2026 PSLE Discussions and Strategies (Children born in 2014)
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The KiasuParents PSLE Preparation guide is here!
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PSLE NOTES 2023 (Documenting our experience here so that i will not forget this 3 years down the time):
My son just finished PSLE and trust me it was one hell of a journey for all of us. We had our share of happy moments, sad ones and stressful days. Needless to say about the stress our child went through. End of the day he aced the exams with flying colours. We had some good friends who were kind enough to share their strategies, best practices and there were moments I wish I had known those a little earlier. I just want to document our learnings so that it can benefit others too.
In summary, PSLE is not an impossible mountain to climb. With enough planning and preparation, it can be climbed with ease.
Important take aways:
\t1.\tTimed practice - Doing exam papers in simulated exam conditions (proper place to sit, no interruptions) really helps kids to face the real exam more confidently.
\t2.\tMake use of June/September holidays wisely. Do SA1/SA2 previous year paper bundles and past year PSLE papers (10 years). More importantly REVISE your corrected papers to understand why you made such mistake and how to fix them.
\t3.\tDon’t wait for school to complete last 3 years PSLE papers. Start at June holidays itself. Also buy that latest 3 years PSLE booklet for personal reference. The one bought in school will mostly be retained at school for practice.
\t4.\tIn september, buy current year SA2 papers and do them at timed conditions.
Tuition:
\t1.\tFollow-up with tuition homework strictly. Just going to tuition alone will not give them good guidance.
\t2.\tTuition will cover overall concepts. Each kid will have different weak points. We parents need to put personal effort to find the exact weakness and focus on that topic.
\t3.\tNo tuition daily. We did back-to-back to tuition on 2 days so that weekly 3 days are no tuition days. For working moms – no tuition on weekends because we can coach only on that day.
\t4.\tPersonally, I feel no point in investing in top tuitions and spending more money. Prefer the tuition which teaches over all concept, exam point of view and more importantly which your child likes.
\t5.\tTuition centre should be near your home. That saves significant amount of time wasted on travel.
English:
\t1.\tFocus on method for each section. Like finding the clue and underlining the keywords. This helps to solve careless mistakes even if you are well versed in English.
\t2.\tidioms and Phrasal verbs can be difficult. It will cover for 4 to 5 marks in whole paper. It would be easy if kids get coaching for this from p5 onwards. We just gave up on this section as we could not cover in p6.
\t3.\tComprehension cloze is the one differentiating AL1 to AL2. Find the correct clue (collocation, finding summary of the paragraph, etc.,) and do more practice. You can improve significantly in this topic with more practice.
\t4.\tReading comprehension should be done with proper steps such as, reading passage once before reading the question then read passage again, Finding the right clue and connecting back to the question
\t5.\tReading comprehension should have more practice. This is more time consuming too. Better to buy separate books for reading comprehension alone as the score of this topic can differentiate AL3 to AL2
\t6.\tCompositions (paper1) is as important as paper 2. At first, we thought we need to be too creative to think of stories and use extraordinary vocabulary to get good marks in compositions. This is not the case. Kids will not get enough time to plan new story and link to picture/theme, which is very important for a good composition.
\t7.\tGet different types of stories from any tuition centre notes or creative writing guides. Understanding story line is the key, not memorizing it word by word. Need to learn the story line and few specific vocabularies for each story. After collecting 10 -20 stories and scenarios, mix and match with given picture and topic.
\t8.\tBooks like chicken soup for kid’s soul are useful too. It’s good to read this as a story book from p4 onwards. This helps to add sentiment and emotions to compositions. Any story in these books looks like exact compo of any tuition centre.
\t9.\tAgain, practice writing more composition to fix time issues and to get used to writing continuously.
A flowery introduction and good vocabulary are as good as nothing without a prober conclusion. Hence writing complete compo is important.
\t10.\tStart preparing for paper 1 - listening comprehension and oral from start of p6 onwards. Do not think the child can ace the listening and oral on the fly. Remember each section has at least one question to differentiate between AL1,2 from the rest. Start preparing early to avoid last minute panic.
\t11. \tPreparing for Oral helps children to create Composition plots with ease. Doing more composition helps them to narrate personal experience in oral exams easily. They are inter linked.
\t12. \tSome books (Vocabulary, S&T) helped us to prepare well.
Mother Tongue (Tamil):
\t1.\tStart reading more story books. A.Sothi books(available in public library story section) are good for grammar and vocab reading . It is available from p2 level till p6.
\t2.\tRead more Thenali Raman, Birbal stories. That helps in reading comprehension.
\t3.\tRead more stories for composition to get understanding of the flow. Sigaram compo helped us a lot but different book suits for different people. Practice to write some compos to understand the storyline and improve on your timing.
