Scoring well for the PSLE Math examination may seem like a daunting endeavour for some students, but it is a realistic one if students know how to take advantage of the resources available. Apart from their school teachers and tutors, there is a plethora of past-year papers, assessment books, and online resources.
This begs the question: how should students pace their revision across the months leading up to the national exam? Well, if you’re a concerned parent searching looking to prepare your child for the PSLE Math examination at the start of the year, time is on your side. Here’s how to make it count.
1. Identify areas for improvement
It’s often said that practice makes perfect, but you may want to hold your horses before piling the practice papers on.
For starters, students have different strengths and weaknesses. Some may struggle with calculating rates and speeds, and others may have difficulty grasping measurement and geometry concepts. To make the most of their revision, and prevent burning out prematurely, students can start by identifying the topics they are least confident in. After their areas for improvement come to the surface, topic assessments are a good place to start doubling down on them.
2. Learn to manage their time
The PSLE Math exam is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. If students aren’t mindful, they may very well get carried away with questions they cannot solve, leaving little time for the ones with a higher “success rate”.
Time management, however, isn’t only about allocating minutes to questions based on the number of marks they carry. Importantly, when students are stuck, they have to be comfortable with skipping questions and revising them later. Picking one’s battles wisely also means tackling sections they are most confident of first, especially if they stress out easily in examination conditions. This will start the paper on the good note and give them a boost in confidence.
3. Avoid common errors
Careless mistakes are every student’s Achilles heel. If they’re lucky, they can redeem themselves with the workings shown. If they aren’t, those are precious marks they will never get back.
Some students may slip up by missing or misinterpreting keywords in the question or copying the wrong information into their work. Others may make conceptual errors, where they identify the wrong technique; or presentation errors; where workings aren’t shown correctly. Still others may be prone to calculation and unit errors, which can be a pity.
It’s hard to maintain speed and accuracy when racing against time. Avoiding these errors, therefore, should be a habit rather than a checklist item on exam day. During revision, students can practise reverse-checking or checking for illogical answers.
4. Sign up for The Learning Lab’s P6 Math Programme
The Learning Lab’s P6 Math Program covers all the above bases through:
Specific Topical Revision
We will distribute handouts on a weekly basis to expose students to past PSLE questions on specific topics they are revising. Visual learners will also benefit from our Topical Mindmaps, which consolidate key formulae, important concepts, and common questions in one place.
Pre-PSLE Handouts
Four handouts will be staggered before the Prelims and PSLE, containing past exam questions, common pitfalls, and useful techniques. Our teachers will simulate examination conditions so the national exam will eventually feel like second nature.
Exam technique handout
Last but not least, our Exam Technique Handout rounds up the mistakes that students are prone to. This allows them to check their “blind spots” based on errors their peers have made, and learn to spot and analyse them across various questions.