p6 math assessment book vs past year school papers

[Leanne]

Hello everyone,


Sometime ago, am facing some problem with the above with my child.

I noticed, if I give him an assessment books with challenging problem, he can take three hours just to do ten questions.I dont know why.

If I give him top past year school papers to do, he can finish it in an hour, as in paper two.

Check wif parents here, do u face the same prob?My child prefer to do exam paper than assessment book.Is it cos the topical consisits of all one kind of questions, and it bores him?

The latest was doing the chapter 9 of onsponge math, every question is correct but he dragged doing it and take a long long time…

Thks.


rgds
Leanne

[Brenda10]

Hi Leanne



May be is due to boring. I recall in P4 dd can finish 16 sets of top school SA2 maths paper but not even one Maths assessment book for an entire year. For P5, she had managed to finish the onsponge book 5 as it was assigned by teacher.

[Leanne]

Hello Brenda,


Thank you for sharing.At least now i know my child is Normal.

But, at times, with topical, you can then see what the prob is, rather paper after paper....will see how


Thanks


regards
Leanne

Brenda10:

Hi Leanne


May be is due to boring. I recall in P4 dd can finish 16 sets of top school SA2 maths paper but not even one Maths assessment book for an entire year. For P5, she had managed to finish the onsponge book 5 as it was assigned by teacher.

[NickleBee Tutors]

Don’t worry! : ) This is pretty common. Over the years, parents have told me that they face exactly the same situation as you are facing right now.


I can only put it down to the few reasons stated below :

1) The child finds it tedious and boring to do challenging questions of the same type over and over again, resulting in the child taking an increasing length of time to do each successive question. Drilling does benefit a student’s mathematical skill greatly but they are humans too and repetitive/tedious work does result in a loss of working efficiency over a long period of time.

2) The child is still unfamiliar with the methods or thought process required of that particular type of question (which is new to him) in the exercise of the challenging problems assessment book due to lack of confidence and fear of making mistakes. His working speed should increase after a while as he starts to integrate/understand the methods/processes used and learn to apply them in a efficient and accurate manner.

3) Exam papers contain a wide variety of questions with a range of difficulty levels from both Paper 1 and Paper 2. Thus the child’s interest in doing the exam paper would be stimulated and result in a comparatively faster rate of work. Also, if the child has been doing consistent practice, most of the questions would be familiar to the child (as in he would have seen and practiced variations of the same questions before) and this would of course result in much faster working speeds.

4) The child would have been taking exams or doing exam papers for quite a while and since he is familiar with the time limits and how much time he needs to allocate to each question, he would know how he should pace himself throughout the paper while keeping an eye on the clock. For Assessment books, they would not usually allocate time limits for each question and the child would also not be sure of how long he should take for each question (especially if they are of the "challenging" paper 2 variety) and this is more so if he is still unfamiliar with the new problem sums faced.

Yours

Zhou Shicai
NickleBee Tutors

[Leanne]

Thanks NickleBee tutors for the info.Greatly appreciate it.


Lately, put him into topical challenging onsponge math, cos wants him to do and find out where his mistakes are.Cos, really no point kept doing the past year top school papers, where those mistakes are not easily spot as compared to put him in one trial on all the challenging prob.Anyway, 50 questions have been done on the chapter 9 of onsponge and manage to spot his weakness that he often"hide".

Just wonder, is there anyway, we can really zero in a child’s math problem?


Regards
Leanne

[Brenda10]

Hi NickleTutor


Thank you for your valuable input as it helps to solve our puzzle.

My dd love to do questions related to Circle, Geometry or Angles etc. She can happy doing in assessment book like A*start booklet without asking for a break. However comes to other topics she only like to do two - three at a time. But seems she has no much problem attempt to past year paper then we just take a slow pace for the assessment book.

[NickleBee Tutors]

Leanne:

Thanks NickleBee tutors for the info.Greatly appreciate it.


Lately, put him into topical challenging onsponge math, cos wants him to do and find out where his mistakes are.Cos, really no point kept doing the past year top school papers, where those mistakes are not easily spot as compared to put him in one trial on all the challenging prob.Anyway, 50 questions have been done on the chapter 9 of onsponge and manage to spot his weakness that he often\"hide\".

