How to help P1 children prepare for CA & SA

[yithz]

Dear All


Would greatly appreciate it if any parent can share on how they help their kids prepare for the P1 CAs/SAs for the various subjects like English, Maths, Chinese

Understand that for English Stellar programme - there is no specific syllabus & different schools use different materials as such there is no specific guideline/assessement books that one can use.

Any tips/sharing/recommendations on materials/strategies to use would be most welcomed eg how early in advance should we help them revise their work.

Thanks a billion!
Yithz

[MMM]

Hi,


Usually the school will issue guidelines on what is being covered in the exam. You can use that guideline as a basis on what will be tested.

For me, this is the approach I take with my P2 and P1 :
* Do top schools SA1 paper. I downloaded this for free from website.
* Through the SA1 paper, I try to identify their weakness areas and then try to practise on those area. Eg. tricky maths question. Through practise and teaching them ways to handle it, they will find it manageable when they see it in the exams.
* In the case of my son who chinese is not as strong, I made sure he revises all the words before giving him the SA1 paper to work on. To ensure he does not get demotivated and also to test if he really knows.

At the end of the day, there’s so much to do and so little. It’s not possible to cover everything… Given that SA1 is next week, I am just trying to get them to focus on key areas now.

[pranav]

[Moderator's note: Topics merged.]


Dear All,

Can anyone tell me what types of questions will be asked for English and maths paper 1 and 2 for Primary 1 :?:

Next week is my boys exam and I don't want to revise all the topics again and again and stress my boy.

[jedamum]

Hi pranav,


Think your post should belong http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2919.

The school should already have given out the exam format weeks ago and some sample papers. Different schools have different format (for Math, some may have MCQ in Part 1 while other schools may only have short questions).

For english, should have the usual Spelling, Vocab, Grammer, Cloze Passage, Word Order, Compre MCQ.

For math, MCQ/Short Q/Problem Sums - details depends on the school's syllabus.

You can either check with parents with kids attending your kid's school, or check with the teacher direct.

Why not revise all topics again? Isn't that the basis of exam? To reinforce things that are being taught in school?

[pranav]

Hi Jedamum,


I think you got me wrong, My boys school has give a exam time table of English and Maths paper 1 & 2. But haven’t yet told me what topics under paper 1 and paper 2. We have been revising for past weeks for all the subjects.

Can you tell me what are the topics that will be covered under paper 1 and paper 2 for both these subjects like the below table.

Englis Paper 1- Listening ,Comprehension, etc.,
Englis Paper 2-Word Order,MCQ,Choose the correct answer, etc.,

Maths Paper 1-Ordinal numbers,Number bonds,Ones and tens,Number patterns,etc.,
Maths Paper2-\tWord problems,etc

This is what I wanna know, so that the day before the exam I can concentrate again on only the specific topics rather than to revise all once again.

I contacted the school to ask for the teachers to give the same, still no reply from them.

[caroline3sg]

pranav & yithz

For lower primary, they only have 1 paper per subject to sit. There isn’t any paper 1 (ie compo).

Oral (both Eng & Chinese) which comprises of:
* reading,
* picture discussion &
* discussion (ie question & answer of a general topic)
is outside of paper 1 & 2

For English, the standard ones would be:
* vocab (MCQ, may have pictures)
* grammar (MCQ)
* vocab cloze (with helping words)
* grammar cloze (with helping words)
* word order?? This I am not sure but I can find them in sch workbook.
* Compre MCQ
* Compre OE


For Chinese, mostly are:
* matching pictures with hanyupinyin
* circle the correct hanyupinyin in a sentence
* write corresponding character with given hanyupinyin, in a sentence.
* sentence making, with picture & chi yu (chinese character)
* can’t remember what else


For Maths, refer to 1A text & workbooks
Shapes definitely in the topic (ie what shape comes next?)
Maybe length as well

[jedamum]

pranav,

i didn't know that some schools doesn't give out format; i thought that was the norm since ours is really a neighbourhood neighbourhood school and the format given is clear enough (save that the chinese is in chinese words and that i am having a hard time deciphering its meaning :P)

For math, different schools covers different topics. you really have to check where the school have covered. the school probably have given mock test/exercises to the kids...check their files.

caroline3sg:

For lower primary, they only have 1 paper per subject to sit. There isn't any paper 1 (ie compo).

I think that depends on school too.
For my boy's school, Oral and Listening Compre is separate.
Paper 1 for English is Compo.
Paper 1 for Chinese is Selecting appropriate HYPY according to picture (something like that).

Paper 2 for English is usual Vocab, Grammer, Wordorder, Spelling, Compre
Paper 2 for Chinese...I think is choose HYPY, choose words, cloze with helping words, Compre MCQ. Not sure if have sentence construction a not.

[caroline3sg]

jedamum

oh yes, spelling is under listening. Listening also covers phonics - rhyme with (ie start or ending sound).

Format slight difference across schools. Topics should be same. But difficulty of questions definitely a great difference.

[jedamum]

caroline3sg:

But difficulty of questions definitely a great difference.

Agree.
We can only prepare so much. At P1, marks are usually lost due to carelessness.

[pranav]

Hi Jedamum and caroline3sg,


Thank you so much for your help.

Pranav