Preparing kids for P5 in 2011

[janet88]

Just started son on Dolphin P6 Editing and Synthesis. I wonder what’s new for synthesis in Term 3.

[pixiedust]

Peony:

My dream!! AWESOME!!!


DD is only a fraction ahead of the school syllabus. But no matter what, I want her to have time to play/rest daily too.

We are in same boat and I was already smirking that we managed to get a fraction ahead (only for Maths actually) until I saw Chenonceau's post [just kidding ] !

Chenonceau, your boy's motivation level and co-operation with you is amazing. How ? still going to set up that tuition center that you talked about ? :evil:

phankao, I think I am the one who needs to see pro psych to up my motivation and energy level :imdrowning:

[underthesea]

Chenonceau:

We finished Onsponge 5... did 3 SA2 Math papers, 12 SA2 Science papers, one Chinese compo everyday for 2 weeks, and one English compo everyday for 2 weeks. School has started. Time to let him play. By 3rd week July, we will stop all practices and he can have unstructured play time every day until CA2 is over.


Teeheehee! This is called Going Against The Flow of School. Play when have to work, and work like crazy when everyone else is playing. Keeps me sane, and is less stressful for him.

:udawoman:

Did you do P5 SA2 paper or P4? How to do P5 as some of the topics have not been taught in school? My dd can't even do some of the CA2 questions and she refused to do anything work that has not been taught in school!

[Peony]

I think she was referring to the P5 SA2 paper… our friend is way ahead!!


By the way for Popular fanatics (like me)… the CASCO maths tutor 5B is out.

I love it! So easy to follow. DD is using it to pick up percentages.

[pixiedust]

underthesea, the lady meant P5 SA2 papers :lol:


Peony, I bugged the Popular staff everyday, finally saw the 5B out last week. Percentage, we not even there yet - me no place to stand here

[Peony]

pixiedust, we really are in the same boat.


Only reason she’s doing percentages is coz she heard some kids say that they hate it and I wanted to let her try for herself. Thanks to the CASCO book… she found it "easy" (fingers crossed) to pick up.

Btw, I only bugged them once… but visited Popular EVERY weekend in search of it.

[jedamum]

pixiedust:

Chenonceau, your boy's motivation level and co-operation with you is amazing. How ? still going to set up that tuition center that you talked about ? :evil:

pixiedust,
Chenonceau need not set up tuition center so troublesome.
she can earn more and help more by giving motivational talks!
and also workshops to parents on how to tackle Math Questions (hey Chenonceau, you did mentioned about teaching some students how to solve some math problem the unconventional way, right? ....wait wait wait, or is it 2ppaamm? you 2 are so alike to me! :oops:).

[Chenonceau]

underthesea:

Did you do P5 SA2 paper or P4? How to do P5 as some of the topics have not been taught in school? My dd can't even do some of the CA2 questions and she refused to do anything work that has not been taught in school!

P5 SA2. I'm quite stubborn about preserving play time. DS MUST NOT study on Sundays (whole day), and Saturday afternoons. Both these slots are unstructured play time. I had to be creative in approaching the material to save him time and still cover enough to tackle exams. To save him time, here are the decisions I took...

Play Days
(1) Since February this year, if I dun have time to cover homeschool work, he pontangs regular school rather than use up Play Days. I think he cooperates because he knows that no matter what the pressures are (and even if I know he could fail), I will not touch his play day. Hence, on weekdays, he cooperates fully with me. I just need to write many many excuse letters to his teachers.

For Math
(2) To save time, we don't do any other assessment except Onsponge, and Math Heuristics' Model Approach to Model Drawing (sorry I forgot to mention this assessment book earlier). You cover these 2 books, you cover all the topics needed for SA2. I don't even look at Topic Lists when teaching my son. Planning a study schedule around topic lists is complicated for a child to manage. I wanted a straightforward schedule that DS can manage independently. So, I threw him Onsponge (& Math Heuristics) and said \"You need to finish this book in SEVEN DAYS. Go and plan how many units you need to do a day.\" Because he generated the plan, he feels ownership and is motivated to get it down. It's a big boy thing to do you see.

