Tag Archives: PSLE

PSLE-Problem Sums that most P6 pupils stumble over – Part 2

8 Jun

Here are various 2010 Math Prelim questions.

Do try them before checking on the worked solutions.

We will go through more of them in class.

Persis

Question 1

Water from 3 taps was used to fill an empty tank. Tap A, B and C could fill the tank completely in 3 hours, 4 hours and 5 hours respectively.

(a) What fraction of the tank was filled with water after half an hour when all taps were turned on at the same time?

Now only Tap A and B were both turned on to fill another empty tank. After 20 minutes, Tap C was also turned on. Both Tap A and B were turned off at the same time after turning on for an hour and only Tap C was left to fill the tank completely.

(b) How much longer would Tap C take to fill the tank completely with water after Tap A and B were turned off?

 

Question 2

Rainy and Minnie had 1260 beads altogether. Rainy gave 2/3 of her beads to Minnie. Minnie then gave 3/8 of her beads to Rainy. Finally, they had the same number of beads. How many more beads had Rainy than Minnie?

 

Question 3

Kaylene was asked to number the pages of a book. When she had numbered the last page, she had counted a total of 822 digits.

(a) How many 3-digit numbered pages were there?

(b) What is the last page of the book?

 

Question 4

Mei and Jane bought a camera and a watch each. Mei spent ½ of her money on the camera and ¼ of the remaining money on a watch.

(a) What fraction of her money did Mei spend?

Jane spent 3/5 of her money on a camera. Her camera cost $280 more than Mei’s camera. They paid the same amount for their watch and had the same amount of money left.

(b) How much money had they altogether at first?

 

 

Question 5

Mom bought some muffins and tarts in the ratio 4:5. Each muffin cost $2.80. Each tart was $1.90. After giving away 5/8 of the muffins and 144 tarts, the ratio of the remaining items was 3:2.

(a) Find the total muffins and tarts left.

(b) How much more did the muffins cost than tarts?

 

Question 6

Jay and Wei bought the same type of notebooks. Jay bought a few for $80. Wei enjoyed a discount of 20% and bought 4 more notebooks than Jay with the same amount of money. Find the usual price of one notebook.


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Primary 5 — Important Preparation Year for PSLE

17 May

Primary 5 is a crucial year for PSLE preparation.

(Though we did receive pupils coming in P6 which was especially memorable as those students joined us when we started at Bedok; I really enjoyed teaching them  and was relieved and happy that they did very well.)

As much as possible, we would also teach pupils all the key concepts that is essential for Primary6.

By this time, the students would be taught more advanced methods and not rely only on bar models and guess and check method, which may not be efficient for solving complex PSLE problems.

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Thank you for your encouragement

30 Apr

Over the years, I have parents calling us with nice words of appreciation.

Such words, make teaching a joy. Their  encouragement tells us that we are doing the right thing — doing this work.

Some have emailed me, but this is the first time I have a parent penned her thoughts in such detail. Thank You.

Although it smacks of self promotion, i hope the parent doesn’t mind and readers would find it alright. I have removed all names.

Here is the letter:

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We value a happy & inspiring environment

13 Apr

If you have read a number of our blog entries, you will know that we care about creating a happy and inspiring environment for children to learn in.

Children already spend long hours in school and most of them have many other activities. So when they make the effort to come to our classes, we must put more thoughts into how we can conduct lessons in a way that is effective, motivating and an overall good learning experience for them.

I write this to remind our instructors that I value this dearly. As I openly state this, we have to live up to it.

I appreciate feedback from parents on how our lessons are conducted. I will work with our instructors to make improvements and corrections whenever necessary. Do give me a call if you need to talk to me.

Persis

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PSLE Math – Problem sums that most P6 pupils stumble over

21 Aug

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New for 2018. Notable questions have been added. This portal is more responsive and friendly to mobile devices. Here is its FAQ. We continue to see fantastic results when parent student pair up to use the portal.

Here is a video showing how to use learnbrill on a mobile phone :

Using Learnbrill.com on a Mobile Phone

Check out the new portal and sign up for its free course.

