Tips for PSLE Science Preparation

Here are some tips for preparing for your PSLE Science exam. It just takes heck of a lot of self discipline on the part of the child and a little boldness from them to ask the school teacher for some clarification occassionally.

1. Buy a good Science Guide. Your child should read it back to front. One reading may not be enough. I would say read it at least two times if possible. Unfortunately, most of our kids read Science guide books a total of….. drumroll…..ZERO times.Knowledge and foundation are important. My two favourites publicly available guide books are Ultimate Science Guide and the old orange book called Science PSLE Revision Guide. There are other good ones out there, and most tuition centres will produce quite a good set of notes. The problem is your child probably hasn’t really read them. Honestly its dry material. Intrinsic motivation to read it is seriously hard to find for a child. Nevertheless, if they want the grades, it must be done. Oh! Notice I said back to front. Read it from the back. Kids love to read from chapter one because they are usually the easier topics. Get them to start from the most difficult topics, so that they use the best of their concentration on the harder topics, before procrastination, boredom and the diminishing enthusiasm sets in.

2. When reading the guide book, make sure they have a notebook beside them. Notetaking is a very important skill. Unfortunately, with computers, powerpoints, printers and photocopiers, we have done our children a great disservice. Note taking is now a dying art and few students these days know how to take notes effectively. If you don’t understand a concept, don’t just memorise it. Try to do a simple experiment to convince your own mind. To ensure learning has occured, try to explain the concept to someone else. i.e. after reading your guide book, you must teach someone else.

3. Buy yourself a stack of past year 10 school exam papers as well as PSLE questions (5 yr series). Some books like Teacher Circles helps you to get a rough idea of what teachers are looking for. For basics you can look at Renee Chong’s books. For the more challenging, ofcourse go look for the Prelim Papers from Nanyang.

4. If you are seriously gunning for an A*. Train yourself to get 60/60 for your multiple choice. With each question worth two marks, careless mistakes are simply not acceptable here. If you are an average student hoping to improve, you’ll probably find that strengthening section A would be your best bet too. With minimal guidance from tutors, you should be able to help your child practice and correct section A quite easily. Students may need some explanation for Section A questions, but it should be relatively few compared to B.

 A reasonably hardworking child should only have at most 2 to 6 questions that really need explaining. Usually there are more careless mistakes than mistakes due to lack of understanding. Something is wrong if they plonk 20 questions at you and say I don’t understand them all. It just means they haven’t bothered taking step 1 and 2 seriously…taking notes using the Guide Book. 5. Section B is tricky. The questions are getting more interesting and less straightforward. This is where you must really know your keywords. Sorry, this is that part that takes months of work to fine tune and crystallise. Read model answers and search for words and phrases that are always repeated for that topic. Key words are the key! Try to get a set of reliable Section B answers e.g. the PSLE questions for the past 5 years. Some assessment books should be OK. Top 10 school exam papers are 80% OK, but sometimes lack depth. Some answers are also total rubbish, but usually these are no more than one or two in each paper.

This is where you could use some advice from your schoolteachers if you don’t have a tutor. The answer should be short and sharp. Clear and contain all the key words and concepts in the right context. I emphasise in the right context. Remember, its a science exam, so 99% of the answers should be testing science keywords and concepts. Be very specific. Do not add frills and go out of point. It will cost you. 6.

The key to PSLE Science Preparation is determination, hardwork and initiative. If you are sending your kid to tuition two or three times a week and he or she is doing nothing much other than quickly answering hundreds of questions and doing lots of assignments at home, you can be assured that unless the child is someone who can listen once and remember for a lifetime, you’re wasting your money. Your kids are just “firefighting”. Review is key. How much time do they spend reviewing what is learnt? How much of the corrections can they actually remember?

 If you really were to test the average child, I can assure you, the answer would be less than 42% as shown by research. Kids who listen and not review remember very little. Save your money, have less tuition, sit with your child and review the work with them. At this age, not many children can really do it on their own. I know of two children who went to a top secondary schools. Self motivated, yet they had wonderfully patient grandmothers who sat down with their grandchildren and reviewed all the work with them daily. How do parents and grandparents differ from paid tutors? Paid tutors have fixed hours. They come and go according to their schedule, not the child’s schedule. The child can be exhausted, but a paid tutor is there and the child’s absorption rate is minimal.

Usually, children do not have a long concentration span. Parents, grandparents and siblings can break revision up into half hour or hour long slots. Tutors cannot be coming to your home to teach for two hours while your child has a toilet break every half an hour! But! you say! My child is different. She can go to math tuition for 3 hours, or Chinese for 4 hours in a stretch. Yes, have you ever in your life sat through 4 hours of meetings non-stop? You are an adult, your child is a child. Rarely can a person absorb at 100% efficiency after sitting for 4 hours straight. Stop kidding yourselves.

In class, they can take notes, so even if their heads are not absorbing, they can go home and review the information. Note: GO HOME and review the information themselves…maybe it would take another 6 hours of home time!!! Can it be done without adult supervision? Yes. There are many self motivated chidlren out there, who due to experience and life circumstances or just the way they are wired have very high intrinsic motivation. But at primary school age, they are not the majority. Most kids have simply not reached that level of mental maturity yet. We often kid ourselves into thinking that we have paid the school fees, the tutors. We have found the best tutors for our children. But if children do not review the information learnt at home, then you have been short changed my friend!