3 Strategies On How To Prepare for Exams - Part 1

Good classwork does not equate to good exam grades. Many parents will share this agony of the mystery of a child doing well for his classwork but doing average for his exams.

The answer to this mystery is proper exam preparation. Exam preparation is a very important skill for every student in today's world.

In this blog post, I am going to share 3 strategies that I teach in my tuition class in helping my students ace for their exams.



1. Keeping up is 100 times easier than catching up

This is logical, isn't it? If there are 100 things to revise for the exam, revising 5 things a day is much easier than revising 100 things a day. I am totally against cramming for exams.

I use mainly the spiral approach to revise for exams. For example:

Day 1: 
(New) Living things need air, food and water to survive.

Day 2: 
(Revisit) Living things need air, food and water to survive.
(New) Living things grow and die.

Day 3: 
(Revisit) Living things need air, food and water to survive.
(Revisit) Living things grow and die.
(New) Living things respond to changes around them.

Do you get the idea? At the end of the revision, the child would have a solid idea on the topic of living things because the child would have revisited some topics many times.

The broad strategy is as above. For my tuition class, I use the modified version (for maximum effectiveness) where the first few topics are the weakest topics for the student. In this way, the weakness would be strengthened many times by the end of the revision.

By spacing out the revision, the child will also be less likely to have panic attacks when the exam dates draw near. The child's confidence is built gradually and it is unlikely that the child discover major gaps in their learning near the exam dates.


2. Failing to plan is planning to fail

We must teach our children to plan. I emphasise this quite often in my lessons.

- When are you going to do this piece of homework?
- How will you remind yourself to do this work?
- How would you know if you have completed this work?

We are living in the generation where parents take ownership of the child's learning more than the child. The child must have the ownership of his own learning.

To teach the child to revise for the exam, get these missing pieces of information from THE CHILD, (not from the teacher).

- the topics for examination
- the dates for the examination
- the marks allocated for the papers

The school will usually give the child all these information on a piece of circular. Get the child to read the circular and filter out the information. Get the child to mark on his own calendar the dates for the examination.

(For younger children, the parent might need to teach the child how to read the circular the first time.)

I have seen cases where the parent feeds the child all the important dates and information. There was once I ask a child what his paper was the next day, he told me to ask his mother. I was totally shocked.

Every child needs to learn to be responsible for his own learning.



3. Goals and visual feedback

After getting the marks from the circular. Get the child to do goal-setting with you.

- What is the total marks for this exam?
- What is the mark he aiming for?
- How is the child going to achieve the goal?

The goal setting sheet should be simple and easy to read.

After setting the goal, this is the best time to get the child to commit to learning and revising everyday.

- 10 minutes a day?
- 20 minutes a day?
- Topics to revise?
- Number of worksheets to do?

The chart should look something like below and should be placed in a very noticeable place in the child's room.

The theory behind this visual goal setting is emphasising cognitive dissonance. If the child sets the goals himself, he will have to agree with himself and fulfil his goals. Seeing the chart everyday and not fulfilling it will create a 'disagreement' in himself and it will be very uncomfortable for him. He will either fulfil the commitment or remove the chart to make himself feel better.

By now, you would have realised that I am an avid fan of visual feedback. I feel that visual feedback is the best reminder to the student and it removes the need to nag.



There are many strategies to prepare for exams because every child is different. These three strategies are the most effective and the easiest to implement so far for me. I hope they will be useful to you too.

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How To Motivate Your Child When He/She Is Totally Not Motivated - Part 1

My children doing their work

Scenario: You have a kid. He plays the iPad and watches cartoons all day. When you ask him to do his homework, he gives you a disgusted look and procrastinates. Five minutes later, you ask him again and he procrastinates again. You nag and nag until he complies. He does his work quickly (with a lot of careless mistakes) and goes back to his iPad or cartoons.

Question: How motivated is this child?

