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PSLE Series – Everything About Composition-Writing

Since my post on How We Learn Comprehension (The No Tuition Way), many have asked me about how we tackle Composition. So, I am going to share what I have learnt in the PSLE Parent Workshop for English by Marshall Cavendish Education mainly on the pitfalls, the common mistakes and some good tips. Some of the below are Rubrics that examiners used for evaluating Compositions too.

1) The Hamburger Proportion

In each Composition, there should be an Introduction, Body and Ending. If a student writes too much on Introduction, and a small “Body” (Main story) and rush through Ending, this will make an out of proportion Composition, just like a hamburger with a big bun on the top. Same goes to short Introduction and lengthy “Body”, etc. Do remember to not overwrite on any one of these.

2) Time for Planning before Starting to Write

Planning is important. When a student gets carried away in writing, he/she may miss out an important connecting part of the story. Do spend 5-10 min to do a quick planning. I think most students, including myself, do not plan. But according to the Trainer in the workshop, he highly recommends this step from his years of experience that planning helps greatly, especially for weaker writers. I would encourage my kids to do the same too.

3) Writing the Introduction

Weather – This is a favourite opening line of many students. However, if weather is not going to be related to the content of the story, please DO NOT start with writing about the Weather.

Recount – Writing Recount stories can be very interesting and yet dangerous too. Just remember to make a note somewhere on the writing paper to remind yourself to tie back to the beginning of the story before concluding the Composition. Further, the trigger of the recount must be related to the main story.

‘One day’ – This 2 words should be avoided in any Composition opening line.

Smooth transition into the main story – Introduction has to be written such that it introduces the story’s mood or atmosphere appropriately.

4) Writing the “Body”

Description – Writing in good details and vivid descriptions will add mood to the story. There should be an ability to “SHOW” and not “TELL”. I am always attracted to good descriptions in any storybooks, and encourage my kids to take note of how authors describe a scenario, weather, facial expressions, etc. Writing description can allow the reader to picture the entire scene you are writing about, and it helps to raise the Composition marks.

Dialogue – Writing an interesting and relevant dialogue to reveal the character and to further plot will help to make a Composition interesting. Try to write a couple of dialogue to help boost the story.

Initiating event and Problem/Conflict – Take note to write a clear initiating event leading to the problem. The conflict should be clearly defined too. Events and Conflict should be linked.

Characters – There should be one or more well drawn characters that are well described and interesting. Too many characters may take away focus from the main character.

Language – Take note not to overuse words and try to vary the words with same meaning. This will show examiner that the language command is strong and it makes the story more interesting. Avoid starting with the word “I” too many times.

Sentences – Vary the sentence structure. Avoid writing lengthy sentences and using too many “and” in a sentence. Use modifiers. (What are modifiers? They are a word, phrase or clause which functions as an adjective or adverb to describe a word or make its meaning more specific.)

Plot Twists – Writing plot twists take some practices and skills. We should encourage our kids to write plot twists as they can lead the reader (examiner) into the story and shed light at the end. This will boost the story greatly.

5) Writing the Ending

Tie back to the story – This is especially for Recount stories. Remember to tie back to the beginning of the story.

Changing for the better – One of the common mistakes is that students may, without explanation, conclude that the main character “realises” his/her mistake “suddenly” and decides to change for the better! This will make the Ending too abrupt. Students sometimes spend too much time writing about the Introduction and “Body” and rush through the Ending. It is important to allocate enough time to conclude nicely.

Policeman, Paramedics, Rescue – This is a common Ending for most Compositions. If this is needed to conclude the story, try to describe in more details, eg, how does the inside of the ambulance look like, how having rescue team affect the character in the story, etc. Or instead of rescue team, try to write with the character as the rescuer or problem-solver by himself.

6) Trademarks of weaker students’ Compositions

I would like to share trademarks on weaker student’s Compositions as it will serve as a reminder to teach our kids not to make these mistakes.

