:
100% for Maths? Yes you can!
Score in Science - 10 tips for better grades
Telling Tales the A+ Way - Composition-writing Hints
Stop losing marks to careless mistakes
Do you have other tips to offer those sitting for the PSLE this year? Do add your comments below.
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