Preparing kids for P5 in 2011

[Chenonceau]

Leanne... thank you!! :rahrah:

[Brenda10]

Chenonceau:

Brenda, this is great news!!

Hi Leanne

Yes, so P5 parents don't need to be too worry lah.

Like EL P1 (Compo. and situation writing), heard from dd the teacher may want to increase to more than 1 time per week and the Maths (not sure full paper or only Section C) they will also carry out such test frequenly at the class to measure their accuracy and speed.

Hi Chenonceau

Yes, at least the the bigger worry to EL compo. is well covered. Think the CL will also go into same mode.

In fact, this few days dd has nothing much to do after supplementary class and can spend time reading those Sciecne comics, watching TV and doing some prelim math and sciecne from those past year paper.

[allcc6]

Chenonceau:

I'll be tackling P6 SA1 in December after spending 2 weeks overseas in a cottage. Again, I will ignore topics and assessment books. By the way, I also ignore CAs. No time to prepare and do so many practices. MUST have time to play.

Chenonceau,

I'm impressed by your 'out-of-the-box' thinking instead of the usual drilling method.

1. Juz curious, what does your son 'play' in his play time?

2. Also, I remembered you mentioning about your son's big leap in chinese compo after getting your son to memorise chinese essays (from books bought fm China). How do you select the pieces? Based on themes? What about his retention rate?

[cimman]

Brenda10:

Leanne:

Hi Brenda,


Yes, yes, yes, school is on the revision mode as in doing and working on all the revision papers.

Cheers

Hi Leanne

Yes, so P5 parents don't need to be too worry lah.

Like EL P1 (Compo. and situation writing), heard from dd the teacher may want to increase to more than 1 time per week and the Maths (not sure full paper or only Section C) they will also carry out such test frequenly at the class to measure their accuracy and speed.

this is great news if it is indeed carried out. The reason why it was not done in the past is that the teachers are already overloaded with a lot of other 'admin' tasks. If the school has taken the holidays to revamp their system and teacher's workload, and to ultimately focus teacher's time on teaching and monitoring, it is a step in the right direction.
It remains to be seen if this is indeed the situation.

[Leanne]

Chenonceau,


cheers....I think balance of work and play very very impt.

DS has lots of fun in school.Dont think he picked up much from school too, probably is the good company of friends.

I must say this term 3, teachers are awesome, as really load them with good exam papers.


cheers

Chenonceau:

Leanne... thank you!! :rahrah:

[Brenda10]

Leanne:

Chenonceau,


cheers....I think balance of work and play very very impt.

DS has lots of fun in school.Dont think he picked up much from school too, probably is the good company of friends.

I must say this term 3, teachers are awesome, as really load them with good exam papers.


cheers

Chenonceau:

Leanne... thank you!! :rahrah:

Hi Chenonceau and Leanne

Yes, play is the important factor to destress!

BTW, next Monday is the school holiday and dd is going to her classmate house to play card game for about half a day.

[linden2000]

PiggyLalala:

We do not have ipad but we have iphone. Can these Chinese comics audiobooks 漫画西游 (ie 西游记）and 漫画三国 (ie 三国演义) be downloaded onto a iphone? Anyone know whether iphone has free app like 成语故事 or anything to do with chinese that we can download? TIA.

Hi. Unfortunately think these audiobooks are for ipad only.

[PiggyLalala]

linden2000:

PiggyLalala:

We do not have ipad but we have iphone. Can these Chinese comics audiobooks 漫画西游 (ie 西游记）and 漫画三国 (ie 三国演义) be downloaded onto a iphone? Anyone know whether iphone has free app like 成语故事 or anything to do with chinese that we can download? TIA.

Hi. Unfortunately think these audiobooks are for ipad only.

Thanks for the infor

[Suz855]

Quote \"The longer hours of remedial and supplementary are inefficient and ineffective. It is more of the same thing - big group teaching. When my DS works at home with me, he has to practise. He needs to write one compo a day... compared to 2 compos in 3 months. When I mark his compo, I comment on every line (green for good things and red for points of improvement). Every hour of compo practice he does (and which I correct in detail), teaches more than 10 hours of talking by teacher\"


I totally agree, how I wish I can convince my elder dd (P5) that it does not help her by staying back in school from Mon - Fri for sub this and that & occupy her time doing tons of hw from the school which will never be tested in the exam anyway.... she just need to follow and cooperate with me instead (I have been leaving her alone & secretly wishing that her teachers will adequently prepare her :oops: )... I have a younger dd in P4, her school is total opposite ... no sub, bare min hw ... so I take over after school hours and she need only study with me 10 ~ 15 min here and there when I have time then she is on her own most of her time with our own resource and her result so far has been exceeding expectation .... :xedfingers:

[linden2000]

Chenonceau:

linden2000:

I am also very impressed with the pontangs.


Thanks to Chenonceau for sharing your strategies. Always learn a lot from you.

You're welcome!!

The schools do more of what does not work. More classes and more hours of big group teaching. The new PSLE testing format is heavy on thinking skills across all subjects...

(1) Science thinking skills and heuristics
(2) Math thinking skills and heuristics
(3) English compo skills (standards for creative writing have risen amazingly)
(4) Chinese compo skills (idem above)

Skills can only be mastered with practice and individualized feedback. This can't be done in big groups of 40 students.

If teachers teach less, students must DO more and teachers must MARK more.

The longer hours of remedial and supplementary are inefficient and ineffective. It is more of the same thing - big group teaching. When my DS works at home with me, he has to practise. He needs to write one compo a day... compared to 2 compos in 3 months. When I mark his compo, I comment on every line (green for good things and red for points of improvement). Every hour of compo practice he does (and which I correct in detail), teaches more than 10 hours of talking by teacher. Remedial classes are a waste of time. It makes sense to swap 10 hours' remedial for 1 hour of work... and play an extra 9 hours. When I correct his compo, I comment on EVERY line (good things are commented in green and improvement points are commented in red). He scored 24/40 for SA2 in English compo because he wrote like he did in P4. Over June, we ratcheted up the quality of his writing by A LOT. Later, if got time, I will key into his blog and link here. You can compare with his P4 work.

In addition, when we work at home, my DS gets to pick the practices that are most useful to him. My brief to him is simple - \"I want you to be lazy. Get the best results in the least time. So, you don't be goondu goondu, complete everything in the book. Do enough that you understand, and then move on. And skip all the easy questions because those waste time.

In the past, when standards were lower, there is less of a crunch on time resources. Nowadays, the PSLE standards are so high that I use Sec 3 assessment books to teach PSLE creative writing because if I stick with the PSLE books, he can score only 24/40. I need to teach him techniques of bathos, irony, energy plotting... If I rely on teacher, compos come back with a tick... no mark... no comments.

It's NUTS!! :scratchhead: :siao:

With PSLE hitting such high standards (across every subject), the crunch on resources is considerable. Something must go... and I am certainly not retrenching Play Time because that is key to children's well-being. Regular school (ineffective and inefficient) has to be retrenched instead.

Maybe there are the 0.02% of students who are so smart that 2 compos a term can bring them up to the standards required. My son is not gifted. The only solution is to practise more, and for that we need TIME.

Yes, I'm also puzzled why they do so few compo per term. Think last term was 2. At least his teacher does give a mark and write some comments though.