Answer: This child is super motivated, not in doing the homework of course, but in playing iPad and watching the cartoons.

You have to understand that the child's actions were totally logical to him. His choices were made without restrictions or consequences. No matter what he chooses, life still gets on.

Imagine if you have a choice between work and play. No matter which choice you make, your salary will still be paid into your bank account. 

Very few normal people will choose work. 

I work, there will be money. I play, there will be money too. Why should I choose work?

These are the thought processes in your child's head when he chooses iPad and cartoons.

If your child is exactly what I have described above, you have a very serious problem at hand. The nearer your child is to PSLE, the more urgent the problem.

There are 3 steps that I implement in my tuition to break this mindset and motivate the child in the right things. It is a mixture of methods I learned from various books.

1. Vision Casting to give an overall goal
2. Small Steps to provide a pathway to the overall goal
3. Visual Feedback to provide a view on the current status


1. Vision Casting
The question to ask your child is "Why do you think you need to learn?"

You will be surprised that most of the kids will answer that it is because their parents asked them to. The child has no ownership to learning at all. They are just doing what they are being told to do.

This is the most crucial step and builds the driver for motivation. This is the 'why' in the things that the child does.

- Why did you choose to play iPad?

- Why did you choose to do the worksheets?

It is important to guide the child to give the right answer and not just provide model answer to him. (If not, he is still doing what you tell him to do.)

I use mainly the Socratic Method of asking questions at this point. (The 'why' in the 'why'.) Some questions include:

- Why is playing the iPad enjoyable?
- How is homework different from this enjoyment?
- Why is it that you don't enjoy doing homework?
- Is there a way to make homework enjoyable to you?
- How can we make this better for both of us?
- Why do you avoid hard work?
- Why do you think it is important to have hard work?
- Tell me a story about hard work.
- What will happen if we avoid hard work constantly?

The list goes on and it is really dependent on the child's answer to each question. It can take quite a long time to go through this. I have to emphasise that this is a very important step and it provides the very foundation of the motivation driver. Spend as much time as you need and it should be reinforced from time to time.


2. Very Small Steps

After vision casting, the child will not be magically transformed into a motivated learner. You will need to help the child in the transformation.

In my tuition class, it takes about 6 to 9 months before any results are seen. Some children take longer.

Fix a timing for work. Agree on the timing and get your child's commitment to put in maximum effort during that time slot.

For example, both of you agree that the timing is 7pm. Start in very small time slots. Say five minutes. Before starting, remind your child that he has promised to put in maximum effort during this five minutes.

Praise your child on his effort for focusing. Reflect it in the time chart.

After a week, increase to ten minutes and after a month, increase to twenty minutes. Soon you will have your child doing his work in thirty-minute slots.

But, you have to remember to start very very small. If your child is overwhelmed and give up at this point, all will be lost.



3. Make It Visual

This is very useful because it is a constant reminder that the child's decision has a direct impact on his future.

Set up a big time chart and paste it somewhere where the child will see everyday. It might look something like that:

Set it at 10-minute interval. Track his time spent on various activities for a week. Then, transfer this to a journal after each week. Entries might look something like:

----------------------------------------------------------------
18 to 24 August

Time spent on iPad = 7 hours
Time spent on learning = 1 hour
Time spent on playing toys = 5 hours
Time spent on cartoons = 7 hours
----------------------------------------------------------------

Match this to his exam results and illustrate to him that the amount of time put into his learning directly impacts his results. And his results impact his future.

(At around this point, I would usually spend some time telling stories on the effective use of time.)

Some of the parents might think that this is too much hard work. However, don't you think the effort is totally worth it when your child is motivated on the right stuff?



Some of my friends commented that I am very lucky that my kids are all very self-motivated and self-directed. I can only smile. Now now, what is the probability that ALL my kids are born self-motivated. Who are you kidding? This is not chance. It is all hard work.

