Picture this with me. You’re a P5 math teacher.
You had a really bad day. Lessons didn’t go as well as you had planned and you feel really tired.
On the right side of your desk is a huge pile of math exam papers.
You’re too tired to count them. But from experience of marking them, you know there’re about 103 sets.
Tomorrow is the dateline for marks submission and you’re barely half-way through.
While you know you need to do your best to complete your marking, part of your mind wonders who can pick your child up from the child care if you can’t finish on time.
As you push through the day, you can’t help it but to worry about your kid as you continue to mark.
At times you pick up papers with untidy handwriting. The steps were all over the place. It seemed to you these students had either rushed through their workings (because of time shortage) or they had no idea what they’re writing.
As you move on to the next paper, the handwriting you see got worse.
You pick up the next paper. (Another 11 minutes before the school gate will be locked.)
So neat, so organised, so detailed.
It’s so easy to mark. You award all the marks this child deserved to get for that question.
Within 3 minutes, you realise you’ve give this child FULL marks for this so-called VERY TOUGH problem sum.
You get curious and you flip over the paper. You recognise the name.
One of high achievers in the class.
Have you ever seen solutions of high achiever?
In fact, most look like the model answers for markers.
This explains why most markers love to mark their work.
It’s so easy to mark their working steps and to give them the marks they deserve.
Every step has a clear statement, explaining the reason for that step.
In addition, it also shows the marker that the student understood the concepts too.
Starting from the first step to the final step seemed to be a natural flow of a straight line.
Every step is linked.
To the marker, the next natural thing to do is to award this child her full marks.
So you want your child to get better grades too?
Ensure your child master processes and skills too. (This is what high achievers do. They’re masters of these.)
Key word (K):
Before diving in to solve any problem sum, do highlight the key words which define the concept. For example, the key word “remainder” tells you is remainder concept.
Concept (C):
Most high achievers know the existence of concepts. This is why most can solve the problem sums much faster than average students. By the time your child reach P6, he should know a total of 12 basic concepts. How many do your child know now?
Numbers (N):
High achievers are resourceful too. They made use of what they’re given. They zoomed into the numbers and diligently circle or highlight them. By doing this, their eyes are also focused on the numbers while their mind is always on a constant thinking mode of when to use them.
Statements (S):
High achievers have time to check their work. In fact, they plan to have time to check their work. They also plan that their checking process is smooth-sailing.
How so? They write statements beside every working step. So right after they have completed their papers, they go back to the problem sums and they check by going through their statements.
Without statements mean that you need to redo the question and spending twice the amount of time.
Units (U):
Finally, teach your child to always write units. Generally, half mark is deducted for the wrong/ no unit.
This simple 5-step K-C-N-S-U is a proven process we have coached many students, both average students and high achievers to score at least 20 marks within a very short time.
This works so well that it had helped some students, who were always stuck at 80+, to get at least 90+ within a few months.
Start getting your child to learn a proven process to start improving. To find out how, do sign up for your free 30-mins phone consultation.
=> http://studysmart.learningoutofthebox.org/free-math-consultation/
