2012 PSLE Discussions and Strategy

[peterch]

firey:

As a non-Singaporean i am somewhat horrified at what you are all talking about. Children should be allowed freedom for discovery, not rigid structure and rules. Perhaps you want your children to have a very narrow frame of reference for this world? For this is what this attitude i am witnessing is all about.


Does anyone in Singapore see this for madness or are you all as deluded?

Hehehehe...... this is not madness by any way. This is so called preparing the kids for 'more fierce' world to come.

I am not a Singaporean as well. I send my kids to SIngapore to study and they are doing pretty well and I am pretty stressed :yikes: , one of them will doing PSLE this year too. :xedfingers:

But let me tell you my experience, after more than 2 years of studying in Singapore, my kids become more mature and responsible. As for narrow frame of reference for this world that you quote, I don't think every child will end with this situation and I might say most children have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge thru any kind of source of reference. At least I can say this for my kids. :rahrah:

[HAPPYH]

peterch:

firey:

As a non-Singaporean i am somewhat horrified at what you are all talking about. Children should be allowed freedom for discovery, not rigid structure and rules. Perhaps you want your children to have a very narrow frame of reference for this world? For this is what this attitude i am witnessing is all about.


Does anyone in Singapore see this for madness or are you all as deluded?

Hehehehe...... this is not madness by any way. This is so called preparing the kids for 'more fierce' world to come.

I am not a Singaporean as well. I send my kids to SIngapore to study and they are doing pretty well and I am pretty stressed :yikes: , one of them will doing PSLE this year too. :xedfingers:

But let me tell you my experience, after more than 2 years of studying in Singapore, my kids become more mature and responsible. As for narrow frame of reference for this world that you quote, I don't think every child will end with this situation and I might say most children have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge thru any kind of source of reference. At least I can say this for my kids. :rahrah:

I like your positive approach

[coast]

peterch:

firey:

As a non-Singaporean i am somewhat horrified at what you are all talking about. Children should be allowed freedom for discovery, not rigid structure and rules. Perhaps you want your children to have a very narrow frame of reference for this world? For this is what this attitude i am witnessing is all about.


Does anyone in Singapore see this for madness or are you all as deluded?

Hehehehe...... this is not madness by any way. This is so called preparing the kids for 'more fierce' world to come.

I am not a Singaporean as well. I send my kids to SIngapore to study and they are doing pretty well and I am pretty stressed :yikes: , one of them will doing PSLE this year too. :xedfingers:

But let me tell you my experience, after more than 2 years of studying in Singapore, my kids become more mature and responsible. As for narrow frame of reference for this world that you quote, I don't think every child will end with this situation and I might say most children have the opportunity to broaden their knowledge thru any kind of source of reference. At least I can say this for my kids. :rahrah:

:thankyou:

Nice of you to share your positive experience

[mother777]

janet_lee88:

HAPPYH:

[quote=\"hshs\"]Hi all!


Have seen some people drawing arrows on the passage so that they cd identify the right distractors. Was wondering if anyone is familiar with this method of doing close passage?

My DD's teacher (enrichment) taught her drawing arrows last year. It helped some children but my DD was quite confused. But I personally feel this method is effective to find the appropriate words in the cloze passage, esp. when there is no helping words.

My son's school teacher taught them to use this method this year (P6). It does help to a certain degree, helping the kids to gain extra 2-3 marks. This method is called 'linking', I think. At P6, there seems to be no more helping words in the cloze.[/quote]Hi Janet,

would you be kind to share how this linking method is used? My DD is always confused in cloze passages too..

After compre OE, this is her next weak point. She is ok in grammer, punctuation etc. Want to find something to improve her cloze.

[mitchy]

Hi Everyone


I m new to this forum. Just attended the parents’ PSLE briefing in my DD school and the dates and subjects for 2012 PSLE are as follows:

16 n 17 August - Oral
14 September - Listening Comprehension
27 September - English
28 September - Maths
1 October - Mother Tongue
2 October - Science
3 October - Higher Mother Tongue

Hope the above information is useful.

[Dione]

mitchy:

Hi Everyone


I m new to this forum. Just attended the parents' PSLE briefing in my DD school and the dates and subjects for 2012 PSLE are as follows:

16 n 17 August - Oral
14 September - Listening Comprehension
27 September - English
28 September - Maths
1 October - Mother Tongue
2 October - Science
3 October - Higher Mother Tongue

Hope the above information is useful.

Thank you for the information. I think many parents are counting down to 16 August, that marks the start of PSLE.

[janet88]

Firstly, I am terrible at explanations :oops: but will try to tell you how it goes...with little or no helping words in cloze, the answer may be found indirectly in the next sentence or paragraph. I saw my son drawing arrows all over the passage. I've yet to start him on cloze practice at home.


What you can do is do a cloze and then refer to the answer sheet if you are 'stuck'. I could manage 12 answers for easier topics....but I'm terrible in history and geography. Based on the answer sheet, try to link.

[psle2011mum]

If I may add to janet_lee88's post - her second paragraph suggestion is a good one to \"prove\" to the kids that these clues exist. You can in fact start with a cloze piece, refer to the model answers and then look for the links ie reverse engineer the process and draw the arrows between the clues and the answers. Some other simple \"rules\" help - specific vocab is chosen over general vocab so we would choose \"patients in the waiting room of a clinic\" over 'people in the waiting room of a clinic\".


Remember that when setters set a piece of cloze, they have to convince the QC Committee for that paper [usually made up of other teachers in the level plus HOD] that the clues are in fact there; so the clues do exist for \"mining\" -- the kids just have to find them.

Having knowledge of the subject matter helps some too - because then the kids know the specific vocab -- but this is more of a bonus to make finding the answers somewhat simpler.

[psle2011mum]

Hi Everyone


Will be uploading the P6 Annotation piece soon and for want of a better method, it'll come in similar form to what I did for the P4 piece.

I hear the request to show what an annotated piece looks like but (a) I'm not sure know how to insert a scanned image here :oops: and (b) I can tell you what it looks like - real messy; which is why I started off by re-typing out each line of a compre piece and sharing the thought processes I went through after reading each line.

Remember that the purpose of the annotation is to (a) slow the child down and (b) through (a), enable the child to mine each sentence for meaning. The \"which tool is better\" is probably not as important as training the child to go through the process when reading the passage and to analyse the questions to ask himself/herself what the teacher is asking of him/her.

Do they teach the kids to annotate in school? In DD's 2011 experience \"Yes, a little\" but this was not the case for my older child, although it's the same school. But this process takes time to develop and the teacher started teaching annotations after CA1 2011 by asking the kids to use a highlighter. We went through that phase too -- DD became very proficient in colouring

I'm not sure how others cope and annotations may not be the only way to get the marks in for this section - but this worked well for DD -- she improved and thereafter her grades were consistent at this higher level.

Best resource I had on annotations was from the English trainer I worked with [google: learning ventures] and the Oxford Essentials books I recommended earlier.

Hope this clarifies.

[peterch]

psle2011mum:

Hi Everyone


Will be uploading the P6 Annotation piece soon and for want of a better method, it'll come in similar form to what I did for the P4 piece.

I hear the request to show what an annotated piece looks like but (a) I'm not sure know how to insert a scanned image here :oops: .................

Will be very happy to upload it here for you. Just email them to me (pmed) :imcool: