With less than four months to go till the Primary School Leaving Examinations (PSLE), the June holidays are a good time to strengthen your child’s revision schedule.
MindChamps’ Deputy Director-General of Education, Joseph Lim, a former Ministry of Education Superintendent and former Principal of Maris Stella High School, shares 3 simple tips parents can use to help their child when revising.
1. How to motivate your child and ensure that they don’t burn out before the actual exams
Parents need to ensure that their children get enough rest.
“Ample rest allows the brain to better internalise the information for meaningful application. Lack of sleep is not healthy. It leaves pupils feeling tired and they might not be able to recall information well,” Mr Lim elaborates.
Parents are also advised to adopt a long-term mindset that success in the exams is a means to a greater end, for instance, developing lifelong skills like discipline and working towards a goal.
“By framing the examination in this light, children take a more mature and long-term view of exams as just another challenge one undertakes in life,” he adds.
Read also: The New PSLE Scoring System: What You Need to Know
2. How to improve their writing and composition
Get your child to spend some time reading a variety of text types, from storybooks to newspapers to even comics.
Mr Lim says reading is also a good way for children to relax.
“When children enjoy what they are reading, their language proficiency naturally improves. It is also a relaxing way to expose the child’s brain to different styles of writing and the various forms of sentence construction.”
This will help children to write fluently and express their opinions and story ideas confidently, Mr Lim adds.
3. How to revise for Science topics
Your child will need to fully understand the concepts behind the topics he or she is studying to determine how best to apply it.
One way to do so would be through drawing connections between the different topics as well as trying out different questions.
“Once a child can understand and master a concept, the application should come more easily,” says Mr Lim.
Read also: Secrets to Success: How MindChamps Students Jumped 4 and 5 Grades on the PSLE
Joseph Lim is the Deputy Director-General of Education at MindChamps. He has a Master of Education in Curriculum Policy from Teachers College, Columbia University.
He is overall in charge of curriculum planning and delivery for both MindChamps PreSchool and Enrichment divisions, with over 20 years of experience in teaching, curriculum design and school leadership with the Ministry of Education (MOE). As a former Superintendent under MOE, he supervised the operations of 15 schools.
Mr Lim also spent 6 years as the Principal of Maris Stella High School, overseeing both the Primary and Secondary sections.
Mr Joseph Lim’s tips were recently published on June 6 in a Straits Times article titled: “How best to revise for the PSLE during the June holidays.”