Mathematics! Does that word trigger chills up and down your spine? Well, you’re not the only one then! Many students (and adults) get flashes of horror when the subject is being mentioned, for they definitely had at least one negative experience with the subject. Regardless of whether it was due to blanking out during an examination, or making careless mistakes, a large number of people fear the subject.
Math fear is a common ailment plaguing both students and parents. An important category of this predicament is the worry among parents who have kids in Primary School. What are they worried about?
Yup, you guessed it right – the anxiety about how their kids will perform in the PSLE. As kids move up the years in primary school, there is often a perceptible decrease in their marks in math and this almost always sends parents into a panic.
Well, it’s time to lose some of that stress because today we are going to share with you a few tips that can help primary schoolers improve their skills in math by the time they have to appear for the PSLE.
Taking it One Step At a Time
Let’s talk about students who are in Primary 4 or Primary 5. From their perspective, the PSLE preparation would definitely need a long-term strategy. How do you begin? You take it one step at a time. Let’s start off by giving our kids one challenging word problem per week. Analyse how your child is performing with the problem. Then shift gears progressively. After a month or so, you can start increasing the number of questions. At the start, you can use comparatively less difficult problems and maybe increase the difficulty level after a week or two.
Analyse your kid’s working
At the start, take some time to analyse how your child is going about completing his math questions. There might be certain minor or basic errors that may be costing your kid dearly in the tests. This could be something as simple as getting the multiplication tables of a particular number wrong. A timely analysis helps you weed out such foundational problems and ensure that your kids don’t lose marks because of them.
Teach them to self-correct
We all learn much more efficiently when we are able to course-correct by ourselves. We need to teach our kids to do the same. Trust me, this is not just going to be useful for their PSLE math. It is a life lesson that would take them places. After the initial parental monitoring that we suggested, the focus should shift towards getting kids to self-correct. But, how do you do this?
Let’s say that your kid gets a question wrong. First of all, let him know that he has made an error and ask him to figure out his mistake. If he is unable to identify the error even after the analysis, then give out the answer to make things a bit easier.
Yes, this might not always work out well on the first try. But, give it a bit of practice and with a bit of time, your kids will be forging ahead with self-sufficiency in error analysis and rectification.
Make kids double-check
Make kids double-check answers. A bit of reverse engineering would be helpful in this regard. If it’s a multiplication problem then kids should be asked to check their answer by doing some reverse division to see if they get back to where they had actually started off. This is a helpful habit that can be practised until you are safely out of the zone of committing simple careless mistakes.
Go online a bit
Online educational tools are a boon for the students today. Wondering why they are so popular with students? Well, these tools offer a great deal of convenience to students. Online learning videos can help take the stress out of learning math. Students can learn at their own pace and enjoy the flexibility of time. They can learn when and where they want to, being completely in control of their learning pace and content.
There are two key ingredients without which your preparation would never be complete – belief and practice. We need to teach our kids to trust their capabilities. Almost all the important battles are first fought within the mind. The confidence in their capabilities along with the regular and disciplined practice of the above-discussed habits can ensure that your kid hits above 90% when the PSLE comes calling.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started straightaway!
Exam Smart Tips
Exam Smart Tip #1 – How to Encourage Our Kids to Speak Better?
Exam Smart Tip #2 – How to avoid carelessness?
Exam Smart Tip #3 – Establishing Routines!
Exam Smart Tip #4 – Let’s Read Carefully!
Exam Smart Tip #5 – Beating the Exam Fever!
Exam Smart Tip #6 – How to Eat Right for the Exams?
Exam Smart Tip #7 – How to Avoid a Meltdown?
Exam Smart Tip #8 – Taking Stress out of Tests
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With the basics learnt well, children will be able to grasp advanced concepts easily. Looking for the best PSLE math tuition, PSLE Science tuition and PSLE English tuition in Singapore? 88tuition has got you covered. The online training videos and assessments are designed in a way that children are made to enjoy the learning process.
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