Few things I want to highlight:

1. We were so happy with his results, we forgot to ask why we were not informed of the exam dates. *faint*
2. Comparing previous results in term 1: Maths WAS 76/100, NOW its 96/100.  Super! Chinese WAS 44/80, NOW its 71/80. Awesome! *clap clap clap*
3. He just managed to get pass the borderline for Chinese Listening Comprehension. Which the teacher thinks that he was probably back to his dreamy self during the test. Which I have no intention to disagree. *pout*
4. Keatkeat WAS in the ‘inferior’ class for Chinese lessons over the past one and a half month. During the teachers-meet-parents session on Wednesday, his Chinese teacher told us that he’s results are too good to remain in this ‘inferior’ class, thus he will be back to the ‘normal’ class once school reopens in late June.

We are worried that he may not be able to keep up with the pace in the ‘normal’ class again. So we requested Keatkeat to remain in this ‘inferior’ class, but the teacher refused and said that we have to maintain his standard.

She explained that no matter how bad his future results would be, he would NOT be allowed to join the ‘inferior’ class ever again.

So now we have lots of work to do on Keatkeat…..

What impressed me the most was This: A story sum project was given as part of the examination, which affects the Term 2 Results.
The students need to create their own problem sums by looking at the picture and the helping words.

Pretty tough and pretty cool idea isn’t it? I love it! And Keatkeat did well for this too. *Grin*

*clap clap clap*

With the end of this teachers-meet-parents session, starts the beginning of a one month long school break.

His teacher did warn us that term 3 would be much more difficult because they would be taking some of the Primary 2 English questions to test on the Primary 1 students.

Man! This is sooooooooo challenging isn’t it? *biting nails*

So to kick start this new teaching method, when school reopens in late June, the Primary one students’ weekly spelling would include Dictation.

So gear up Keatkeat and get ready to rock and roll boy….. *wink*

To me, Algebra equations are a set of unknowns joined together to form a relationship. Just look these 3 questions in Keatkeat’s Maths test paper:

Don’t they look a little like Algebra?

And below was the kind of question that Keatkeat brings home as homework nowadays:

Remember, ALL The boxes were blanks. Each shape represents one number.

Primary one!!!

Man!!!

Does it need to be this tough???

The worse part was, in my view, shouldn’t the second equation be on top? Keatkeat had to make so many wild guesses before he got it right.

Imagine if its a test? How much time would have been wasted on such a question? *eyes rolled*

Does your Primary one child has such questions in his or her tests too?

Read what is Algebra over here.

Guess what?

After going through the Maths paper, I am happy with his result. Those questions which he lose points on were more on algebra, which is something I did not expect would appear in a 6 years old’s test paper.

And for Chinese paper….

I’m SUPER happy!!! Yeah! He passed!!! I truly expected him to fail. *Grin*

Those words were from Keatkeat’s Teacher yesterday. We were not informed of any examinations at all.

So in a way, I thank her for the complains, ‘cos if it had not been that, then I would NEVER have known about the examination. *Wink*

So how do you handle Teacher’s Complaints? Its not all that bad, find the positive side of the complain and your heart will not be heavy. *smile*

Later did we found out that Keatkeat has double performance standard. What he can do at home, he cannot in school. This is something that I do not know how to improve unless I sit in school with him for a day (which is NOT allowed), to find out what made the difference.

Hhhmmm…… this is one puzzle yet to be solved.

So for those of you who have kids in Kindergarten, and would like to give your child a head-start, you might want to try this out.

http://xuele.edumall.sg

The kid is suppose to try to pronounce the word first and check his pronunciation by clicking on the word on the screen. Games are also available to promote interest in the subject. But from the video, you can tell that Keatkeat was ‘not‘ following the rules… *eyes rolled*

Oh well, so long as his interest in Hanyu Pinyin is still there (just look at his reaction in the end), I am happy.

And my 4 year old Binbin is getting great satisfaction from getting the answers correct. Love that Big Smile at the end.

Today, Keatkeat is having his Chinese Test and Maths Test. Yes, you heard me right. The teachers REFUSED to change the dates. *eyes rolled* Read this post and this post to know the complete story.

After giving some mock tests at home, I would NOT be surprise if Keatkeat fails his Chinese Test. *giggle* Well, let’s see if he is in guessing luck today then… *laugh*

Yup! I just had to ask, “Is there any form of communication between teachers teaching different subjects?”

Miss N. (Keatkeat’s Chinese Teacher) replied, “Yes.”

Me: “If yes, then may I know what is the reason for arranging Both Maths and Chinese tests on the same day?”

Miss N. “What? I did not know about that.”

In my head I was going, “Huh?! But you just said you guys communicate with each other and now you said you did not know?!”

Miss N. continued to explain, “We have a representative for each class to ‘coordinate’, to prevent such issues from happening. For Primary One students, we would not want to give them two tests on the same day. Let me feedback this…. This should not have happened.”

