BB & GG are having a ball in school these days. Because the other classes are having their exams, so they have to be quiet and so are allowed to watch videos in class or stay in the aesthetics hub which is away from the classrooms to prepare for their year-end concerts.

They also went for learning journeys – BB to the Discovery Centre and GG to the National Museum. They will swap the places next week and there’s a day-long workshop in different things like graphic design and flight simulations in another school. This is a school which BB is interested in and I hope he has a good look to decide if he wants to go there after results are declared.

There are around 3 weeks to the results and my stress levels have just started rising….

PSLE Marking Week plus Holiday Week!

This week was a holiday for Primary schools which send teachers for PSLE marking (not all schools send teachers, only those who have students giving the exams and new schools with atleast students in Primary 4). Taking advantage of this break, we decided to make a short holiday to Penang (Penang posts coming up soon).

This was mostly to get our attention off the marking (more me than the kids I think!). Well, the marking is all done and their fates sealed…..Now we play the waiting game to see what scores they get.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the schools to choose when we fill up the secondary forms and have decided that we will go with schools where the cut off points fall in the median of their eventual scores. I am going to finalise 10 schools each, with a variety of scores so that when the scores are released, we can choose from these schools and if the COP is lower than their score, then they will definitely get the first choice. It’s better to be in the top classes in a lesser known school than be scrapping the barrel and trying to keep up in a more well-known school. This way, they can be at the top of the class, with access to leadership roles in the school, instead of always trying to keep up with their peers.

Friday was a Learning Journey Day where the whole Primary 6 cohort in their school visited the Science Centre. Initially BB & GG were very reluctant to go there again, as they’ve been there multiple times. But this time, they saw a couple of documentaries which they said were fantastic!

We ended the week with a baby shower for one of S’ colleague and friend. I realise these days there’s a trend of having baby showers after the baby is born – the baby shower we went to is around a month plus old….

Even though the PSLE is over, both BB & GG have been busy quite busy in school. They have to work on their class yearbook as well as prepare for the year-end concert. Each graduating class is expected to put together a song and dance performance (either together or separately) and every child is expected to contribute. GG is taking part in her class dance while BB who hates dancing is joining the song routine.

We also got a note from the school on the learning journeys they will take from now till the end of the school year. The school plans to bring them to the National Museum, The Arts Science Museum as well as the Discovery Centre. They are also going to bring the children to a secondary school which has an Aviation programme. As expected BB is most excited about that trip as this is the school we are targeting if his grades are not very stellar. If, by some luck, he does brilliantly, we’ll try other schools, the main one being his dream school where he did not make the cut for the DSA. We can always dream right!

We also received the huge book from MOE which tells us all about how we can select schools (merit before choice) and that we need to choose 6 schools for both of them each. Once the results are declared, we need to go to the website and indicate our school choices. If our scores are below the school cut off point (COP), we get in, otherwise, they will go down the list. If none of the schools meet our COP, we get a nearby school which still has vacancies and which is within the COP. So it makes sense to choose real carefully so that we can get into our first choice school….

From tomorrow, for the next four days, teachers across Singapore will come together to mark the PSLE papers. I am tense about this, but also realise nothing is my hands now! So schools are shut for the next four days which means we’re off today for a holiday! Normally this period is a time for children to hunker down and study as usually after this holiday is when exams start, but this year with the end of the PSLE, we decided to use this short holiday to go around the region. I’ll post more about the holiday later!

And then there were none!!

We’re done and dusted with the PSLE exams…It’s been 40 stressful weeks from the time school started till this day, but we persevered and now we are done. What’s left is to now worry about the results, although there’s no real use of worrying about the results. What’s done can’t be undone and so no use worrying about it.

Monday was the Mother Tongue aka Hindi exam. I was so worried the whole morning, especially for BB, for whom this is the weakest subject. GG is not too bad, but still is not where I would ideally like her to be. When they got home, GG said the paper was ok, some parts were easy, others not so much. BB said everything was difficult. The Facebook group I frequent had parents commenting that their children found it easy. I got more and more worried, but then by the end of the day, decided to “Let it Go”

The last paper was Science and both GG & BB woke up feeling happy that this was the last paper. I was feeling quite confident about the exams as Science is both BB & GG’s strongest subject. When they came home, they were shouting with joy – “Freedom, Freedom”!! They said Booklet A was relatively easy while Booklet B was challenging. Hopefully they’ve thought over the answers and written them…

I took them to the library to borrow books and did a spot of shopping as a treat after the exams…

Anyways no thinking about it atleast till about a week before the results are declared!!

This is it! The exams started end of last week and we are halfway through it now. We’re done with English and Maths, but have Mother Tongue aka Hindi and Science left.

The haze situation is still bad, fluctuating between 150 to over 200. My only worry last week was that the PSI should not be high during the exams.

So far of the papers they’ve done, both said English was very easy. BB said he didn’t feel any different than writing a school exam.My concern now is that if the paper is so easy, then maybe the marking will be difficult with the cohort average high and so the standard deviation also low….What this means for marking I don’t know! Hopefully both get an A*(praying for that) or atleast an A for English.

During the Maths exam, at one of groups on Facebook that I belong to, someone posted that Paper 1 was a killer! I immediately got scared and started praying to all the Gods and Goddesses I know as I was very worried about GG as Maths is her weakest subject. It was agony till they came home and then an anti-climax when they announced it was tricky, but moderately difficult….

People posted questions on Facebook and based on the answers there and confirming with BB, I think he can score a good mark…Now need to hope the bell curve is in their favour…

Ok, two more to go and then we are home free… and can start worrying about the results!