Lots of Grammatical Errors – Weaker students have lots of grammatical errors such that the content is confused or lost. If your child is weak in Grammar, you may like to drill them in basic Grammar rules from the start. It takes time, but it will slowly help the child improve his/her language which will go a long way.

Not Enough Vocabulary – Lack of Vocabulary will make a story boring. Build up a Vocabulary Bank by jotting down new words when you are reading books, newspaper, etc. This is a long term learning and will help in the long run.

Lack Organisation Skills and No Flow – Here is where planning helps. You can be a strong writer but if the organisation is missing, the story will not be a good one.

Lack of Immersing in the Story – When a student is writing a Composition, he/she should imagine himself in the story. It will help him to describe the 5 senses (see, hear, taste, smell, touch) better and bring the reader into his/her world through the description.

Length of Composition – A weaker writer tends to write too short and a strong writer may write too long. Writing about 3,4 pages long is sufficient to not bore the examiner and not too short to miss out content.

7) Checking the Composition

Finally, check through the Composition and look out for G.P.S (Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling)! Replace words that are overused with better words.

I hope the above 7 Steps will help your child to write better. After writing this post, I am going to let my kids read these tips and guide them along!

If you like this post and find it useful, do share with your friends who are struggling in Composition or preparing for PSLE like us. I want to selflessly teach everyone what I know and how I teach my children in academics. I do have a small ambition: To inspire more parents to go the NO-TUITION route like us! Let’s save money and save time for our children to play and unwind more! I think there is more to life than academic and tuition.

You may follow us in the NO TUITION PSLE SERIES by clicking on the link or follow us on instagram to see how we learn in our daily #30minrevision.

Hope this post is useful to everyone out there who has a kid in school! Stay tune for the next post!

PSLE Series – How We Learn Comprehension (The No Tuition Way)

We have been doing our #30minrevision every weeknight and only concentrating on nothing but English. We leave the Science and Math revision to the weekends when we have more time. The reason why we concentrate hard on English shows how I value the importance of the English subject. And it is also easier for us to concentrate on language rather than the heavy kind of revision in calculation or theories on the limited attention span on weeknights.

I wanted to catch more eyeballs with a header that says “Ace your way in Comprehension” but I thought since our self-learnt method is not tried and tested, I had better be humble to share this post on how we learn Comprehension, the no tuition way.

As most of you may have known that I learnt a lot of good tips from the PSLE Parent Workshop for English by Marshall Cavendish Education. I shared my learning with Missy 12 over 4 blocks of #30minrevision in 4 weeknights.

1st weeknight of #30minrevision – Reading Comprehension and explaining to her how to draw arrows on the Comprehension passage and infer.

2nd weeknight – Read Comprehension Questions and explain to her how to do highlighting on the questions. Then read the Comprehension passage a 2nd time to understand more in depth and relate to Questions. Start doing the Questions until 30 min is up.

3rd weeknight – Continuing doing the Comprehension Questions. Then check answers and explain mistakes. Try a 2nd Comprehension passage all over again starting from reading the comprehension passage once.

4th weeknight – Do the same steps as above to complete 2nd Comprehension passage and complete questions. This time round, Missy 12 could do it faster because she has grasped the Comprehension skills and concept.

6 Steps in Learning the Comprehension Skills

Step 1: Reading the Passage

This is the most important step to score in Comprehension! If one does not read properly and understand what the passage in depth, he/she will waste much time in answering the questions because he/she will have to refer back and forth and scan through to re-read several times. I told Missy 12 to spend more time to read the passage carefully and understand the passage as much as she can, once she is able to understand the passage, she will save lots of time when doing the Comprehension questions. It will be faster than skimping through the passage and dive right into the questions, only to have most of them answered wrongly.

