How To Score An Additional 10 Marks In Exams

Many parents shared with me that their children are smart, but very careless in exams. I could not agree more.

This is one of the first things I tackle in my students. Believe it or not, eliminating careless mistakes can bag you at least another 10 marks in examinations.

That means, if your child is getting 80/100, eliminating careless mistakes will help your child score 90/100.

So, how can we do it?

First, we need to dig deep into the child's mindset. There are four main patterns.

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1. Complacency - "I know my work. There is no need to check."

2. Avoid area of weakness - "I forgot to check Qs 18 (because it was too hard for me)."

3. Anxiety - "Oh no, Tom already finished. I must hurry."

4. Competition - "I am faster than John. Hence, I am smarter than him."

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Then, we need to come up with a system.


Step 1: Neat handwriting and clear working

This is the most important step. If the child has poor handwriting, he would have problems reviewing the working. This will discourage the child from checking. To counter this, train your child to write neatly first.


Step 2: Systematic checking
To check MCQ, show your child how to plug in all the options in the question to check the answer.

To check Math word problems, check that there are no mistakes in the working. Check that the models and steps are correct.

To check open-ended Science questions, check that the keywords are there.

To check the English paper, read and re-read and re-read and re-read. If it sounds strange, it means something is wrong. Check for full-stops too. 


Step 3: Manage the given time

Teach your child not to rush and not to dwell. If the question is too difficult, just move on to the next question first. Come back to the difficult question later.

By right, the time given in any exam paper is sufficient as long as the student does not dwell on certain questions.


Step 4: Show the impact of checking

This is the part where you sit down with your child and go through his past papers and ask him to check. Show him that if he checked, he would have scored more marks.


Lastly, we need to drill this into the child and make it into a habit. For me, I took the longer route. I will do the checking with the child for the first 5 papers. Then, he will show me how he does the checking for the next 5 papers. Monitor the child for a few sessions to see if he does his checking. If the habit did not stick, I will do the checking with him again. It is important that we do the checking with him and not for him.

The actual process is very long. Some students get it within 3 months. Some get it within 6 months. Some still do not get it after one year.

Unlearning a bad habit and starting a new habit is much more difficult than learning a right habit in the beginning.



I hope this little system will help your child bag another 10 marks in the upcoming exams.

Have fun and please share my post!

Stay tuned!

4 Core Skills Of A Good Parent Tutor

Mrs Tan (not her real name) is a stay-at-home mum. She does household chores and fetches her two kids from school everyday. Her older child is in P4 and her younger child is in P1 this year.

I met her at the playground and we started to talk about how difficult it is now to meet good private tutors. She already changed three tutors and she was thinking of teaching her children herself.

However, her children would not listen to her. They have difficulty focusing on their work.

She asked me if my children were like that.

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Now, I post the question to you, "Are your children like that?"

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I strongly believe that parents are the best teachers, provided that they know what they are doing. They need to upgrade their teaching skills accordingly.

When I first started teaching as a teacher, I observed countless lessons. I wanted to see what makes an excellent lesson. I wanted to learn the secrets of this trade.

My conclusion:

An excellent teacher delivers excellent lessons.

It may sound absurd but it is true. Normal people just could not deliver excellent lessons. A normal carpenter cannot produce exquisite furniture.

I have seen very good lesson plans carried out by normal teachers. The effect was not even 10% of the original lesson. The person doing the lesson is very important. So much so that the person is even more important than the lesson itself.

Hence, it is not a formula. You cannot walk into a bookstore, buy an assessment book, follow its steps and hope your child enjoy the lesson.

It is simply not so easy.

So now, the golden question:

What makes an excellent teacher?

Those who know me personally would know that I was in the sales line before. I was a good salesman. I discovered that my selling skills was directly linked to my teaching skills.


An excellent teacher possesses the following:

1. Deep content knowledge (Product Knowledge)
2. Good rapport building skills (Rapport)
3. Delivery skills (Presentation Skills)
4. Situational sensitivity (Situational Awareness)



Deep Content Knowledge

This is the first thing the child looks at when you start to teach him. If by standards, you are lower level than the child, the child will despise you. Without respect, it is impossible to deliver any lessons.

Let me give you an example.

Can you list the six characteristics of living things? 

If you can't, how are you going to convince your child to learn it from you (when you don't possess the knowledge in the first place?)

This is the first area you should master if you are serious in helping your child. Do his assessment books before you assign the work to him.


