The PSLE exams are a pivotal moment in your child’s academic journey. Don’t leave their success to chance. Discover our expert tips on how to prepare them for the PSLE exams. With our guidance, your child can excel and achieve their academic goals.
What’s Next After Mid-Year Assessments?
Now is a suitable time to review the test results and analyse the weak areas in each subject. May is an ideal time to assess the errors made by students. These mistakes might have occurred due to lacking content knowledge or technique. For example, students might not understand how to accurately eliminate ambiguous multiple-choice options or narrow down question requirements.
Different scores depict a child’s level of understanding of Science. If a child scores below 50 marks, they are weak in conceptual knowledge. In such cases, multiple-choice questions (MCQ) will have close but wrong options, and students might select the incorrect answers. The solution is to revise and understand the concepts of the topics that the pupils are weak in, followed by practising more MCQs until they can consistently score above 40 marks in Booklet A, which consists of 28 MCQs and a total of 56 marks.
If a child scores between 51 and 75, they understand science concepts fairly well but face difficulties in the open-ended questions of Booklet B. They may have trouble getting the clues in the questions and choose the wrong data. To tackle this, try highlighting keywords in questions to narrow down the information required for their answers.
If a child scores between 76 and 89, they may lack the ability to provide specific answers. For instance, different question keywords such as “state, describe or explain” require different ways of answering the question.
Besides assessing the work that needs to be done, parents should also check on their children to ensure they are coping well. Provide emotional support for your children and encourage them to share their concerns so they do not feel there’s no point in telling parents about schoolwork because they will not understand anyway.
Have a Plan for Revision and Rest in June
Some children may struggle to start revising or may not know the best way to learn. Providing a revision structure for children in June can significantly assist in these cases. One way to make the most of revision time is to tackle two topics or subjects in a day instead of spending a full day on a single subject or topic. Guide your child to set goals, gather study materials, and organise them according to topic or difficulty level. Don’t forget to give your child breaks, time for exercise and family bonding time.
Studies have shown that it is more effective for children to vary their daily studies and keep the sessions short. Neuroscience research calls this interleaving or spaced retrieval, which helps the brain function better and aids in revision.
How to Prepare for PSLE
1. Develop a Study Plan with Your Child
Having a study plan for the PSLE exam helps your child prioritise their tasks and track where their effort is going. If you’re unsure about how to help your child develop a consistent study routine, follow these tips:
First, list the topics covered in the exam for each subject. For mathematics and science, break into individual components, such as mastering algebra. For language components like English Composition, encourage your child to write excellent characterisations, use five-sense descriptions, and use show-not-tell phrases in their following composition.
As your child goes through their PSLE study timetable, they should feel confident about answering questions on various topics. If they feel unsure, encourage them to consider what needs to be done to improve their knowledge of that topic.
2. Set a Momentum to Revision
When preparing for the PSLE, having your child practice with sample examination papers during your study sessions is a good idea. This will help them become familiar with the exam format and teach them how to use their time wisely during the exam. Practice papers can also help identify areas where your child needs more practice.
When your child attempts the practice papers, it’s important to simulate the exam conditions. Studies have shown that people who regularly self-test have higher information retention rates than those who don’t.
As a parent, you can act as an exam invigilator to ensure that your child is free of distractions while doing the practice papers. Don’t forget to ask your child to note any questions they have difficulty with so you can consult with their teacher.
3. Anticipate What’s Ahead
Be proactive. Encourage your child to review past-year exam papers during each term break, like the upcoming June holidays, to become familiar with common questions that are typically asked.
School holidays are perfect for your child to catch up on as much revision as possible. Your child can also create revision notes, concept maps, and study guides during this time.
You can book a tutor with TuitionCentre SG to free yourself from the stress of exam preparation and provide your child with someone with more revision experience.
4. Establish Clear Goals
Understanding the connection between diligent studying and achieving good grades is essential to motivating students to learn for their own sake. Inquire about your child’s aspirations in a supportive and encouraging way to help them establish a clear direction for achieving their objectives.