Step 2: Annotate as you Read

I learnt this step from the PSLE Parent Workshop. There are many words in a passage that refer to one another. Sometimes, the reference of the words are not obvious and one has to infer (deduce or conclude) from the story to understand what the words are referring to. For example in the picture below, the word “a ten-year-old boy” is referring to “Wesley Binks“. And Missy 12 will draw an arrow to join these 2 inferences together. The word “It” highlighted in yellow is referring to the “firework”, hence, Missy 12 will similarly draw an arrow to connect both together for her understanding. While it may seem obvious, it helps readers to not get lost in the passage.

You may ask if this is a time-waster in examinations. Well, I told Missy 12 that as long as she annotates during her regular Comprehension practices, she will annotate faster as she gets the hang of it and she can even annotate less during the examinations. What is important here is to first UNDERSTAND the passage.

Look at the picture below, I teach my girl to write down meaning of phrases. For example, “feathers were still a little ruffled” means “angry“. So, what if she does not know the meaning of the word or phrase? I realised that it is good to make a guess and look one sentence above and one sentence below or within the same sentence for clues. I have gone through with her a few times and I find this trick works most of the time.

Step 3: Read the Questions and Highlight

Make a habit to highlight tenses and keywords in the questions. This will remind the child to answer in the right tense. Actually, most of the answers are usually in past tense for most Comprehension passages, unless the passage is a non-fiction passage. Then, you will spot most present tense usage in the passage anyway.

Step 4: Read the Passage a SECOND Time

Reading the passage a second time is very important. Usually, we will understand the passage better or catch the details that we had left out in the first read. This time round, when reading, do ask questions to yourself and answer them. In the Workshop, we learnt that this is a good habit to get used to. When one ask questions in the head and answer these questions, he/she will tend to get closer to the answers to the questions that examiners set, because examiners set the questions with the same kind of thought process in mind! In fact, when we get used to answering our own questions, we are training our mind to be analytical too!

Step 5: Answer the Questions

This is the time to answer the questions and I remind my girl: DON’T BE LAZY TO FLIP BACK AND REFER TO THE PASSAGE AGAIN AND AGAIN! I find that sometimes she tends to answer questions with her memory instead of flipping back the paper to refer to the passage. If the answer is in the passage, do not let go of a chance to get the answer right! Do not depend on just memory alone!!!

Step 6: Check G.P.S.

What is G.P.S.? Not the navigation of course! Get your child in the habit of checking Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling! There is bound to be mistakes! Never give up on checking carefully. I told my girl to point to each word when she reads her answer just to be sure she is using the right tense and right spelling.

The above 6 steps are how I want my girl to go through each Comprehension passage from now on. In fact, I told her if she gets the habit of doing these steps, it will help her go a long way into Secondary School when Comprehension passages are much tougher.

If you like this post and find it useful, do share with your friends who are struggling in Comprehension or preparing for PSLE like us. I want to selflessly teach everyone what I know and how I teach my children in academics. I do have a small ambition: To inspire more parents to go the NO-TUITION route like us! Let’s save money and save time for our children to play and unwind more! I think there is more to life than academic and tuition.

You may follow us in the NO TUITION PSLE SERIES by clicking on the link or follow us on instagram to see how we learn in our daily #30minrevision. And if you have a P5 kid, do hop over to DinoMama, a fellow mummy blogger who has started to document some good study tips from her daily revision with her son too.

Hope this post is useful to everyone out there who has a kid in school! Stay tune for the next post!

PSLE Series – How We Learn English

I must admit that Primary School English these days is so much more difficult than what we learnt in our own Primary School years. We never had Comprehension Cloze! We never had Editing! We never learn the word “Prospectus” and whatever is that? We only know MCQs, Comprehension, perhaps some fill in the blanks but with helping words and we only know the word “Leaflet”.

I must admit that Primary School English these days is so much more difficult than what we learnt in our own Primary School years. We never had Comprehension Cloze! We never had Editing! We never learn the word “Prospectus” and whatever is that? We only know MCQs, Comprehension, perhaps some fill in the blanks but with helping words and we only know the word “Leaflet“.