***A Secondary Math IP student from the very best school joined us, he said he learnt his math from http://www.learnbrill.com and scored his A Star. That is very encouraging to us.

New for 2016. In www.ilearnbywatching.com, we have compiled over 2000 video solutions and we are still adding. The response from students have been fantastic. The methods used are fast and efficient. Each video is usually about 3 minutes plus. As a subscriber, you get priority when you asked us questions. We still want to help our non subscriber readers, but please make the effort to send to us your solution and we can help you from there. Better still –>You can join us a free member and start learning. Just added 30 June 2016 P4 Heuristics in the free section so you can start learning the fundamentals. Compare your solutions with bar model methods. Enjoy.

We have been monitoring the logins of students using http://www.ilearnbywaching.com. This year we took notice of a Math Arena student logging in in the most. She was not the strongest and was behind her fellow classmate. We were amazed when we found out she scored full marks for 2016 SA1 and topped her school for math. Like Shruti (most frequent logins afor 2015), her improvement was tremendous.

I am a student from Math Arena and I feel the math arena is just the right place when you are unsure of a solution or when you do not how to answer a question. I especially like the new website that the tuition has created, learnbywatching.org. Previously I was using a website called,”learnology” which is a website which provided me useful solutions. However I felt that the explanations in learnbywatching.org (now www.ilearnbywatching.com)  were better. This is one of the reasons why matharena is my favorite tuition centre! I strongly encourage the use of this website as your A Star will come flying.

Shruti

P6 Confidence 2015

Chongzheng Pri School

Inside the portal, we have P5 and P6 ebooks with hundreds of questions. Here is the content of the P6 ebooks (they are separated inside the portal for easy download). P6-learnbywatchingbook

New! Updated for 2015. Below are our free pdfs and videos to help you …

Hi Abi, Nat, and everyone else

(We first called out to Abi and Nat on 21 August 2010, and posted the solutions for them. This has since grown to help our readers with many parts now given in reverse order.)

Here are the questions and solutions. Please go through them. Click Here –>P6Coaching-Abi&Nat.pdf (Part 1)

Also check out in reverse order!

https://matharena.wordpress.com/2017/04/19/common-problems-for-psle-math-students/

If you are not a Math Arena student, sign up with http://www.ilearnbywatching.com, you get priority from us helping you in your questions.

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PSLE — The Last Stretch

1 Aug

Last year, we started Math Arena in the middle of the year.  A few anxious parents brought their children to Math Arena, that is a bit of leap of faith … with us being so new and PSLE is the BIG exam. The parents were anxious because the children used to score well previously but suddenly there was a steep drop in scores as they moved up to P5 & 6 –not uncommon to hear that. This is worrying because the children  did well before.

Though we had only a short time to work together, the children did very well in their preliminary tests, our expectation became high and so did our anxiety. In the end we were happy and had a party.

This year we have students who started with us earlier, but we all need to keep focus — students, parents and us teachers to get the desired results.

Last Stretch Guys and Girls ….!

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PSLE — Syllabus Math will count most

12 May

The whole 6 years of primary school life culminate with the Primary School Leaving Exam. For those who use Math to gain direct admission to Hwa Chong Institution or any others, competition math is certainly important. But for almost all, PSLE is the key concern.

Syllabus Math is the core mathematics to master for PSLE. At Math Arena, equal emphasis is placed on teaching Syllabus Math and our success will be in no small part, having our students do well in their school exams and ultimately in PSLE.

What’s the recipe for a conducive class for students to learn in? The crucial ingredient is the teacher. The sauce is the rapport — a 2 way street of interaction between the teacher and the students and it starts with the teacher. It is important for a child not to go to another place where he is being pressured to be a good student. That could happen in school or even in the home.

It is a given that our math teachers must possess superior knowledge with a toolbox of mathematical methods to impart to the class. Our up to date content is built up by a team of math teachers. The crucial component is to get the class motivated to learn and absorb.

Ultimately let’s get our children to enjoy the journey to learn math and acquire its knowledge. The good results come naturally after that. In the end, we should not be overly paranoid…. life is more than a single test or exam.

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