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SINGAPORE – Every year, some questions in the PSLE Maths paper pose a significant challenge for Primary 6 pupils. These can cause them to panic and feel demoralised, which in turn worries their parents.

The Ministry of Education includes these questions – capped at 15 per cent of the exam – to help identify stronger pupils, according to Dr Yeap Ban Har, director of curriculum and teacher development at Pathlight School Singapore.

In this two-part ST PSLE Companion video series, he helps parents understand the various types of complex and layered multi-step maths problems.

He recommends that parents help their children approach lengthy maths word problems by reading them in parts.

“It is not useful for children to read these word problems from start to end because there is often a lot of information in them,” he says. “Unless the children are very strong readers, the information will overwhelm them.”

Instead, guide them to read the first sentence, perform a calculation or draw a relevant diagram. Then read the second sentence, think of a subsequent calculation or add to the existing diagram.

This is a useful strategy to help them make steady progress towards the solution. “You can see that problems like these are rather challenging. Not every 12-year-old is ready to handle them,” he points out.

For children who are not yet ready, he emphasises that they can still perform well on other problems, given the wide range of questions in the PSLE Maths papers.

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