If my own English is not good enough to score a Primary 6 Exam Paper, how do I teach this subject to my girl, especially when we have no tuition?

I am currently learning along with my kids whenever I teach them on this subject. I feel that I am re-learning English all over again and I am appreciating the specific usage of tenses, and even simple things like punctuation! I find myself flipping through the dictionary often and explaining the meaning to Missy 12, sometimes in Chinese. Apparently my Chinese is better than English by a great margin. Maybe because Chinese is so much more straightforward without complicated Grammar rules and phrasal verbs. I feel so paralyzed by my lack of English vocabulary words that I regret tremendously not having read enough books when I was young.

Hence, my number one advice in learning English is really to READ MORE BOOKS! No hard and fast formula, just READ, READ and READ!

Kel and I decided to devise an English learning plan for Missy 12 starting from January this year. It is kind of late and we get interrupted on our schedule due to the intensive volleyball training that sees my girl returning late and tired. I have yet to see results since there is only one school test so far, which is taking place as I type. But I have certainly put more ticks than crosses on Missy 12’s English assessment book lately, and that has been encouraging enough to raise her confidence.

I will be elaborating on a few methods that are shared by kind friends and even strangers. Although some are not yet tried and tested on my girl yet, I would still wish to share with you as maybe some of you are struggling like us on doing a crash course on English and would not be able to wait for our verdict at the end of the year. I would suggest that if you do use these methods, please DO NOT bet 100% on them to create miracles over a short time. You can, of course, use them as a guide or try them out on your own, or tweak them to suit your child’s learning ways as you wish.

Our Daily 30 minutes English Revision

I use the Longman Mastering English Grammar & Vocabulary book recommended by a good friend (The picture below from Google image shows Hodder Education, but it is the same. Popular Bookstore is selling Longman publisher). It is separated by topics and each topic has exercises to test the understanding of the student. I also bought a Complete Practice Book for Grammar, Vocabulary & Comprehension to help me test my girl’s understanding of what was taught.

First of all, I assign each topic, for example, Nouns, to be taught by me in one week. Then once the topic on Nouns is completed, we concentrate on the Complete Practice book on the second week on the same topic, Nouns. Hence, this is a 2 weeks block for each topic. If the topic needs more time, for example, on Tenses, then it will be 2 weeks teaching, 2 weeks practices.

Secondly, I prep my girl that we will have daily 30 minutes of English revision. I emphasized that it will only be 30 minutes and not more than that, hence, she should be able to give full concentration during these 30 minutes. I find that prepping her on this revision plan helps greatly. Both of us know that it will only be 30 minutes and not more or less, as compared to a stretchable time period that may see both of us losing concentration and patience.

On the first week
For the first 15 minutes, I will be teaching a topic on Grammar and once 15 minutes is up, I will stop teaching.
For the next 15 minutes, she will start doing exercises in the Longman book for 10 minutes and final 5 minutes will be marking and explaining mistakes.

On the second week
For the first 15 minutes, Missy 12 will do as many exercises as she can on the Complete Practice book.
For the next 15 minutes, I will mark and go through the mistakes with her.

The above is our lesson plan for English revision. Both of us are surprised at how fast 30 minutes pass us by and the real challenge is calling it a day after 30 minutes! I have to stop my urge to continue beyond that but since I have promised that it will be a 30 minute revision, I have to keep to it.

So far, apart from some interrupted schedule like Chinese New Year break and days that she returned late and too tired for any revision, it has been working out fine for us. I can also see her improvement in understanding the topic more in depth. This is certainly better compared to my previous way of assigning numerous practices for her to do in the afternoon while I was at work and then marking the practices and explaining to her on another day. She has given feedback that she understands English Grammar better now than previously blindly doing assessment books.

Tackling Comprehension Cloze

This method is with courtesy from a close friend.
I learnt that most students fail this section badly, and perhaps including me too! There are no helping words and unless you read newspapers regularly and read widely, chances are the students will have no clue on what words to fill in.