It is so easy for children to get motivated in the wrong stuff (iPad/cartoons/games) these days and we really need to set their internal compass correct while we can. It is the least we can do as parents.



I hope this post has been helpful to you. Please click on SHARE on Facebook to share this post with your friends.

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Secret Arts: Resilience

A few weeks ago, I gave my students a cup of red beans each and asked them to count the beans. They had five minutes and they were all frantically trying to finish counting within the time constraint. (Yep, I do crazy stuff at my tuition class.)

During those five minutes, many characteristics could be observed about the students. One gave up after losing count. Another tried to estimate the number. The other one tried to write down the last count.


"One gave up after losing count."


After five minutes, no one finished counting. I asked the class what they learned from the activity. One said the red beans were too small to manage. One said it was too difficult. One said it was impossible.

Then, I asked them why they tried to count even though it was difficult. There was silence. Finally, one said he believed he could do it if more time is given.

I told them that this is resilience. It is the 'keep on trying' part of life. No matter how difficult the Math problems are, we need to keep trying. No matter how difficult the writing gets, we need to keep trying. If we tried and failed, we tried and we will try again. If we give up, we failed and you will not 'level up' as a student and that will be your maximum level.


"I told them that this is resilience."


This is what happens in my tuition. I believe in spending ten minutes per tuition lesson to work on the 'secret arts' and inculcate good values in my students. You might not believe it, but these are actually the lessons that clocked the most mileage for my students. The lessons improved the child's character and made it a lot easier for knowledge acquisition in days to come.


"You might not believe it, but these are actually the lessons that clocked the most mileage for my students."


Now, the key question: How do you do this at home with your own child?

Resilience is actually two parts: self-awareness and self-management.


Model resilience to the child

Modelling is the most effective way. You can talk and talk, but a child looks at your action more than listen to your talk.

To model resilience to your child, you must seek to improve on the situation. It is better to be 'solution-seeking' than 'blame-seeking'.

"Why did you spill the water all over the floor?"

"Why did you forget your water bottle again?"

Notice the answers to these questions are not helpful at all. The child might be careless or daydreaming and the answers will not develop the child at all. Instead you might want to ask:

"How should we clean up this mess?"

"How can we prevent losing the water bottle again?"

Now, the child will be less defensive and you can get the problem sorted out. By doing this, your child will learn how to move forward in a problem and not just push the blame away.

Help your child to be aware of the problem and to be aware that solutions are needed.


Allow some mistakes

I have a student who loves to ask me if he is right in the middle of his work. His favourite questions are "Am I using the right method?" or "Am I getting the right answer for this step?"

It is very tempting to tell the child that he/she is calculating wrongly in the middle of the problem and it is very easy for us to tell him/her the correct answer. It is very easy to tell the child that his method is wrong and point him to the right direction.

I have often seen teachers/parents using this method because it is the easiest and the fastest way.

However, easy comes at a price. This way, the child learns nothing. The child only know you will come to his/her rescue when he is making a mistake.


"Easy comes at a price."


Let the child make the mistake. Then ask him about his thinking process. Discover where the child went wrong and guide him to question his own answer.

It is hard, but I guarantee you that your child learns the most this way.


Encourage your child to try

My wife does this the most to all my three sons. Her favourite phrase is "Try, you can do it. You must try."

Sometimes, the child lacks the belief that he can do it. He needs someone to remind him on his ability to solve the problem. He needs someone to remind him to believe in himself.



Building resilience is one of the top priorities in raising my children. It is one of the key factors for success in life, not only in PSLE. 

In addition, this art of resilience is slowly becoming a 'lost art'. Many children are not taught on this skill explicitly.

I hope you had benefitted from this blog post. Please share with your friends by clicking on the 'SHARE' button on Facebook.

Have fun and stay tuned!

(Sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/WDj6j for monthly tips on how to motivate your child to study. A free ebook on writing is included in the newsletter.)