Apparently, there’s this short section on sample PSLE Maths questions in today’s newspapers, or at least my mom only showed me today. Recently, there’s quite an “uproar” regarding the difficulty of the Maths paper this year. Of course, I didn’t read that from the newspapers la, knowing me. xD Seems like this year’s complaints are quite “fierce”, so I thought it’s gonna be an “eye-opener” seeing some of the sample questions. Perhaps I’ve expected too much from these samples (though probably not 100% identical to the actual paper), which I presume belong to the “harder” category that many parents have found.
Much to my disappointment, the questions are not hard at all. Yeah of course, asking me to do such questions now may be way overkill, but given my competency level at primary 6, I wouldn’t have found the questions difficult at all. I’ll try to reproduce the questions from the papers (I threw away the piece of paper. hohum) and tell me if you agree with what I’ve said. Don’t worry, the numerical values (including the marks awarded) are going to be accurate (I have no freaking idea why I can remember those values). It’s quite hard to believe that some teacher claimed that the average student will not be able to do these questions, and he (or she) took 20 minutes with the help of a calculator to complete. Seriously, such teachers should just retire (my mom told me it’s some teacher with 40 years experience, means old liao).
First up, the easiest question of the 3 “showcased” in the papers. And it goes something like this. Shop A has 156kg of rice (maybe it’s not rice, but doesn’t matter), while Shop B has 72kg of rice. Each shop sold an equal amount of rice and after that the ratio of the amount of rice left in their shop was 4:1. Find out how much rice has been sold. (3 marks) In what way is this difficult? It’s not something that primary school kids wouldn’t have seen before. It’s the same kind of concepts used for “John is <insert number> years old. Joe is <insert some other number> years old. After <insert some number> years, their ages are <insert ratio>”. I mean, it’s perfectly do-able without algebra. Models (which I learnt during P sch and didn’t really like to use anyway) are still taught in primary school I believe, and this technique is definitely useful in solving this question. Anyway the answer’s 44kg. Just take 72 - [(156-72)/3] and you get the answer. 1 step. Ok lah, the average primary school kid should take 2-3 steps. But yea, this question is definitely no issue.
Question 2 goes something like this. 6/14 of the chairs in the hall are in rows of 13. Half of the chairs in the hall are in rows of 7. There are 112 more chairs in rows of 7. The rest of the chairs are stacked up. Find out the total number of chairs in the hall (5 marks). Just basing on the approach of the question alone, this is definitely another “freefrag”. The harder part imo, is trying to understand all the English used in the phrasing, which was one of the irritating things I hated about Maths in p sch back then. So actually, the answer is something like 112 * 14. The answer, if you do it straightforwardly without checking your answer, is 1568 (incidentally 1568 = 2^10 + 2^9 + 2^5), but is it really the right answer? All right, as pointed out by some brilliant friend of mine, the answer we get technically does not fulfill the first statement, since 6/14 of 1568 is not divisible by 13. Even after finding a total number that fulfills the first 2 statements, the 3rd statement fails. Lol. Oh well, the important thing that they wanna illustrate (or rather try to convey) is that the questions asked are testing things that are supposedly not taught during normal curriculum, but miserably failed. I believe the actual question can’t be so ambiguous. Anyway concept wise it’s not difficult what. Still don’t understand the hoo-ha.
Pardon my lousy drawing using MSpaint, I should really have scanned the paper before throwing it, or at least take it using my HP (my HP cam like doesn’t really serve any proper purpose now. hic). Anyway, here’s the last question featured in the papers. So the question goes: water is filled to the brim on the left hand figure, and then is poured into the figure on the right until they have the same water level. What is the water level? (4 marks) Not very hard, just take (50 * 40 * 60)/(50*40 + 70*40), and the answer is 25cm. So yeah, I still don’t see why it’s worth complaining about.
The difficulty of these questions are something I’ve seen during my p sch years so I suppose it’s not so bad what. After all, after I left p sch there seems to have more emphasis on “thinking skills” in primary school, or at least that’s the kind of impression I get from news reports etc. I guess it’s not really working, or certain parents are just complaining too much. Surprisingly, none of the sample questions contained those number patterns/sequences or those IQ-test-like questions. I would think those type of questions will be more challenging for the average student.
Apparently, there’s also some comments by teachers and one of them seem to be really disappointing. Lol, maybe he or she should get out of the teaching vocation soon, for the better good of students under him/her. Oh no, that sounded a little offensive, but yea well.