Tips: I learnt that for each word to be filled up, there will be clues around the word to hint at the right answer. Although this is not always the case as some are phrasal verbs, this method can still be applied for most of the words. You can find these clues in 1-2 sentences before or after the word.
Below are some clues that I have tried to find with my girl. For example: the highlighted words are clue to the blank word, like “read and write” hints to you that the blank is “school“, “determination” hints that the earlier word is “determined“, “raked the ground” and “harvesting” hint that the next answer is “planting” the seeds.

Memorizing Method

This method is shared by a stranger whom I had a chance to learn an unorthodox way of crash course English. I have not tried this method yet, but it seems a possible approach when one is running out of time. Do let me know what you think of this method!

Since we are talking about running out of time to clam all English words into the brain of a 12 yo, memorizing answers on practice papers may be a good way for some students. Basically, for all MCQs on English Vocabulary or Grammar options on practice papers (In this case, we bought the English set of practice papers called “Primary 6 English Exam Package by PhD Education” from Popular but have yet to try it out), parents can highlight the right word option in yellow and write down the meaning of the word beside the right word. So, that means that Parents have to be diligent to DO the practice paper for the child! For the rest of the wrong words, the stranger shared that there will be NO TIME to go through them and those will not need to pay attention to. In fact, highlighting in yellow aids the child to remember better and whenever the child comes across the same sentence or similar phrase, he or she will be remembering that this “Right Word” will go hand in hand with these words before and after. Whoa! Does this even make sense?

Now before you go all out to dismiss this unorthodox method, let me share a success story of a Korean family whose son joined his Secondary 1 class in June, half way into the academic year for the first time in Singapore. Everyday, his stay home mother would spend time to underline words in a comprehension passage or books that she thought her son did not know and write down the meaning of the word in a separate notebook. When the father came back from work, he would spend time going through these words and his son would re-read and memorize till he understood the words and sentences. This went on for 3 months before the son took his first English examination. Guess what? He did it well enough to move on to Sec 2! This is from a boy who did not know much English to taking English medium classes and passing an English Exam within 3 months period!

So perhaps this unorthodox method may help for some.

Composition

My girl attended the Marshall Cavendish Education PSLE English Workshop for students. They shared about plot twists and My “Friend Has Diarrhea” way of concluding plus some Synthesis tips. I shall not repeat them here. You may check out the post here for what she had learnt and happily applied to her recent Composition Test.

That’s all for my sharing of teaching and learning English at home. Do you have tips and ideas on tackling the English Paper? Please, please share with me and all other readers so that we can learn from each other!

Disclaimer: These methods are not meant to be in any way official guides to learning English. Some are tried and tested and some are not. Some methods may work for me but may not work for you. I do hope that by sharing some of the methods that I have heard and used or not used, some parents out there may find them beneficial for their children. I really welcome comments and even your own tips, so that whoever reads this post, is able to learn and hopefully take away some positive ideas 🙂

The Start of PSLE Preparations From A Mum Who Insists On NO TUITION

I have wanted to title this as “The Start of PSLE Preparations From The Laid-Back Mum”. But I am not exactly so laid-back anymore after my girl, Missy 12, failed her Math in P3. I cannot label myself as laid-back since I do teach and revise with my kids one month before examinations. In comparison with most parents, I have done very minimal for my kids’ academic. There is one thing I have stick to my guns and am crossing my fingers that I am doing a right thing, is to insist on not sending my kids to tuition.

This year, Missy 12 is taking PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examinations), her first National Examination at a tender age of 12. I am not going to lament why the need for PSLE and why can’t kids just move on to Secondary school without going through such major stress. This post is about how we are going to revise for PSLE on our own, free of external tuition.

If there are tuition centres for parents to teach techniques in answering English Comprehension Cloze, Comprehension, Science open-ended questions, Chinese Comprehension and Composition tips, you bet, I will sign up for it. I will gladly use my time to learn and go back to teach Missy 12, so as to save her time. Perhaps I am unaware of any. So please let me know if you know of one ok?

