Hi,


I can dare say that no other schools are doing it. As teachers, HOD, and other educators moved from school to school. And ideas will get to be recognised and implemented in parts in other schools too.

Best practices are sometimes shared by teachers at Teachers-Network sessions, in the different Clusters (in their different Zone), etc.

But as this initiative took place from end of last year by a group of teachers in Catholic High.

They have chosen 1, 3 & 5 levels to implement the new methodology and syllabus, and they are doing development one term earlier than the actual term.

Thus, it's very time consuming for the teachers involved.

Next year, they will do for the 2, 4 & 6 levels.

As my son's form teacher, Ms. Low is in that team, she has started using it with my son's class for P5 & P6. My son has thus benefited from this method.


I have started consolidating Questions & Solutions for PSLE Maths 2009 at my blog :
http://psle-2009-questions.blogspot.com

Do visit and contribute your comments there too.

Thanks.

Martin Lee

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My son, P6 this year, has gone through the Catholic High Conceptual teaching methods.


I’ve attended their Maths Conference middle of this year, and understand that they want the students to think out of the box when face with a problem.

The students approach a new topic in class, but being challenged why they need to study that topic.

For example, when learning about area of circle, usual method, is to know the formula, calculate the area with the given radius, etc.

But here, they are given difference circles and asked if they have the same area. Which is bigger? Why are they the same area?

I understand that they break into small groups to come up with the answers, and each group to present to the whole class. Where other groups can challenge their answers (or beliefs).

In this way, it forces the students to think deeper.
They need to find consensus in their small group to agree to a certain way of thinking about the problem. They then have to present it to the whole class. And they have to defend what they belief in.

The only set back I find amongst the P6 students. They seems to be able to do the hard questions, but they got some of the very basic questions wrong.

Why? Well, I attribute it to that the students are now conditioned to handle complex situations (difficult questions), so they tried using their "advance" methods on simple questions automatically.

Thus, they have to learn how to look at any question, and to find the simplest method to solve, if can’t, then apply more advance method.

Just my thoughts on this mater. Hope it’s of help to you.

Martin Lee

Hi,


For those parents who have children Primary 6 & below presently.

Are you aware that there are changes to the PSLE Maths? Namely the use of Calculators?

After attending a conference at my son’s school over the last 2 weeks, who is in Primary 6 this year, I realised that there are much changes to the PSLE papers.

The emphasis has been moved to differentiate students who know WHY and NOT just HOW to do the questions.

There were uproar of some of the questions of PSLE in maths papers 2 years back.

Any comments?