The effective way to ace any exam is to prepare for it as much as possible. This means studying the syllabus, revising popular topics, and practising writing answers as often as possible.
There’s nothing that beats preparations. But what if we told you, your child’s exam preparation can be done in a smarter way. The idea is to maximise productivity and this method is particularly useful for children who practice using past-year question papers.
Now, using these past PSLE papers is a great idea but not the most effective when done without a plan.
Instead, PSLE papers from previous years will give you perceivable gains when there is a plan involved on how to maximise their and your child’s potential. Want to know more about this? Read on to find out.
What Are Past PSLE Papers?
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PSLE practice papers are question papers from the previous years available for children of Primary 6. You can purchase them at the school itself, possibly at a discounted price.
Another option is to get these papers at your nearest bookstore or from an online assessment bookseller. The PSLE exam practice books normally contain three years of papers, which will be presented in the full-paper form. They can also be available as a series of questions segregated under different topics.
Parents can also download past PSLE papers from different sources on the Internet for their children. In this case, make sure to select only the papers from recent years that are relevant to the current syllabus that is taught in school.
4 Study Hacks To Maximise Potential With Past PSLE Papers
Now that you’ve got your hands on the PSLE question papers, here are four hacks you can try at home to strategise your child’s time and effort better by concentrating on the important things.
1. Colour Code Each Question
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PSLE papers come with hundreds of questions across multiple subjects. It can be hard to keep track of what’s solved and what needs more attention. Here’s when colour coding takes precedence and will help your child organise his/her efforts better.
Some parents suggest highlighting questions based on the difficulty level that each of them has to offer. For instance,
- Red: Questions coloured in red can be the ones that your child finds hard to memorise or solve
- Orange: For questions that are fairly easy but need attention from time to time, children can mark them as orange.
- Green: For questions that your child knows the answers to, the green marker will do the job.
When revising, the red, orange and green colour codes will make things easier for your child to keep track of. So, they are less likely to waste time on revising the green questions, as opposed to the orange and red ones that will need more attention.
The more questions turn green, the more confident your kids will be about acing their exams.
2. Track Past Mistakes
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It’s obvious that your child won’t get all answers right in one go. That’s why it’s a good habit to keep track of all mistakes made while solving practice PSLE papers. Kids should keep a log of what mistakes they’ve made and even categorise the same according to the topic.
Understand the root cause of the mistake like misreading the question, misinterpreting instructions, or not understanding the concept. Also, note down petty mistakes like spelling errors and avoiding direct answers.
If your child is a fan of organising or statistics, it will be a good way to practice by keeping a tab of all the mistakes made either in a notebook or an excel sheet.
At the end of the day, the idea is to work on these mistakes and reduce them from your ledger. If kids particularly find something unsolvable, the detailed list will be helpful when reaching out to a teacher or a tutor.
3. Make A List Of Common Questions
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Apart from parents hunting down PSLE papers, schools assign practice papers as well to kids. Once you compile all of these, they will throw a few similarities.
There will be questions common to multiple papers that will be easy to solve and are likely to feature in future papers. Some questions will pose a challenge for your child. In this case, ask your little one to keep a list of the common questions that they find problems with.
Complicated questions that ask children to “explain or compare” may be difficult for your kid. That’s why they need extra help with the answers. Having a list makes it easier to come back to these questions when you want to concentrate on difficult things and seek help.
4. Redo Tricky Questions
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With past PSLE papers, the biggest hack isn’t doing a large number of papers, but doing enough to identify the potential important questions. Your child’s school also has them solve past papers, so making your house a dumping ground of question papers isn’t a solution.
Once you’ve solved a handful of papers, help your child concentrate on those questions that they find most difficult. You can create your own paper with only those questions and print them for your child’s practice sessions.
The idea is to get your child ready for exams in a way where they are confident of understanding the concept as much as mugging the answers.
Exams can be a stressful time for kids, so be their support system during this process. You do not want your child to take unnecessary pressure. Instead, hacks like these will help your kids prepare better for their exams and will have you to thank.
Source: Testpapersfree.com
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