Maths:
1.\tIdentify your child’s weak topic. Give more practice in that to forge sound understanding of concepts.
2.\tGet Topic wise past year PSLE papers (can find them in corousell too) and practice all the topics (especially the weak topics).
3.\tMost of the assessment books arrange their questions in increasing level of difficulty. If you think your child is up for the challenge, make sure your child can do those last few questions in every exercise.
4.\t'Olympiad training books' are good too provided your child can handle them.
Science:
1.\tUnderstanding the overall concept is more important than memorizing each question and answers.
2.\tMind maps are excellent tool to revise overall concepts.
3.\tbooklet A is equally important as each question holds 2 marks. Concept understanding is needed for get good mark in booklet A.
4.\tBooklet B comes with more practice only. The more they write better the understanding of the concept. Use of proper keywords in answers is important.
5.\tUse TCR/CER (whichever is convenient) method to form the sentence and concept structure for booklet B answers. This was the game changer for us. There are videos in FB/YouTube teaching these concepts. They help too.
6.\tPrevious year PSLE topic wise booklets helped us a lot to identify the actual weak area and focus on those topics.
Disclaimer: This may not work for everyone, but the above mentioned approach worked for us. -
ashomech\" post_id=\"2124952\" time=\"1702884540\" user_id=\"121818:
Thank you so much for your contribution! I'm sure parents who have children taking PSLE in the future will find this very useful.
PSLE NOTES 2023 (Documenting our experience here so that i will not forget this 3 years down the time):
... -
ashomech\" post_id=\"2124952\" time=\"1702884540\" user_id=\"121818:
What is
My son just finished PSLE
...
5.\tUse TCR/CER (whichever is convenient) method to form the sentence and concept structure for booklet B answers ...
TCR / CER, in Science ? -
TCR- Topic, Clue/Claim, Result (found in a video.)
CER- Claim, Evidence, Reason (school teacher taught this method) -
ashomech\" post_id=\"2124995\" time=\"1702909080\" user_id=\"121818:
This same answer structure will recur in Sec 1,
TCR- Topic, Clue/Claim, Result (found in a video.)
CER- Claim, Evidence, Reason (school teacher taught this method)
particularly for Literature and History (source-based essay questions). The good news is, unlike psle science, there is more than one acceptable answer. -
ashomech\" post_id=\"2124952\" time=\"1702884540\" user_id=\"121818:
You posted the same message in one of the Facebook groups! I read it there. Once you have gone through the PSLE with one kid, you can easily replicate the process with the next. In fact the next time you \"tackle\" PSLE, it will be even easier because you already know HOW to do it better.
PSLE NOTES 2023 (Documenting our experience here so that i will not forget this 3 years down the time):
Disclaimer: This may not work for everyone, but the above mentioned approach worked for us. -
manorway\" post_id=\"2124998\" time=\"1702910719\" user_id=\"9303:
Sadly my FB posts were reported and removed. Not sure what was wrong with the post. Thanks for giving hope that i can replicate the process.
You posted the same message in one of the Facebook groups! I read it there. Once you have gone through the PSLE with one kid, you can easily replicate the process with the next. In fact the next time you \"tackle\" PSLE, it will be even easier because you already know HOW to do it better. -
manorway\" post_id=\"2124998\" time=\"1702910719\" user_id=\"9303:
You posted the same message in one of the Facebook groups! I read it there. Once you have gone through the PSLE with one kid, you can easily replicate the process with the next. In fact the next time you \"tackle\" PSLE, it will be even easier because you already know HOW to do it better.
There's an amount of jadedness. After you have gone through it with one kid, you get tired and lazy and doesn't go through the same thing with your next child. Hopefully that child should automatically do everything correctly since she would have witnessed what his elder brother/sister went through :imanangel:
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manorway\" post_id=\"2124998\" time=\"1702910719\" user_id=\"9303:
Unfortunately, this batch is affected by changes in syllabus for both Math and Science. But for Math, I guess the bulk of it no changes, still applicable but I’m not sure how the qn types may change for PSLE.
You posted the same message in one of the Facebook groups! I read it there. Once you have gone through the PSLE with one kid, you can easily replicate the process with the next. In fact the next time you \"tackle\" PSLE, it will be even easier because you already know HOW to do it better.
NETs and Pie Chart topics are being pushed down from P6 to P4. Speed removed completely.
For Science, it seems the focus will be more towards application questions, so MORE “explain” kind of questions. Some concepts added and some removed. Cell topic is completely removed.
I wish there’s like a mapping, so it’s easier to identify what has changed. I need to calibrate my 2022 PSLE knowledge to guide my 2026 PSLE DD. 😭
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