MOE says 15 marks of the Mathematics PSLE paper are challenging. So average students can only hope to score 85% max?

[Mr.025413Clumsy]

floppy\" post_id=\"2075278\" time=\"1658284113\" user_id=\"97579:

Here's what I think...

The important thing about exam, isn't always about how easy / difficult the papers are. It's about understanding and employing some exam strategies to mitigate the difficulty of the paper.

1. Acknowledge that it is not always possible to score 100% (yah, I know many do but still, they are in the minority).
2. There will ALWAYS be easy and difficult questions in EVERY exam paper.
3. YOU will be good in some topics and not so good in others.

Thus,
1. Maximise your score from topics that you are good at.
2. Maximise your score from 'easy' part of the exam (typically MCQ). Keep practising until you can get full marks.
3. For questions that you have no idea how to do, fret not. Skip and come back to them later.
4. For questions that you can't really do, put in a few lines, do the obvious. Who knows, the teachers (and the marking scheme) may award you 1 or 2 marks. 1 or 2 out of 4 is always better than 0 out of 4.

That has been our theory too. It's like a battlefield. You need to know where you can focus and do well. Where you are weak, move along and focus instead on your strengths. It is far better to score huge and avoid careless mistakes in areas where you are stronger than to waste time scribbling wrong answers in areas where you are weak.

I don't recall life being so difficult when I was 12 but I was too busy playing marbles and eating mud.

[SG_KP1]

I will add this. My kid’s school once loaded all of the harder questions* in Math Paper 2 at the front of the paper. My kid imploded; couldn’t do a question but banged head against wall for a while, spent way too much time on a couple of others, and was pressing the rest of the way.


I asked why not skip the one(s) you can’t do, finish/check everything else, and you can still get a decent score even if you leave that one or two blank (or come back to them once the points in the easier sections are secured). The reply: " It would have been nice if you told me that yesterday."

Anyways, the lesson was learnt and hopefully will be avoided in the future. Rough scores were brought home but I think the teachers got the students to learn how to manage time in an exam and keep a cool head.

*IMO, the questions weren’t that hard (some kids still got 100). But it was a shock for the kid to not get into a rhythm of solving easier problems first.

[Swc]

floppy\" post_id=\"2075278\" time=\"1658284113\" user_id=\"97579:

Here's what I think...

The important thing about exam, isn't always about how easy / difficult the papers are. It's about understanding and employing some exam strategies to mitigate the difficulty of the paper.

1. Acknowledge that it is not always possible to score 100% (yah, I know many do but still, they are in the minority).
2. There will ALWAYS be easy and difficult questions in EVERY exam paper.
3. YOU will be good in some topics and not so good in others.

Thus,
1. Maximise your score from topics that you are good at.
2. Maximise your score from 'easy' part of the exam (typically MCQ). Keep practising until you can get full marks.
3. For questions that you have no idea how to do, fret not. Skip and come back to them later.
4. For questions that you can't really do, put in a few lines, do the obvious. Who knows, the teachers (and the marking scheme) may award you 1 or 2 marks. 1 or 2 out of 4 is always better than 0 out of 4.

I think what you described are essentially what I term as exam skills. As someone who live in the era who has to go through at least 2 major exams every year since the age of 6/7, one does become \"seasoned\" in taking exam.

I think our younger generation lacks the kind of \"training\" we went through and hence becomes easily traumatised by challenging questions they encounter during a high stake exam.

I am not advocating more exams. Just wondering with the lack of \"exam training\", as parents, maybe we do need to \"teach\" such exam skills?

[floppy]

ChiefKiasu\" post_id=\"2075279\" time=\"1658284208\" user_id=\"3:

No lah... If students want a challenge, they can always start from the last question and work towards the first. Then they can proudly claim: \"I did my Math paper backwards!\"

It's better for the paper to be sorted in order of difficulty and leave it up to students to choose.

Like I say earlier lor, I always thought the challenge was to see who can finish the paper first
IIRC, the cut off of being allowed to the leave the hall was 30 mins (or was it 15?) before time. If you can put up the hand and submit / leave, it will be a proud moment :rotflmao:

The problem of leaving students to choose is you will end up with self-selection bias. The AL1 group will try everything, the AL2 group will try most of them, the AL5 and others will just walk out once the baseline is cleared.

[lee_yl]

For GEP and HA students, they can’t wait to solve those challenging questions marked with asterisk!


