PSLE English Guide For Parents

2012-07-13T02:16:00.005-07:00

My forum post for your enjoyment:
Hi parents, here's the post for today:

Yesterday, the parent of my p5 english student told me about how her son does not like to do assessment books and practice papers on his own and about how difficult and emotionally taxing it has become to get him to sit down and do any work other than homework.

This got me thinking about how learning language can be made fun for kids. So I started up a blog where I will be posting the activities I talk about below. psleengilsh.blogspot.com

TODAY's Tip

Vocabulary that is commonly tested in school papers can be done as crossword puzzles. You can use crossword puzzle making software freely available online or you can use the ones I post on the blog psleengilsh.blogspot.com

In the course that I teach, I aim to increase the vocabulary of students by teaching them to use the vocabulary I teach when speaking. This is a simple and effective way to get kids to learn vocabulary fast. For example, vocabulary taught in a lesson will be revisited in the next lesson as part of a presentation, wheel of fortune games, drama re-enactment or creative writing exercise. I also give students crossword puzzles to take home and try with words taught in class before.

Educational psychologists have proven that language is best learnt through use and enjoyable activities. In order to ensure that at the end of the day, we are always working towards doing better in exams, I use the latest and most common vocabulary words tested in PSLE.

For crossword puzzles of past year vocabulary (2005-2009), visit my site. To ensure that your child's vocabulary improves and fast, sign up for my course! pm me, post here or email me at missraja86@ovi.com

Cheers
Miss Raja
psleengilsh.blogspot.com

2012-07-13T02:16:00.003-07:00

My forum post for your enjoyment:

Hi parents,

Here is the post for today.

TODAY's tip

Improve your child's grammar by teaching them the correct grammar rules. Compositions are marked based on impression. There are four types of students with respect to grammar:
1) Students who use varied grammar and sentence structure and thus impress the marker.
2) Students who use simple grammar and sentence structure and thus just meet the requirements.
3) Students who use simple grammar and sentence structure but make grammar mistakes and thus are one the borderline for language marks.
4) Students who make so many grammar mistakes that the story cannot be understood.

The good news is even if the student falls in the last section, they can be taught the rules and sentence structures to use in their paper 1 and so improvement can be made.

The course I have developed does diagnosis (testing to see what rules the child makes mistakes in) and then gives each student the grammar and language help he/she needs. Also, I teach students several 'impressive' higher level sentence structures to help them impress their markers in exams.

Just like yesterday, you can pm with queries or post here.

Hoping the post is helpful,
Miss Raja

2012-07-13T02:16:00.001-07:00

My forum post for your enjoyment:

Hi parents,
Over the years, there are some techniques i have devised as a tutor that can help to boost your child's english marks. I have collated these and turned them into a Creative Writing course and a Paper 2 Course and thought I should share some tips with parents so that they can understand my teaching style a bit more.

TODAY's Tip:

Instead of spending hours upon hours reading books (although this habit should be cultivated from a young age), your child can learn how to describe common scenes creatively and then adapt them to suit the story.

What do you mean ?

For example, a scene of waking up late can be used to start almost any story. Or the description of a person looking shocked can be used in any situation where a surprising or shocking event happens.

So where can you get such 'model starts'?

Of course you can find many assessment books on this. However, you don't want to use the same words as all the other students who use the same books.

My course helps ensure your child has his/her own unique set of scenes/ words/ phrases to stand out from the crowd.

If you like what you see here, you can pm me and I will give you more details about the course.

Also parents, please post excerpts of your child's work here and I will give feedback as to where problems are and how you can rectify them.

Cheers
Miss Raja

2012-07-13T01:44:00.001-07:00

Today, I was marking the essay of a student who has a talent for writing. She loves to watch discovery channel and is very into science. This got me thinking. Students tend not to not enjoy learning anymore. I notice over the years of my teaching that students who enjoy learning are those who tend to do better for exams.

This re-iterates my teaching aim: make lessons and learning fun. Hopefully this blog is a good source for parents to engage their kids in learning. Of course, we need to always link the activities to the curriculum taught in school.

So here is a challenge for your kids:

Here is a P5/P6 composition topic for which your kids can write a composition:

You have noticed that a friend of yours is cheating during an examination. You approach him or her after the examination to enquire why he or she was doing this. Write an essay of 250-300 words based on the topic above.

You may include the points below in your essay.

• How did you notice that your friend was cheating?
• How did you approach him/her?
• What was his/her response?
• What did you after that?

The essay that gets the highest marks will get a free Smiggles stationary voucher for $25.

I am opening this to my current students as well, they will get a separate prize.

You can post the essays as replies to this post.

Cheers
Miss Raja

2012-07-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

Activity 1:

Hi Parents, feel free to print the following crossword puzzle, share it with friends and their kids. This one is based on vocabulary words from the year 2006.

Answers for above.