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!