Back in May when we were giving out the Maximise Your Potential (MYP) Award to the kids, Adrian and I promised to return to visit them before the PSLE.
With the examinations just round the corner, starting with the oral examinations on 18 Aug 2016, we kept our promise and dropped by yesterday as it was a short day for the school on account of National
Day celebrations.
We headed over around noon armed with lunch for the kids.
Like a bad habit of an old naggy mother hen, the first business of order was going around the table asking for their targets i.e. what PSLE aggregate scores are they aiming for and with those target scores, which secondary schools do they hope to go to.
Like all the other RunForFunds kids, from the past years, most of them set a score lower than what we feel is their true potential. Perhaps lacking in confidence and possibly because they have not seen "what good looks like", it was quite understandable to find them, more often than not, going for the "safe bets" by aiming lower.
Then we got them thinking.
"You wish to go Chung Cheng High School and you know for a fact that the cut off point for the school is around 245." I said. "Next you tell me, you are aiming to score 235. Where is the logic in that?"
The room went silent and you can almost hear the gears beginning to click and move in their heads.
While we do acknowledged that some of them may have faced some early setbacks in life but we felt that we owed a duty to open their eyes (and minds) that the so-called “disadvantage” is not as big as they perceived.
We urged them to think big, aim high with the hope of breaking their mental shackles.
Their best, if I may add, is easily more than what their target scores were when we went around the table for the first time.
Granted, all that we could offer were mere words but we hope that it would be enough to convince them to give themselves a chance to really go for it. We are confident that they will come out fruitful at the end of the day. The results that we predict they will score shall be, fingers crossed, the best proof of what we saw in them.
We also shared on some techniques during the examinations to avoid losing marks.
- Buy more time, if required, to process a question during oral examinations by asking the teacher to repeat the question
- Making a mark on the optical answer sheet when skipping a question, to ensure each answer is aligned to the correct question.
- Always show workings and statements when answering mathematical questions.
We finished by emphasizing that a healthy mind is nothing without a healthy body. All the preparations in the world would be undermined if the body decides to fall sick at the most crucial moment.
Rest, in the form of sufficient amount of sleep is just as important as studying hard for the examinations.
“So, how many hours do you think is an adequate amount of sleep?” I asked.
“8 hours.” Almost in unison.
“What time do you need to wake up for school every day?”
Some say 5:30am, some say 6am.
“So what time do you need to get to bed based on that?” I asked further.
“9:30pm, 10pm.”
“So,” I continued, “how many of you actually sleep during that time or earlier?”
Silence and the gear sounds clicked and whirred again.
We got them to understand that all that studying goes to nought if your mind is tired. A brain will function best only when it is sharp and sharpness can only come from adequate rest.
On that "intellectual bombshell", we bade them goodbye and will visit them again in September before the PSLE papers begin.
- Voxeros
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