I must admit that tuition centres or private tuition teachers have bags of tricks and techniques to teach students on how to answer questions. That is the major advantage of going for tuition classes. So by denying my girl to go to such sure-win classes, many have question about my sanity and label me as a stubborn bull. To speak the truth, I am scared too.

Should I stop Missy 12’s new piano classes now (she has recently asked to resume her piano class after 1.5 years of break) when everyone is doing the opposite by taking a year break from any kind of enrichment classes? Should I invest $100+ per lesson to give her a booster in English? Should I ignore her tiredness from 3 times a week of intensive Volleyball training and insist she go to 1.5 hours of tuition multiply by 2 or 3 subjects every week plus 1 hour travelling time back and forth? Or perhaps others may ask why is she still playing sports and going for NAFA art classes during this crucial year?

There are various reasons why I do not send her to tuition classes and why she is still continuing enrichment classes.

FATIGUE PREVENTS OPTIMAL LEARNING

Firstly, she has never attended a single tuition class and forcing her to do it now may backfire her learning interest. If she cannot catch what is taught in class, she may not catch it in another tuition class. Switching off when one has lost interest and simply too tired could happen to anyone. Besides travelling on the road to and fro tuition will deplete all her energy and attention needed in the class.

TRUST IN SCHOOL TEACHERS

Secondly, I believe our MOE-trained school teachers are very qualified to teach the students good enough to do well in PSLE. If not, shouldn’t we send our kids to tuition classes instead and skip school entirely?

STRIKING A BALANCE

Thirdly, I believe in BALANCE. I want my girl to be happy and learn holistically. I worry about her stress levels this year.

On the first day of school, her form teacher wrote down the test and exam schedule from Jan to Sep. I can feel that the teachers have started to emphasize to the students on how critical this year is, and have no reservations in instilling the awareness and stress in them. I am not so sure if Missy 12 feels the stress, but I took a picture of what she jotted down on this schedule and I couldn’t take my eyes off the snapshot of the schedule the next day. I am determined to “wake up” from my laid-back self and do my best to ensure she does reasonably well. It will still be only Mom Tuition and no external tuition. At the same time, I am also determined to balance her stress and ensure she still has a life. So, her piano and art classes and volleyball practices are forms of de-stress in my opinion and should not stop. I will respect her if, at any point of time, she thinks she wants to stop any of them. So far, she has not raised a flag.

REVISION PLANS

Ever since I saw the Jan to Sep exam schedule, I have gone to the Popular bookstore to buy more assessment books. I had chanced upon a parent who taught an unorthodox method to improve English in a short time. I had talked to several mums whose kids have been through PSLE. I have talked to teacher friends. Finally I discussed all my findings and thoughts with Kel.

We came out with a timetable for revision. We worked out how to settle the other 2 kids when I am teaching my girl. We put up a revision plan and teaching method for English, the weakest subject. I shall share details on how we go about revising in another post.

Each weeknight, we will have 30 minutes revision time for English. You may think it is very short. However, I am a working mum. Night time is short and precious. Energy is low, attention span is short. My girl returns late on 4 weekdays in a week from school’s commitment. She will need time to rest and do her homework. She may have questions that need my help to teach her too. Some time has to be catered to that.

Every weekend, we will have 2 parts of revision according to our weekend schedule. First part will be an hour’s revision and second part will be an hour and a half. Saturday will be focusing on Math and Sunday will be on Science.

That leaves Chinese out of the whole revision plan. Chinese is our kids’ strongest subject and it really helps to free up time for the rest of the subjects. It is hard to achieve bilingual excellence. While Chinese is their strongest subject, naturally, English becomes the weaker one. The reason why Chinese is a stronger subject is because we are a Chinese speaking family and my kids watch Channel 8 drama serials, listen to Chinese radio station and Chinese songs. Even though they do not have too much problem with Chinese, they still need to brush up compositions and get the right technique to answering Chinese Comprehension questions.