But for some mainstream children, upon seeing questions marked with asterisks, their brains may go blank immediately, it’s like an invisible pressure / psychological barrier to them.

[zac's mum]

Philosophical qn: if we look at the reason behind why MOE is removing those smaller exams, and we really all believe in it, then by extension there should be less “need” to train exam skills per se. Just my very cynical POV.

[floppy]

Swc\" post_id=\"2075285\" time=\"1658284769\" user_id=\"178585:

I think what you described are essentially what I term as exam skills. As someone who live in the era who has to go through at least 2 major exams every year since the age of 6/7, one does become \"seasoned\" in taking exam.

I think our younger generation lacks the kind of \"training\" we went through and hence becomes easily traumatised by challenging questions they encounter during a high stake exam.

I am not advocating more exams. Just wondering with the lack of \"exam training\", as parents, maybe we do need to \"teach\" such exam skills?

Yes, I think whether calling it exam strategies and / or exam skills, it's the same thing.

Our kids, unfortunately, lack training and when they are made to go to war, some will freeze and lack the know-how to tackle difficult situations. I think some schools, couple of months before PSLE, will start 'drilling' them and preparing them for the exam. As parents, I think we do need to 'teach' or at least make them aware of such skills, that it is ok to skip questions and move on and come back to them later, that it is ok not to be able to do all the questions, that it is ok to do the papers from back to front if they so wish.

[floppy]

lee_yl\" post_id=\"2075288\" time=\"1658285156\" user_id=\"17023:

For GEP and HA students, they can’t wait to solve those challenging questions marked with asterisk!

But for some mainstream children, upon seeing questions marked with asterisks, their brains may go blank immediately, it’s like an invisible pressure / psychological barrier to them.

Yes, exactly how self-selection bias will work.

[sushi88]

tinker_bell\" post_id=\"2075271\" time=\"1658282617\" user_id=\"194652:

Good idea! 🤗 Thank you for sharing!

After reading eyewitness accounts of how some students were emotionally thrown off by the challenging PSLE mathematics questions early in the paper, I think its good to put them only at the back of the exam paper.

I mean I won't want my kid taking the PSLE exam to be affected by others crying / sniffling or even worse vomited due to the sheer stress of bumping into unexpectedly tough questions in the 1st half of the exam paper.

By the natural order of things, the exam paper is already somewhat organised that way for the long questions in both Paper1 and Paper2. As for the short ones, most of them are common sense type of questions that catch the kids by surprise because likely not enough daily life experiences. It's ok, just move on if get stuck, except that if it is an OAS question, maybe circle on the question paper and ensure that OAS answer sheet is left blank first for that question and shade the next question correctly.

Apart from doing exam papers, I hope parents find the opportunity to teach their kids resilience. Crying or vomiting after a challenging exam paper is a wakeup call to parents to do their part in coaching the kids to spend more time learning the challenges of life. Life is FULL of unexpected happenings...if the pandemic has not taught us anything...are we soaking in tears everyday, can we afford to? As for children watching others cry, just let them know that everyone has different pain threshold even for exams, ok to empathise with them but need not get unduly affected especially if there are other papers to sit for. Do not criticize these children to your kids.

I only have objection to lousy difficult questions being set which can be found in some school papers...confusing kids with the way the question is worded instead of testing their ability in Math. So always vet and proof-read exam papers properly a few times by different people before releasing it for exams.

[sharonkhoo]

floppy\" post_id=\"2075291\" time=\"1658285432\" user_id=\"97579:

Yes, I think whether calling it exam strategies and / or exam skills, it's the same thing.

Our kids, unfortunately, lack training and when they are made to go to war, some will freeze and lack the know-how to tackle difficult situations. I think some schools, couple of months before PSLE, will start 'drilling' them and preparing them for the exam. As parents, I think we do need to 'teach' or at least make them aware of such skills, that it is ok to skip questions and move on and come back to them later, that it is ok not to be able to do all the questions, that it is ok to do the papers from back to front if they so wish.

I would look at it as part of wider training in planning and strategising skills. Once they have these explained to them, the few practice runs before the exam should be good enough - no need to make them take exams multiple times over multiple years.

For some kids, the strategising comes naturally, but for most, they do need to be taught, or at least given some tips. My husband and I have always told out kids \"how\" to take exams (Maths as well as others) - watching their timing, not stopping when they get stuck, showing their working, checking, and making a good guess when all else fails! I'm sure teachers also tell their students all this - I've seen these same tips in assessment books and revision guides as well.