A Systematic Approach To Answer Science Open-Ended Questions: The KITKAT Method

If your child remembers a lot of Science facts and yet cannot score for his/her Science paper, this blog post is for you.

Good tutors are hard to find. Good Science tutors are even harder to find.

Science is an easy topic to read up and gain knowledge but it is an extremely difficult subject to teach. Teaching Science is slowly becoming a lost art.

Knowledge is easy to 'upload' into the students. Some examples include:

"All living things need air, food and water."
"Like poles repel."
"Light travels in straight lines."

Skills are harder to teach and it appears in Booklet B of the Science Paper. Many teachers do not have a method in helping the children understand and answer the questions. Some examples are:

- Which basin has more heat in the water. Explain your answer.
- Explain how the method described above works.
- Based on the table given, predict the length of shadow at Position 'A'.

There is a need to teach your child the answering techniques in tackling the Science questions in PSLE. 

There is a need for a systematic approach in teaching how to answer Science open-ended questions. Today I am going to share with you how I teach my students to tackle Science Open-Ended Questions: The KITKAT Method.


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K - Keywords in the question
I - Identify the skill/process involved
T - Topic tested for the question
K - Keywords in the answer
A - Answer the question according to the marks allocated
T - Test out the answer
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Let's take a look at the following example:

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K - Keywords in the question are heat, applied, observed, dropped a little, slowly rose.

I - Skills tested is 'Explain why'.

T - Topic tested is Heat. Subtopic is Expansion and Contraction.

K - Keywords to use in the answer are gains heat, conical flask expands, air expands, dropped a little, rose slowly. 

A - 2 marks are allocated and most probably need 2 causes and effects to answer the question

T - Read the answer back to yourself to see if it is complete.

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After working through the KITKAT, the answer to the question can be formulated as:

The conical flask gains heat first, causing the flask to expand. The expanded flask has more space for the air and hence the ink dropped a little first. Then, the air in the conical flask gains heat, causing the air to expand. The expanded air needs more space and hence pushes the ink up.

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From this question, you will know that it is not so easy to answer a Science open-ended question. If your child is weak in Booklet B, your child needs to learn how to answer the question, not what knowledge to read up. Reading the textbook or revision guide will not help your child much.

The KITKAT method is a structure to help the child organise the information needed to answer the question. It is not random and is more systematic in answering the open-ended questions.

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