(3) For both books, we only do the first 2 questions in each unit. Once he gets the technique, we skip all the other questions. Sometimes, DS will decide to practise 2 or 3 more in that unit because he is not confident. But that was his own choice. There was one unit where he told me he wanted to do all the sums. Again, his choice. I only require him to skim the units and do the first 2 sums only. We had a fight about this. I insisted that he do only 2 and he cried saying that he couldn't remember, and wanted to be sure. So I gave in. DS knows best how much he has learnt. I wanted him to know enough to gain an exposure to tackle CA2 and SA2. We will drill and reinforce in P6. This round, I wanted him to skim all the topics in both books.

(4) Having skimmed both books, I gave him three P5 SA2 Math papers. He hit 95+ for all three so I decided to stop Math and do Science where he seems to be only at 80+.

For Science
(5) For Science, I did not bother with assessment books at all. Again, I ignored Topic List. I refused to let myself be guided by topics published in the syllabus. I chose the unstructured approach instead. I gave him a post-it pad and one exam paper after another. After every practice, we sat down to analyze and identify topics that he needed to read up on. He tagged (with a post-it) each of the unfamiliar questions/topics he wanted to find out more about. Then, he did internet search... borrowed videos from library... and just enjoyed himself. This means he covers much content BEYOND the test paper because as he clicks on one link after another, he casts his net wider and wider. I teach less, he learns more. But that's ok 'cos he thought it was fun. For the first 6 papers, it was slow because there were many unfamiliar topics. By Paper 12, there is hardly any research left to do because he had read up on almost all that SA2 covers plus more besides. Again, I chose to do this because I wanted a study schedule that wasn't too complicated... something DS can manage and feel good about being his own boss. Planning a schedule around topics is complicated. The way i did it, I just told him \"Finish 12 papers. Research what you dunno. What's your plan?\"

(6) I marked every Science practice exam OE with Science Heuristics' LiSC answering technique in mind. So, over 12 exam papers, he has slowly refined his answering technique.

It sounds like we did a lot but we did get in a lotta play too. Cycling and swimming and movies... a spot of cooking... picnics ... lotsa cuddling and training our dog to walk properly on a leash. Played Monopoly Deal and Quoridor till I feel nauseous.

I hope this helps other Mommies.

3 Motivational Strategies
The 3 motivational strategies that are salient in this sharing are...
(1) I give him control over his work by assigning work that he is himself able to easily schedule and...
(2) I protect his play days completely so that he knows that if he focuses, he can play to his heart's content on weekends
(3) I junk all the topic lists so he doesn't KNOW what topics need to be covered. The focus is on completing the science exam practices and then having fun watching videos, youtube and surfing the net for what I call \"useless info\" but is actually really useful since schools like to test what they don't teach. How do you know what'll come out? The only way is to read widely about Science. He found and read obscure stuff about plague and fleas and rats... See link here - http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/12/famine200712. Then there was something about hydrothermal vents and the bacteria that thrive there... and the tube worms who live in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with bacteria... and that carnivorous plant that squirrels shit into...I just have to make sure that I look interested when he reports his findings

[PiggyLalala]

Chenonceau:

underthesea:

Did you do P5 SA2 paper or P4? How to do P5 as some of the topics have not been taught in school? My dd can't even do some of the CA2 questions and she refused to do anything work that has not been taught in school!

P5 SA2. I'm quite stubborn about preserving play time. DS MUST NOT study on Sundays (whole day), and Saturday afternoons. Both these slots are unstructured play time. I had to be creative in approaching the material to save him time and still cover enough to tackle exams. To save him time, here are the decisions I took...

Play Days
(1) Since February this year, if I dun have time to cover homeschool work, he pontangs regular school rather than use up Play Days. I think he cooperates because he knows that no matter what the pressures are (and even if I know he could fail), I will not touch his play day. Hence, on weekdays, he cooperates fully with me. I just need to write many many excuse letters to his teachers.