CHANGE OF ROUTINES TO PREP PSLE

Some routines will have to change a bit.

Sleeping early

This is a really difficult routine to change. Perhaps with one child, I may be able to enforce this with breeze since there are no toddler who runs in and out of the room before bed and no sibling to chat and giggle with long after lights out. I told Missy 12 that a simple way to help her do well in academic is to sleep early, as simple as that. A clear mind is like an empty sponge. It absorbs knowledge faster and allows one to think better. We are trying to have a lights out by 930pm.

No night TV

The kids love to watch the Chinese Drama serial at 9pm to 10pm. This will have to stop. I do allow them to have an hour of TV time in the day time once they have finished their homework.

Less weekend activities

This year, we may have to cut down on our weekend activities for the sake of Missy 12’s critical year. She has lots of homework from Friday school and has started to ask for more time to do homework. The first time she asked for homework time, I was slightly taken aback. The kids are growing up and school work is mounting. I have since cut down on blog events and ensure homework is done before we bring them out. Nevertheless, I will balance revision time with play. Moderating stress is my priority too.

Other siblings

So what do the other 2 kids do when I am revising with my Missy 12? I have decided to task Master 10 to play with Master 5. It works sometimes and it poses great challenges on other times. Master 5 yearns for attention after not seeing me for the whole day. I have even thought of the convenient way of giving the ipad so that he can quietly watch some YouTube videos and I can have some peaceful serious revision time. If you have good ideas on how to handle the other kids, do help me on this too!

To prepare for PSLE which is taking place in September, I will most likely take up lesser blog commitment and cut down on my girl night dates. It is indeed a family examination since everyone in the house has to change routine and adjust in one way or another to give moral support. I will be blogging more on PSLE preparation and my experience on it as we go along. I hope our revision plan works and who knows, I may really send my girl to intensive tuition if nothing works out!

I welcome PSLE mums to drop a comment below or on facebook page to exchange ideas and advice. Thank you in advance!

Till the next PSLE post!

Wake up Parents! A child’s life is more important than GRADES!

The day I read about the tragic news of a Primary 5 child who plunged to his death because he did not want to face the remainder of the day due to his poor results, my heart actually skipped a beat.

It was not because I am the type of Kiasu Mum who will punish my kids for not meeting my target marks, in fact, I DO NOT have a target mark for my children to meet, but it was more of getting a self-check on whether I am putting my children through high stress UNKNOWINGLY!

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The day I read about the tragic news of a Primary 5 child who plunged to his death because he did not want to face the remainder of the day due to his poor grades, my heart actually skipped a beat.

I read through the article and it stated that the boy’s mum cried out that she did not expect him to get 80 marks and it was “only 70 marks” that she had asked for. That gave me a wake up call too. What if I thought that I am a good mum who is doing the best for my kids and that my expectations (if any) are reasonable, but the kids are actually feeling too stressed out by my expectations or actions? It never occurred to me that my kids may be stressed. Have I looked out for signs that they are feeling stressful? Have I been doing a self-check on myself and checking on my actions and my facial expressions when they bring back the exam papers to me to sign?

Kids, nowadays, are indeed subjected to too much stress, from peers, from teachers, from tuition teachers, from parents, from grandparents, from society. And to make things worse, they are more vulnerable than previous generations who are more resilient and know how precious lives are. Their vulnerability comes from being too sheltered, too scared to fail, no chance to fail, and comes from growing up in a safety net around them and not permitted to take controlled risks. Are these the results of our “can’t afford to fail” mentality expected of our children?

The first thing I did when I returned home that day after I read the news was to catch my girl in a relax mood to talk. I asked my eldest if she felt stressful with the exams preparation. She answered yes. I was surprised as I had never thought that she was stressful because she played more than she studied and I detected no signs of stress in her. Neither is she taking any academic enrichment classes outside school that will cause her stress.