Good Rapport Skills

This is not the same as 'making your child like you'. Many parents establish the fact that if you are a friend to your child, it is more probable that he learns from you.

I beg to differ.

The position you should have is an expert co-learner. You are expert, but you are also learning with him.

To establish rapport, you have to empathise with your child. Let him share his feelings of fear of failure with you. Let him share his feelings of success with you. Let him share his struggles with you.

What you want is not to remove the obstacles, but to provide a real life example on how you have conquered your own obstacles in the past.

Share your past learning experiences in school with him. Share how you struggled with your studies. Share how you planned your revision.


Delivery Skills

This is the part where you make the lesson fun.

Convert the boring lesson into an activity. Look up the Internet for resources and ideas.

In short, change the pen and paper lesson into something more interesting.

However, not all lessons can be converted into activities. For some lessons, an introductory video should be sufficient to kickstart the work.

For this section, the Internet is your friend.


Situational Sensitivity

This is the part where effortless teaching occurs.

Your child looked at a plant dying. Seize the situation to teach 'All living things grow old and die."

He looked at a word 'cries'. Seize the situation to teach 'Verbs and Simple Present Tense."

He noticed that his mana decreased by 14 points when he cast a spell in a game. Seize the situation to teach 'Subtraction'.

This is intricately linked to Content Knowledge. Only when you have a very good grasp on the content, then you can seize the teachable moment.

All the small teachable moments add up to a big boost to your child's understanding. And more importantly, this is the missing link. 

It links what your child is learning to the world around him.

These are the four core skills you should have if you are teaching your own children.

We can only help our children excel when we achieve excellence first.

I hope you benefited from this blog post. Please SHARE!

HOW I OVERCAME FAILURE IN MATH WORD PROBLEMS (Guest post by a teacher)

Today, we have a very special guest. Shaoyang was one of the teachers I met during my contract teaching. He was motivating and was one of first teachers I learned from. He believes in doing what is right rather than what is popular.

I was pleasantly surprised when he asked me if he could post on my blog. Teachers reading and affirming my methods are always a source of motivation for me.

Today, he shares about his journey when he was younger.

Here it goes!

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Hi everyone!

My name is Shaoyang and I have been following Danny’s posts for a while. Some of his posts are on skills in solving word problems and I want to share my experience with you all on this aspect while I was a student.

By the way, I would like to thank Danny for letting me post on his blog. 

Problem

Does your child (and sometimes you yourself) GIVE UP EASILY in solving word problems? Do the both of you feel DISCOURAGED upon seeing SENTENCE AFTER SENTENCE in a word problem? If you answered ‘yes’, read on. If not…you still can read on.

When I was a Primary 4 student, I understood word problems like playing ‘tikam’: literally GUESSING the solutions to the word problems. Somehow, in the first 3 years of school, I survived through guessing. You (or your child) might also have this experience before and you can be sure it IS NOT A NICE FEELING.

More problems

Now, you would think that I could get through Primary 4 by guessing. Instead, I failed my Math exams in mid-year.

I WAS SHOCKED! It never occurred to me that I would fail Math.

THE BEST PART WAS MY UNDERSTANDING OF ‘SUBTRACTION’ IS AS FOLLOWS:

4 – 1 = 1, 2 OR 3.

That was how BAD my math was. I had to take action to pass my exams at the end of the year. 

A plan is hatched

NO MORE FOOLING AROUND. I decided to seek help from my parents and teachers in Math. They told me an important element to solving math word problems:

UNDERSTANDING

With guidance, I slowed down my reading of solving word problems to look out for information that will help me UNDERSTAND the word problems and solve them. As time went by, I gained more confidence in solving word problems when I saw that my most of my solutions were correct and more importantly, based on understanding, not guesswork.

THE GRAND FINISH

Then, came the turning point in the year end exams. 92 out of 100!

The JOY was beyond description! I had moved from failure to 92, double of what I have been doing! This was a tremendous milestone!

My point?

Solving Math word problems is still as difficult as ever. With resilience, guidance from mentors and understanding, you can turn them into opportunities of learning by deepening your understanding of Math concepts. Today, because of that breakthrough, I treat every Math problem as a challenge to strengthen my understanding of Math concepts! J

IF I CAN SOLVE WORD PROBLEMS, YOUR CHILD CAN TOO!

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I hope you benefit from this post. Please share with your friends if you find it useful.

Together, we can make a difference in educating our next generation.

Stay tuned!