Primary school is a time to have fun playing games, make some friends but students must still spend a bit of their time studying. They would have to write examinations every semester. It is important to study for them as they are preparing the students for their final hurdle, the Primary School Leaving Examination PSLE tuition. Most of their primary school education is to help them prepare to overcome this final hurdle.
However, some students may think that this preparation may not be enough and may want to be more prepared to ensure they have a good education ahead. This extra preparation can be in the form of tuition or extra consultations but one method that helps a lot is extra practice.
So how can doing past year papers help in this preparation?
Firstly,
Past year primary exam papers provide good practice for students. Most of the time, the amount of practice given during schoolwork and homework is not sufficient for students to be familiar with the concepts that they learn in school. For the concept to be ingrained into the students’ minds, a lot of practice needs to be done in that particular topic.
If not, the students have insufficient practice, they can easily forget the concepts during high pressure situations such as examinations, especially during PSLE. Moreover, by doing past year examination papers, students can easily identify small gaps in their knowledge that may have resulted in unnecessary mark losses during their actual examinations.
Secondly,
Past year examinations give students the experience of doing examination style questions. If someone asks a student about a particular topic, the student may easily be able to explain the concept to them in a fluent manner. However, this will be very different from the type of questions examinations will ask. The format of the question will be much different and the question will also be much more technical.
Doing past year examinations will also teach the students how the examiners want them to think and improve their higher order thinking, which is usually required for these examinations. The model answers will also give students examples on how to solve the questions and how to phrase their answers. All of these will help to train them.
Thirdly,
Past year examinations can greatly help in time management. Usually in a normal practice setting, students usually take as much time as they want for homework or schoolwork.
Real examinations, however, usually have a strict time limit and students may struggle because of this if they are inexperienced. Doing practice examinations with a time constraint will help students a lot in thinking quickly and learning the importance of being familiar with the types of questions.
Lastly,
Revising for all the topics may be very difficult and mentally taxing on students. Although it is necessary to still remember all of the concepts if possible, students can choose which topics to focus on based on past year exam papers. If many past year examiners liked to set questions on a particular topic, it may hint that the topic may be tested again. If a particular topic never came out, it can mean that the topic is unpopular among examiners. However, students should not completely ignore topics based on these predictions as these are definitely not fool-proof. They are just a form of guide to use to focus on certain topics to revise.