Me: Why do you feel stressed?

Missy 11: I am worried that I will not do well in the examinations.

Ok, stress noted and acknowledged. Then, I started to talk about my learning journey of how I fared a 238 for my PSLE, went into a better than average school with lowest cut off of 232 (now a top school), and began to ace my Math which was my worst subject in PSLE, ace my way to University and ended up just an average worker in the workforce and not earning as much as those who fared average in school.

ALTERNATIVE ACADEMIC ROUTES DO NOT DEFINE OR CONDEMN YOU IN ANY WAY

Me: Well, that’s more to life than getting good results. So what if you do not score well in P5 SA2 exams or PSLE? When you grow up and look back, these are just 2 small chapters in your life. Just accept that you have done your best and have a pat on your back for that. If you do not do as well in PSLE, you may go to an average school, or take the slightly longer route in Secondary School of Normal Academic or Normal Tech. These are just alternative routes to learning and they do not define you or condemn you in any way. It is not going to stop you from achieving success in life with other talents. Maybe you are not academic incline in Primary School, and it doesn’t mean you will not realize your academic potential in Secondary School when you meet a good teacher. The most important thing is that you have tried your BEST and be HAPPY.

I recalled with my gal on the time she failed her Math in P3. Now, fast forward 2.5 years later, I really appreciate that failure.

I told her: The most important thing after a failure is what you do after that. Do you reflect on your failure and get more motivated to do better or do you wallow in self-pity or self-destruction and waste the ‘Failure’ experience?

In my girl’s case, it was a good failure which I am happy that it happened. Without failing, she would probably not have experienced and gone through what the failure made her to be: More resilient and more motivated.

I had earlier mentioned in my previous post that PSLE Year will not be an enjoyable year. Now I think about it, it doesn’t have to be that way. Since teachers in school are putting pressure on the PSLE students, all the more I should moderate the stress by planning activities for destress and enjoyment. How can one waste one year of life to mug for examinations?

PARENTS AS CHEERLEADERS

I feel that parents are the best supporters and cheerleaders in their children’s lives. As cheerleaders, your job is not to scold your teammates and instead your job is to motivate and give encouraging words. Who doesn’t know that positive words go towards better self-esteem and better performance for an individual? This is commonly known in sports team or workplace where coach/boss give a pat on player/employee’s back, in relationship when a husband give encouraging words to his wife or vice versa, and certainly it does more good than harm for a parent to give encouraging words to his child.

I seriously hope that PSLE can be scrapped one day. It does not provide much value add to move to Secondary School and beyond. Since we are doing away with school ranking, why not do away with an exam that serves no significant purpose in life except create a whole lot of unhealthy stress in our young children and us, parents? Further, in a recent news, ” South Korea and Singapore, both high achievers at school level, are below average in the graduate rankings.” Now, that’s some food for thought on our education system.

CHECK OUR FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

Back to the tragic case of the P5 boy, all I want to say is that when a child does badly, he knows it. We don’t have to reiterate to him on how badly he does, or show him a disappointed face combined with a slow shake of head. We should never never punished physically for bad results. Most of the time, the child feels worse than us. After a while, our emotions subside and we may feel it was not such a big deal after all. But the child, on the receiving end of the parents’ disappointed faces or negative words may feel it for a long long time.

NEVER COMPARE

And never compare your child with another person, especially siblings. If my hubby constantly compares me with another woman, you will be sure I will detest that woman instead of improving myself. I supposed the same thing applies to comparing academic results. Comparing serves no purpose.

Nevermind that my girl is in the 2nd class from the bottom as long as she is happy and enjoys learning. Having said that, academic basics and foundation are still necessary to be reinforced to the ability of the child. As Confucius said,”Different strokes for Different Folks (因材施教)“, it is how the parents coach their own children according to their aptitude that will benefit them. I am determined to make PSLE year for her a less stressful year and one that she will not remember for an unpleasant learning journey.

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