Oh well, maybe it’s just to create the annual buzz on the PSLE, or maybe some parents just never learn how to complain with some kind of concrete backing, or maybe some parents just can’t accept that the school did not prepare enough questions of this level (or higher) to their children. Shrugs. Whatever the reason, I don’t find it convincing to have such an uproar. Don’t you think so too?
p.s. Sorry if I sounded emo in certain parts of the entry. Emo is the “in” thing these days. XD
Hey I actually wrote a post in reply to your post k?
Check it out
Well I think the old teacher is a disgrace to the teaching profession. Thousands of students of secondary level and above are pwning him this minute. Who the hell does 3 Pschool questions in 19 minutes WITH a calculator? And he calls himself a teacher with 40 years of experience. Pui!
well, i hope his ex-students are doing fine now. >_<
i realise my entry very long siah.
Hey there.
I’m in touch of math problems too. =)
When i was taking my PSLE, there were many rumors about the math paper being too hard. It is always, hard?
You state that your teacher who had the help of a calculator already shows that he is definitely not there.
Many teachers are like, you know… there just for the sake of money. So what if he or she has taught for many years?
it’s not one of my teachers. i believe the thing i mentioned about was in the papers as well…
yes its in the papers. The math questions are always hard for weaker students. Which question is not hard for weaker students? Parents all feel that their child is a top student, and deserves to go into the top school. Reality is different. Do not blame the exam. How can you blame the exam paper when other people can still do well for it?
Hi there, it is a good post. THose questions are really chicken feed. I suppose the reporter’s getting his 5 seconds of fame. If one notices the quotation, I suspect the calculator part was taken out of context. I think he was just saying something about calculators, and it was lifted out. This is journalism.
I suppose it is 1) to appease the parents, and 2) to stoke the fire by dividing opinion about whether it really is simple. N yes you are right, it is very easy.
Btw, my students told me PSLE produced the pattern question again.Haha. The ‘n’ method needs to be taught by tutors/teachers :S
what n method are u referring to?
I think it is exaggerated concerning this couple of maths questions. Q2 has beeen taught to P2 to P4 pupils using smaller number before.
Q1, there is a flaw when counting backward to do checking.
Q3, it is definitely taught to the pupils for Volume before.
I did not use a calculator at all. Sad to know that the parents complained about them.
And anyway, there is a trend of questions being repeated, just questions slightly rephrase and also number changed.
I agreed the children who complain need to self-reflect whether they are so nervous during a major exams that they just cannot do then it is important for them to learn to be composure since there will be more major exams along the way like “O”s, “A”s, and other.
Agree with priscilla fully. jh, the ‘n =1, n = 2, n = 3, n = 4…” method to solve crazy questions like “how many toothpicks used in pattern 205?” etc.
@Priscilla, Q1 has problem when working backwards?? I dont see the problem though…
@winston, what’s the toothpick problem?
hmm..question one is a simple modular question ma..got problem with it ah?
erm;
after reading yr post; i felt quite insulted;
cos’ erm;i’m one of the PSLE students this yr,
and personally i felt that the maths paper WAS hard.
u only got to see 3 sample Q.’s
there are lots more difficult ones.
but as for Q3. i got it right. i did write 25cm (:
but for the other 2 q’s i felt they were hard.
esp. the one about chairs.
plus; sometimes its not that the paper is hard.its that not enough time was given for the paper.only 2h 15mins.
2h 15mins for 15 multiple choice and around 30 fill-in-the-blank
and another 15 problem sums is unreasonable (to me)
so i dnt noe wat you want to say now but do reply if you want to.
jh, in pattern 1 there are 2 toothpicks used.
in pattern 2 there are 5 toothpicks used,
in pattern 3, 8 toothpicks;
in pattern 4, 11 toothpicks et cetera;
a) How many toothpicks were used in pattern 205?
b) In which pattern was 209 toothpicks used?
This is the ‘n’ method that has often been tested.
This pattern is:
2,5,8,11 etc…
The patter is (+3).
However if the pattern is 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 etc,
the pattern is ( x2 ). This is the what we call the multiplication pattern, and sometimes they can ask u what is the number in pattern 100. This is the killer.
@winston: yea that number pattern thing is quite common these days. and erm 2^100 is not going to be tested, that’s for sure… even with a (normal scientific) calculator you can’t even express it accurately enough.
@punkerem0: yea i did say that these are only samples provided in the papers, but i ASSUMED them to be of a certain range of difficulty (above average - most difficult). as for the chairs question, if the actual question has exactly the same figures, i agree that the question is sort of imperfect, but question 1 definitely isn’t an issue. glad that you got question 3 right. as for the time duration, i think it’s the same during my time, not sure about the number of questions though.
if there are harder questions, why not share?
