::Reason why your P5 child is struggling in Maths:: From my experience preparing pupils for PSLE Maths, I have noticed a distinct pattern year after year - there is a general plunge in pupils Maths results in P5 compared to P1-P4. Parents and students who realised the challenges at P5 recover quickly and catch up but many do not and the problem exacerbate until PSLE. This may explain the reason why only 60% of Malay students pass Maths at PSLE. The following reasons could explain the reason why many P5 pupils are struggling in Maths: Reason #1 Introduction of many new topics at P5 (esp. 2nd semester) such as Decimals, Percentage, Area of Triangle, Average, Measurement, 4-sided figure and Volume. As decimals and percentage are very closely related to ratio and fractions, students who are still weak in fractions would have great difficulty understanding Percentage concepts. Area of Triangle is also challenging for many students if their spatial skills are still not well developed. As for measurement and volume, many students are still confused about conversion to different units. Reason #2 Introduction of challenging non-routine higher order questions in Paper 2 (60%) in preparation for P6 and the PSLE. Not only students have to learn the new concepts quickly, the questions also gets more challenging requiring students to apply different problem-solving strategies such as branching, advance model drawing, unitary method, simultaneous, units and parts etc. Reason #3 Over-testing by schools. In preparation for P6 and the PSLE, many schools tend to over-test their students by setting very difficult Maths paper at SA2 hoping to "wake up" the students. While this strategy taken by the schools might work for high and mid-ability students who have not put in optimal effort, the lower-ability students may get demoralised when they fail badly in the Maths exams and never recover. In my next posting, I would offer some suggestions on how to overcome these challenges. Regards, Principal Tutor Edufront Maths Science English Malay Primary PSLE Tuition and Enrichment |Like|Share|Tag|
Posted on: Wed, 09 Oct 2013 02:48:43 +0000
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