For Math
(2) To save time, we don't do any other assessment except Onsponge, and Math Heuristics' Model Approach to Model Drawing (sorry I forgot to mention this assessment book earlier). You cover these 2 books, you cover all the topics needed for SA2. I don't even look at Topic Lists when teaching my son. Planning a study schedule around topic lists is complicated for a child to manage. I wanted a straightforward schedule that DS can manage independently. So, I threw him Onsponge (& Math Heuristics) and said \"You need to finish this book in SEVEN DAYS. Go and plan how many units you need to do a day.\" Because he generated the plan, he feels ownership and is motivated to get it down. It's a big boy thing to do you see.

(3) For both books, we only do the first 2 questions in each unit. Once he gets the technique, we skip all the other questions. Sometimes, DS will decide to practise 2 or 3 more in that unit because he is not confident. But that was his own choice. There was one unit where he told me he wanted to do all the sums. Again, his choice. I only require him to skim the units and do the first 2 sums only. We had a fight about this. I insisted that he do only 2 and he cried saying that he couldn't remember, and wanted to be sure. So I gave in. DS knows best how much he has learnt. I wanted him to know enough to gain an exposure to tackle CA2 and SA2. We will drill and reinforce in P6. This round, I wanted him to skim all the topics in both books.

(4) Having skimmed both books, I gave him three P5 SA2 Math papers. He hit 95+ for all three so I decided to stop Math and do Science where he seems to be only at 80+.

For Science
(5) For Science, I did not bother with assessment books at all. Again, I ignored Topic List. I refused to let myself be guided by topics published in the syllabus. I chose the unstructured approach instead. I gave him a post-it pad and one exam paper after another. After every practice, we sat down to analyze and identify topics that he needed to read up on. He tagged (with a post-it) each of the unfamiliar questions/topics he wanted to find out more about. Then, he did internet search... borrowed videos from library... and just enjoyed himself. This means he covers much content BEYOND the test paper because as he clicks on one link after another, he casts his net wider and wider. I teach less, he learns more. But that's ok 'cos he thought it was fun. For the first 6 papers, it was slow because there were many unfamiliar topics. By Paper 12, there is hardly any research left to do because he had read up on almost all that SA2 covers plus more besides. Again, I chose to do this because I wanted a study schedule that wasn't too complicated... something DS can manage and feel good about being his own boss. Planning a schedule around topics is complicated. The way i did it, I just told him \"Finish 12 papers. Research what you dunno. What's your plan?\"

(6) I marked every Science practice exam OE with Science Heuristics' LiSC answering technique in mind. So, over 12 exam papers, he has slowly refined his answering technique.

It sounds like we did a lot but we did get in a lotta play too. Cycling and swimming and movies... a spot of cooking... picnics ... lotsa cuddling and training our dog to walk properly on a leash. Played Monopoly Deal and Quoridor till I feel nauseous.

I hope this helps other Mommies.

3 Motivational Strategies
The 3 motivational strategies that are salient in this sharing are...
(1) I give him control over his work by assigning work that he is himself able to easily schedule and...
(2) I protect his play days completely so that he knows that if he focuses, he can play to his heart's content on weekends
(3) I junk all the topic lists so he doesn't KNOW what topics need to be covered. The focus is on completing the science exam practices and then having fun watching videos, youtube and surfing the net for what I call \"useless info\" but is actually really useful since schools like to test what they don't teach. How do you know what'll come out. The only way is to read widely about Science.

:thankyou: for sharing especially on the revision of science. I think I am going to follow your way. To make science fun for my son. Thank you for sharing the motivational strategies too.

[Chenonceau]

jedamum:

pixiedust:

Chenonceau, your boy's motivation level and co-operation with you is amazing. How ? still going to set up that tuition center that you talked about ? :evil:

pixiedust,
Chenonceau need not set up tuition center so troublesome.
she can earn more and help more by giving motivational talks!
and also workshops to parents on how to tackle Math Questions (hey Chenonceau, you did mentioned about teaching some students how to solve some math problem the unconventional way, right? ....wait wait wait, or is it 2ppaamm? you 2 are so alike to me! :oops:).

Heehee! Jedamum, unconventional Math cannot be me. I'm only good in English lah... Math = 2ppaamm.

Pixie, I wanna set up tuition centre leh... but I had to write that stupid petition and now I wonder if MOE will decide to pull the plug on the tuition industry. They is smart you know. Maybe they'll come up with some high leverage mechanism that'll put Tutors outta business. Then my investment how?