Hey punkerem0,
never ever feel insulted. You are talking to 2 university students here, and if you cannot do the questions that fast in university level, something must be really wrong with our level of math. I’m sure with consistent hard work, one day you will be the same as us.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with thinking it is difficult. It is alright. In fact, i thought my paper has difficult questions too. I didn’t know how to do the last question at all. Back in my time (gosh I am old), it was the same type of paper. Same duration, same questions. Unreasonable? I thought so in primary 5 semester 1. But after that I though its reasonable. My friends can all do it, why can’t I?
The thing is that we should accept that there will be difficult questions. We should accept that we cannot do those questions because we are not good enough in thinking skills. We should not blame the examination board because for every one person that cannot do that question, there is another person who can.
If someone else can do that question, why not us?
I hope you will continually study hard and improve yourself. One day when you pass the A levels, you can look back and think, hey, PSLE math isn’t that hard after all. It was good training for something worst.
Do keep thinking: If people can do it, I should be able too. If the timing is too demanding, then ask, does everyone feel this way? The answer is no. I managed to finish my paper (other than the last question), and still checked my answers.
In the end I got an A* for my math and 247 for PSLE. Big deal? No. Couldn’t make it to special. But guess what? It doesn’t matter. I’m now who I am because I made sure I work hard. PSLE doesn’t set you for life. You set yourself for life.
Haha, I was exaggerating. Obviously, it wasn’t the exact question. I’m not exactly allowed to tell, but within my jurisdiction I’m allowed to say the pattern was a multiplication one.
(Btw, 2^100 is possible, the formula is very common… Just that it did not come out this time)
come on, be realistic. 2^100, even using the GP formula (which shouldn’t be explicitly taught in p sch i *think), expressing it in EXACT value is ridiculous.
yo, long time nv visit, then come and see u drop bombshell. haha agreed that when i read the papers i felt the questions were definitely do-able in a timely manner. personally i feel that it’s juz the culture of having parents make unreasonable demands on their kids to overachieve and so on… I agreed with the ministry’s reply (or was it from sm1 else?) that they do need a few very stimulating qns in order to really differentiate between those really gd kids from those juz gd ones.
Think u got me wrong… Not as in 2 to the power of 100..! Just a multiplication sequence. To be honest it was tested this year, but this pattern questions were not revealed.
multiplication sequence isn’t going to be too difficult since the numbers given has to be somewhat computable (rather easily). anyway the papers are always such that getting an A* isn’t much of an issue if the student’s foundation of maths is there.
of course,le!use common sense u 2 uni students of course say easy,if im uni student n do pri i oso sae easy.but the think is i nw in pri.if nw i do k1 question of course easy but for them hard…well,i oso took the psle maths this year n i find it ok..all the three sample quetions at newspaper i gt it correct..although i leave i blank 5marks..so sad,i dunno how 2 do but when the paper was collected i suddenli remember,i tinki was juz 2 nervous…
eh michelle, notice that we are not saying that it is easy simply because we can do it. Its a little stupid of us to think that way, if you feel that we are thinking that way. Besides, the main point is that the 3 questions are simple even for primary school students. I know because I have been tutoring some students. There is nothing different from past year’s papers. Every year, students are required to exercise thinking skills, this year inclusive.
Plus we are appalled at a retired primary school teacher needs 19minutes (with a calculator) to do the 3 questions. Even at a university level (which is clearly lower than a graduate and a teacher), we are able to finish the questions faster than that teacher.
Its no about whether we feel that it is easy. It is that it IS easy and that if there are people in P6 who can do it, then there is no reason to say it is tough. It is only tough if you have problems getting a 90 (for majority of the students).
My stand is that we should all stop whining year after year that the exams are tough. Marks are always moderated and people still get 270++ for aggregate. Whining will not get more marks. Point made.
its nt wat I mean,I juz mean ever1 except pri n kindergarten students will say its easy…its actuali indeed nt so hard..I dun believe the 19mins wif calculator teacher..even I pri students did the rice questions at 2-3mins..I find the people sayin it hard ridiculous..
1) about the teacher “featured” in the report.
2) i’ve already explained why it is easy, using concepts that pri sch students shld already know. maybe my english isn’t very good in putting across what i want to express.
3) like u said, it’s not all that hard right? the paper isn’t made for everyone to get 100 marks all right? getting A* is good enough already. if u’ve done the rest correctly, then 95/100 is already very respectable.
eh. u’re missing the point….
well i do believe that its reported that a p5 student found those questions easy.