5. Engage in Positive Visualisation
It can be helpful to imagine and discuss positive experiences of taking exams with your child. This can include reflecting on their performance during mock exam practices. By examining what helped them to do well and how they can apply the same skills during the actual PSLE exams, such as good time management and thorough checking of their work, you can encourage your child to feel more confident and less anxious about the exams. By reminding your child of their previous good performance, you can help them boost their confidence and dispel their fear of failure.
Tips on How to Tackle Different Subjects
The June holidays provide an excellent opportunity for students to clear their doubts and catch up on their studies. Students should use this extra time to organise content into topics and use mnemonics to improve memory recall. Teachers also recommend that students maintain a journal for each subject to collate common mistakes, tricky exam questions or challenging issues for quick reference. For instance, students should re-try repeated mistakes in math journals.
Here are some ways to approach revision for each subject, which can be adjusted according to the student’s needs.
English
Use June to read storybooks, newspapers, or articles to enhance their vocabulary and comprehension skills. Students can also select a theme from these materials and write related words or phrases. To improve their composition writing skills, students can create a list of common themes such as friendship, courage, an apology, perseverance, a difficult decision, and an unforgettable experience, and then practice writing short essays or come up with ideas for them. Another approach is to collect suitable compositions with various themes.
Students can also list descriptive phrases for compositions and categorise them based on emotions or common scenarios. They should review their previous exams and worksheets and extract the frequently tested rules for components such as grammar or synthesis and transformation.
Compiling one’s notes helps students to better internalise the content as it involves an active review of what they have learned.
Mother Tongue Languages
Pupils who struggle with the Chinese language feel overwhelmed while preparing for the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) due to difficulties with all exam components. Teachers advise students to focus on small improvement steps rather than dwelling on what they don’t know. One way to improve Chinese vocabulary is to learn a few words daily and practice using them in writing.
Students can use the month of June to strengthen their fundamentals. Go through the glossary of textbooks, identify unfamiliar words, and work on improving vocabulary. Read passages from the textbook regularly to improve word recognition skills.
Language enrichment activities such as reading enhance language proficiency in Chinese, Malay, or Tamil. Parents can also create opportunities to practice speaking with native speakers, whether relatives or friends. To help them better understand and learn the language, parents can also let their children watch TV shows that expose them to it.
Mathematics
Parents should not focus on getting their children to complete as many past exam papers as possible. Instead, they should first help the child understand the key concepts and principles behind the problems. Conceptual understanding makes learning meaningful, and practices help reinforce learning.
If the child is stuck on a particular concept or question, do not leave it for later, as the child may forget about it. Instead, refer to the textbook, worksheets, or online Student Learning Space (SLS) to fill any gaps in the child’s understanding.
Parents can utilise this four-step process for complex problems:
- Help the child understand the problem by underlining or breaking key information into smaller parts.
- Select a strategy, such as the model method, working backwards, or finding patterns.
- Solve the problem.
- Check the answer using another method.
Zooming in on specific concepts that require more practice rather than broadly tackling the issue of “problem sums” will also greatly help.
Employing home tuition to offer support and teach students effective exam strategies is a great investment for making the most of June revisions. Booking a home tutor with TuitionCentre SG takes less than three minutes.
Science
Teachers advise that students begin with topical revision for one to three hours per week. After that, they can move on to past years’ papers to gain exposure to various questions. Some topics are more crucial than others. Therefore, it is better to spend more time revising topics that teachers take more time to explain and less time on content that is covered quickly. Simply memorising scientific keywords is not enough; a student should be able to adjust them to fit the question’s requirements.
The primary science syllabus is based on themes. One way to help students learn the relationship between themes is to do mind maps or summaries. Active consolidation of concepts will help pupils become more familiar with the content. If mind maps do not work for the topic, students can also create flashcards on the content and get their parents or siblings to help test them.
Parents can also teach their children science by relating it to the real world. For instance, parents can describe the conditions of fungi growing in moist conditions to get a child to think about why fungi can grow on feet and whether wearing slippers instead of covered shoes will help prevent it. Science is about developing curiosity and inquiry. When the world around them inspires students, they will be motivated to learn science.
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