Followers


Tuesday, May 22, 2012

My son's exam - my stress or his stress?!

Finally my son's exams are over. Phew! It does sound like I'm having exam too, isn't it? Anyways, those 3-4 weeks of review were quite tiring. In fact, it was definitely harder on my son, Ryan who had to go thru 2 to 3 rounds of tuition plus school everyday. In fact, he was asking for the tuition teacher to come in the morning session before he went to school and right after school. After that, it was followed by my session with him. You see, the tuition teacher and I split work. She took up all subjects in Chinese and I took English and Bahasa Malaysia. I focused quite a bit on BM - going very slow, word by word making sure he understood each word. I wasn't expecting him to remember all but at least 80%... that's quite demanding too, I guess. Towards the last week and exam week, I did a lot of practice with him using KSSR workbooks and UPSR workbooks. I thought like what I used to do in SPM, practice makes perfect and hopefully, the teachers would use some of those questions from the published workbooks. I know that in my days, my teachers used to copy questions from different workbooks to make up an exam paper.

A word of warning though. Don't rely on workbooks that mention on covers that they are on KSSR syllabus. Some publishers just used KBSR books and put a cover saying that they are KSSR books. The syllabuses between KSSR and KBSR are very different. You know what I did? I used my iPhone and snapped my son's text book's content page and then, went to the bookstore and check the workbooks book by book before I bought them. 

So, what I did was, after reviewing a few topics on text books, I gave him practice the same topics on a few workbooks. I aim for repetitive learning. Within reach was a dictionary which I train my son to use. So, it was a very slow and painful progress. When exam came, I found that Ryan had quite some confidence. I'm very happy. I'm not expecting 100% but an above average grade will do so that at least some subjects will help to pull up his overall grading. 

On the last day of his exam, I rewarded Ryan with 2 sets of encyclopedia which he loves. This time, I bought him encyclopedia in Malay language. I found it by chance in Sogo. I'll take some pictures and show you next time. Too comfortable now in bed, blogging. 

Actually, I was pretty much in dilemma just before his exam. I knew I pushed him very hard and he has been a good boy trying to please me by studying hard even though he was very tired. I felt very heartsick to push my 7+ year old like that but I asked myself if I had a choice. Two days before exam started, Ryan said to me just before bedtime that he was very worried. Worried what if he couldn't do well in his exam. Worried what if he didn't know how to do. I told him to try his best and try not to make careless mistakes. He told me that he wanted to be a good boy and he wanted to do well. My sister in law also just told me that Ryan told her that he was stressed a few days back. I felt really bad. Have I pushed him too hard? I told him that he has improved a lot already. Even if his results are not as good, he has already improved. He can always try to do better in the next exam. My husband told me to relax a bit. On the extreme, we don't want him to get depress like those children we hear in the news who went into extreme actions like committing suicide. That got me real worried. Straight away, I sms-ed the tuition teacher telling her not to push too hard. I relaxed a bit on my coaching method as well. And I prepared a reward on the last day of exam to boost up his spirit. Actually, it wasn't so bad. He was pretty confident with BM and English. So, let's see... the results.

I don't know I was lucky or not that I don't need to coach Raymund and Rachel. At last minute, about a 2-3 weeks back, there was a notice that MOE abolished exams for preschoolers. I'm not very sure I'm that happy about that. I feel that these children will get quite a shock when they move to primary school. My son Ryan has gone thru both environments - kindy with exam and without exam. I feel that kindy with exam is preparing preschoolers better for primary school. They will have enough shock going to a new school .. much bigger.. stricter ...and definitely, with teachers with less personal touch and care.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I totally Agree with you. In general when our children have an Exam it looks we have an exam too with them. Generally parents are too involved in children exam so they feel like this. This shown how parents are cautions about their children studies and exam. mark louis

Related Posts Widget for Blogs by LinkWithin
 
ss_blog_claim=688caa9e4ba46a9ff6aa8fb4f3f96dbe ss_blog_claim=688caa9e4ba46a9ff6aa8fb4f3f96dbe