:) there you go..
:)every1 will always say tht their psle year is the hardest….90%of my frenz sae it was hard but their happy juz 2 try their best..
actually, my year was actually quite ok. at least me and my frenz nvr complain about the maths, which is what usually turns up in the papers…
haha i do agree..it is only recently in these few years did parents start to complain. Nowadays the kids are all v pampered one. A little tough then complain. O level how? A level how? No wonder cannot go uni.
To be honest, this is due to the changing genres of question. Students last time were trained to DO, and tested on whether they practised hard- and if they did practise, they can DO.
Now they are trained to DO, still, but questions are unseen. This means that to them, never see before = can’t do= difficult. That’s a general mindset. They have to learn how to handle unseen questions. With calculators coming etc etc, questions will be more and more, harder and harder, and they have to learn. No more basic arithmetic for my students… :(
it’s not like every student practised a lot last time. it’s more about understanding what the question is asking which is more important, although i can’t say the same about how i’m dealing with my uni maths now. but uni maths is uni maths.
for p sch, and even sec sch maths, i believe understand the concepts will be a much better way of improving your maths rather than just practice after practice after practice (recurse here).
Agreed. The questions now are honestly tougher. I really shouldnt be saying more as Im bound by ‘duty’ (or whatever bull—-), but the papers set these years are in evolution. That’s where u are right- practise matters, but concepts more.
Unfortunately the students have yet to absorb this culture, let alone the parents
I suspect most of us, along with parents, are arguing on a different scale, for we are… in a different generation.
haha..well after they start to go on to higher education then they would need to learn how to apply concepts rather than regurgitate. If not, it will be difficult to score.
Ah, fair enough. I rather they learn now.
finally we come to an understanding =)
I don’t think the questions on the newspapers are accurate because I took the PSLE exam this year! The questions in the exam papers were certainlly much harder!
yeah there have been a few people who have said that but no one seems to want to share the harder questions? or at least those harder than the ones “featured” in the newspaper…
yes no doubt there are harder questions..but it is still not reason enough to complain. Arn’t there hard questions every single YEAR?
Back in our years people find our papers tough also, but there wasn’t such a big commotion about it. For my year I remembered I couldn’t do one question.
Unlike O and A levels, the standard of PSLE doesn’t drop (or rise) with time. To those who complained, wait until you go to uni.. Say the same things then.. “I can’t do one question, out of the syllabus. Want to complain.” See if people will whack you or not. :D
maths at pri6 is somewhat almost the same level as sec1 maths…n of course its v easy.
Very surprising that there is so little mention of the error in Question 2. i’ll leave the error for a moment.
The phrasing of that question is, imo, the killer. Just try posing the question to a dozen people who are not concerned with PSLE, you did be surprised with the array of interpretations. The PSLE mock questions had been so well practised by our top students that they and their educators cannot see beyond their fixated interpration of the question. The mockery of this is that the ‘difficulty’ of such question is done with the intention to instill in our students the attitude to ‘think out of the box’.
If you still think ‘can PSLE question have error ?’ Try ask: Is setting too high a difficlty an error, at least pedagogically ? The old teacher who reportedly took 19 mintues with a calculator, when we jeer at her/him, do we really know where he coming from ?
Now, that question 2, those who had solved it, how many rows of 13 are there ?
Some responses that i’d gotten to my above question are:
. why bother with that, if the answer is 1568.
. so what is the correct answer (that the examinator would mark as correct) ?
. so chim, so what to answer.
What i felt most sad is that it took a university professor to point out, very courteosuly, error in our PSLE maths question, and at the mathematical error:
http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/papers/PSLE2005.pdf
well, for one, we don’t know if the figures given in the sample questions that made it to the papers are the same as the ones given in the examination. and well, i’d like to say it once again.
a lot of parents who complain dont seem to be complaining because of the ambiguity or it’s mathematically flawed, but rather just simply complaining that their children can’t do this and that etc.
and btw, imo that’s not really jeering at the teacher. teachers are also human hence not perfect, but the amount of time taken is just a little too long for an experienced teacher don’t you think?
Is 19 minutes too long a time taken by an experienced teacher to solve 3 PLSE questions ?
Let’s pretend to be a pri 1-3 teacher assessing the amount of time she shud allow for her puplis to do this sum: Add all the number from 1 to 20.
Being quite a aged person and an experienced teacher, she would likely pick up a calculator to simulate the additon one-by-one. Coming up with the answer in a very short time without addition, as Gauss once did for 1 to 100, should not be the way of a teacher.
