atutor2001:Conducted an experiment today with my 3 personal guinea pigs (all x-PSLE Math A* - showoff right? no lah, just an indication of their past competency) to find out how tough those questions are.
They managed to solve the questions but the time taken was not impressive.
Considering that they are much older, existing students and working under very relax mood - conclusion - the questions are indeed very very tough. On the other hand, the poor P6 kids are working under tremendous pressure.
To those students who can see the solution easily, well done (but please be humble).
To those who can't solve them - we are normal and I am glad that I am normal.
The one thing that I find extremely disturbing with some of the questions though, are the way they are phrased. Wish I can see the actual questions. However, from what everyone has posted in the different forum, (which can't be too far off) I wondered if it is a Math or English paper. Till now I'm still wondering what does \"... stringing 2 big balloons\" mean. If the questions are written in plain simple English with proper illustration, I am sure many more students could have handled them.
My friends and I think that the paper is normal, not as difficult as you think. Most of the methods were taught by our school maths teacher. I think maybe you did not teach your students methods to solve these problems.