Just wonder, is there anyway, we can really zero in a child's math problem?


Regards
Leanne

Well, to really zero in on a Child's maths problem takes quite a bit of time and effort and of course co-operation on the child's part. Ideally, open channels of communications between the educator and the child is essential so that both can feedback to each other what areas they need to work on (e.g the way the educator is explaining a concept is not optimal for that particular child) or the child can highlight which area is causing him problems in understanding a particular concept.

Usually, Assessment books with topical practice like Simon Eio's Step by Step series help you to spot fundamental knowledge gaps or misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. You would then have to follow up by re-teaching/explaining the concepts to your child again and giving him questions with increasing difficulty to make sure he has understood that particular basic mathematical concept.

Assessment books with challenging problem sum practice like OnSponge or Fabian Ng's PSP deal with different types of problems solving techniques and heuristic skills and how they can be used to solve different varieties of mathematical problems. Doing such books help the child to integrate and fully understand the various techniques and methods used and so as to recall and apply them on demand during exams. So if your child is strong in the basic mathematical concepts and yet weak in problems solving especially in paper 2, these books may be useful.

Yours

Zhou Shicai
NickleBee Tutors

[Leanne]

Thanks Nicklebee tutors again.


I will train ds on his processing skills.Past year school papers he enjoyed but I cannot spot major problem....I guess route learning for math is just partial learning, and there is more than that...


Regards
Leanne

NickleBee Tutors:

Leanne:

Thanks NickleBee tutors for the info.Greatly appreciate it.

Lately, put him into topical challenging onsponge math, cos wants him to do and find out where his mistakes are.Cos, really no point kept doing the past year top school papers, where those mistakes are not easily spot as compared to put him in one trial on all the challenging prob.Anyway, 50 questions have been done on the chapter 9 of onsponge and manage to spot his weakness that he often\"hide\".

Just wonder, is there anyway, we can really zero in a child's math problem?


Regards
Leanne

Well, to really zero in on a Child's maths problem takes quite a bit of time and effort and of course co-operation on the child's part. Ideally, open channels of communications between the educator and the child is essential so that both can feedback to each other what areas they need to work on (e.g the way the educator is explaining a concept is not optimal for that particular child) or the child can highlight which area is causing him problems in understanding a particular concept.

Usually, Assessment books with topical practice like Simon Eio's Step by Step series help you to spot fundamental knowledge gaps or misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. You would then have to follow up by re-teaching/explaining the concepts to your child again and giving him questions with increasing difficulty to make sure he has understood that particular basic mathematical concept.

Assessment books with challenging problem sum practice like OnSponge or Fabian Ng's PSP deal with different types of problems solving techniques and heuristic skills and how they can be used to solve different varieties of mathematical problems. Doing such books help the child to integrate and fully understand the various techniques and methods used and so as to recall and apply them on demand during exams. So if your child is strong in the basic mathematical concepts and yet weak in problems solving especially in paper 2, these books may be useful.

Yours

Zhou Shicai
NickleBee Tutors

[QuiteKSMum]

[quote]I noticed, if I give him an assessment books with challenging problem, he can take three hours just to do ten questions.I dont know why.


If I give him top past year school papers to do, he can finish it in an hour, as in paper two.

Check wif parents here, do u face the same prob?My child prefer to do exam paper than assessment book[/quote]Hi Leanne,

My son was exactly like that last yr! He loved doing the Top Sch papers (esp Maths papers); he would plan himself which paper to do 1st, followed by another one etc...

My own conclusion was that ( he had been like this since P1) he loved to \"pit\" his own std against Top schs' std ( he was fm a neighbourhood sch) & see where he stands. If he did v.well for the top amongst the top papers, could see he would be elated... Just my 2 cts... :celebrate: :celebrate:

[Brenda10]

QuiteKSMum:

My son was exactly like that last yr! He loved doing the Top Sch papers (esp Maths papers); he would plan himself which paper to do 1st, followed by another one etc...

Hi QuiteKSMum

Need your advice as your ds had gone through the PSLE last year. We also doing purely in past year papers and would you think that is sufficient if dd don't have much problem with it?

Thank you