Timing the answering of question is part and parcel of good exam vetting. What intent the teacher reported in the newspaper had for her timing is for us to guess.
That the focus is on how to solve the question is the sad state of affairs.
On the question: Are the questions too hard ? Hope this story means something:
Mr Y: Question 1. So difficult. How hah ?
Z: Hey, U maths Hons, u joking ?
Mr Y: do that so long time ago, if i let the number be x, i can. But that’s not how’s it supposed to be done now.
Z: draw model, it’s to make it easier for the weaker ones who cannot do algebra.
( 3 minutes)
Mr Y: still cannot draw the model.
Z tries.
Z: Ah, the model not so straight-forward afterall, have to use the trick that the difference remain unchanged.
there’s a difference between taking 19 minutes to do, and estimating that the average student needs that much time. after all, i would like to believe that the questions “featured” were more of the harder side of the paper, rather than the average/easy side of the paper. certainly there will be other questions that most of the students taking would be able to do.
and besides, even if that teacher is a pri1-3 teacher, and thinking from the perspective of the students, he ought to be estimating based on the average p6 student. not his usual p1-3 kids.
anyway my main point is that the fuss over this issue is far too great. not too hard does not imply that it’s going to be easy.
Yes I do agree with JH that the sole main point of this whole issue is that parents should not make so much fuss that the paper is hard.
Besides, why are we coming up with excuses for the teacher? The questions posted by The Straits Times to the teacher is posted up in JH’s post for all to see. The teacher did that 3 questions in 19 minutes WITH a calculator. That itself has already shown a significant problem with the teacher.
Another point to note is that the same 3 questions were posed to last year’s TOP PSLE student, who managed to do it quick.
Anyway, this whole PSLE issue is over and I am surprised that JH can still get comments on it. LOL.
The top pupil scores 294. It shows that the paper is not so hard after all is it? Hard papers just make it easier to differentiate the better students. The top student still get the max marks, whether he gets 50/100 or 99/100. Its a freaking bell curve so people should stop making a fuss when questions are hard.
erm hi the uni guys,
i chanced upon this website and is somehow puzzled…
i am oso a psle student of 2007 and i somehow think that the qns r quite hard to decipher. 4 example the tank qns, the teacher gt teach the theory meh???
plus the ans for the tank qns is 24 cm nt 25 cm :)
p.s. can elaborate the n meothod?
hi xilisk chy, my answer of 25cm is based on the picture i’ve doodled. not sure if the actual question is the same.
well, in that question 4, i’m sure you’ll be able to find out the volume of water present in the problem right? that shouldn’t be of any problem. and i’m pretty sure you will know that volume = base area x height.
and we do know the base areas of each of the containers, and the question states that after distributing the water, the containers have the same height, hence the calculation provided in my entry.
hope it helps.
Well..I’m impressed that P6 students r searching blogs..hahaha.. Its a sign that we are old already. When I was in P6, the most in thing on the internet was hotmail and it was only 2mb! Old liao la!
aiyah, not bad what, at least now there exists some not-so-nonsense blogs like mine which may be helpful to some people :P (hahaha very thick skin)…
it’s also good to see people still interested to find out how questions are solved though explanations could possibly have been obtained by asking your stronger friends, or even your psch teacher (tho this one might be a lil difficult for some due to shyness or whatever).
ah well… i didn’t really cover much in this entry also leh, yet there’s a heck lot of comments. whee.
p.s. back in p6, i didn’t even know how to use the Internet… got mine in sec 1. lol… u more advanced siah!
The questions were not difficult because they are not even the questions that came out! I took the paper this year and the questions published are different from the ones i took! It is indeed much easier…
this year? psle isn’t until the last quarter of the year isn’t it?
like i said many times before…. if it’s harder, why isn’t anyone giving an example?
Lol. This P6 pupil is retake one ah? Last year take the paper, then still P6 this year? Lol.. but to be serious, where is the bloody example? Anyway, retired teacher took 19 minutes to do those questions, and then now got people say this is the chickenfeet one. WOW man. This retired teacher probably takes 40 minutes to do 3 normal PSLE questions. Makes me wonder whether the teacher suffers from lao ren chi dai zhen.
Aniway this is a post that’s made last year..lol..still got comments!
lol the paper wasn’t that hard. i took it last year.
but the problem was…, they always gave us extra information!!
let say a question has 2 clues.
but last year’s paper was like…, you just needed 1 clue to solve it.
i still felt there was something wrong with my answer after solving them
because of that. anyway got an ‘a*’
what do you mean by extra information and clues?
anyway congrats on getting an A*