So it was the mistake of the representative which stressed us up. *eyes rolled* Now I am hoping for good news next week….. *fingers crossed*

Keatkeat’s school which was my Primary School too, decided to initiate a new system of assessment. Its back to the good old days. *wink*

Seriously, it does not matter to me, but what nudged me to write this post was the CHINESE TESTS AND MATHS TESTS both fall on the SAME DAY! *faint*

Man! Keatkeat’s stress level rose when he marked it down on his calendar. “Huh? 2 Tests on the same day? Then no time to play!” was his immediate response.

A little update on his progress. His Maths is Awesome so long as he stops being over-confident of himself and starts making silly mistakes. How silly are his mistakes? Here is an example:

He did all the sums right, but he copied the letters wrongly! *faint*

Silly Enough? No? Look at the next one:-

He forgot to write the letter “m” for monkeys and “b” for bananas!!! *Double faint*

And that was how he could not get Full Marks for his maths exercises. What a waste! *pout*

So 11th March is the ‘deadly day’. Both Maths and Chinese Test. I call these two subjects his “A” subjects. Why? Well, his Maths is Awesome and his Chinese is Awful!

His Chinese is so bad that his dad is seriously considering to get him into a tuition center. *eyes rolled* To me, nahhh…. its expected and I can accept that fact, but not his beloved Papa.

Oh well, we shall see his performance after the Tests on 11th March first, before his Papa takes any actions.

This was what he got for his VERY FIRST Chinese Spelling *huge laugh*:

I was impressed with his result because WE DID NOT KNOW THERE WAS CHINESE SPELLING!!! Hey, without learning from home, he got 2 correct!! That’s awesome! *laugh*

Growing up in a COMPLETELY English-speaking family was really hard for me. It affected my results for my Chinese language badly. My father speaks English, Cantonese and Melayu. My mother speaks English, Cantonese and Hainanese.

So I am expecting the same for Keatkeat. Because of my poor Chinese, and I had embarrassed myself globally with this post, I am not having any expectation from Keatkeat that he will excel in this language either. That is why I can ‘celebrate‘ such results.

How come we did not know there was Chinese Spelling?

Well, the teacher gave out this sheet of paper. Told the children to write the Chinese Words and the Hanyu Pinyin 3 times each.

Allan and I thought this was just another Chinese homework. We completely missed out the word “Ting Xie”, which is Spelling for Chinese.

Keatkeat came back sulking with that 2/10 score.

1 day BEFORE the next Ting Xie, Keatkeat’s Chinese teacher called me up and said these “Your boy is very attentive in class. Whenever I ask the class to read aloud, he would too. If he does not understand anything, he would ask as well. But errrr…. may I know why did he do so badly for his Ting Xie?”

I laughed so loud. I think I scared the teacher a little! *huge laugh* I explained that it was our error and it will not happen again. I asked if my boy needs to learn both the Chinese Words and the Hanyu Pinyin, she said “No, we will just test him on the Hanyu Pinyin.”

2nd Ting Xie:

Yippee! So much better. Then I saw Chinese words. And Keatkeat was unhappy that he could not write the Chinese Characters correctly. (Teacher circled no. 10 “didi”)

As I had mentioned in the English spelling post, Keatkeat, being a perfectionist, he does not like to see crosses and now, he does not like to see circles on his book either. He was upset and so was I.

Why does he need to write the Chinese characters when its not tested on? Worse,  if he gets it wrong, he needs to do correction like the 2nd picture for his First Ting Xie (scroll all the way up to the top of the post). For correction, he needs to write both the Hanyu Pinyin and the Chinese characters 3 times!

Allan spoke with the Chinese teacher. This time she said a different thing, “We will test them on Hanyu Pinyin just for the first 3 months. Thereafter, it will be Hanyu Pinyin and Chinese characters. So we want them to Try writing both now, to get used to it.”

*Faint*

So every week becomes 30 spelling words to learn!!!! 10 English words. 10 Chinese characters. 10 Hanyu Pinyin!

Keatkeat does not like to do correction. Oh well, who does?! *eyes rolled* So now, though the teacher still gives points for correct Hanyu Pinyin with wrong Chinese characters, my boy does not want to get the Chinese characters wrong either, so that he can skip doing correction.

*sigh*

3rd Ting Xie:

He got it all correct for Hanyu Pinyin, but was still penalised for the wrong Chinese Characters. *sigh*

Keatkeat was unhappy again.

But you know what?! I am sooooooo proud of him. Someone who has no interest in Chinese at all can make such amazing effort in pushing himself…. *Kudos*

So now, Keatkeat is working hard for his Ting Xie because English Spelling has become a breeze for him! Whoo-hoo! *wink*

Jiayou Keatkeat!!! I know you can master learning both Hanyu Pinyin and Chinese Characters BEFORE the 3months ‘probation’ period. *Grin*

Cos after 3 months, the scores will be affected, if he gets the Chinese Characters wrong and THAT is the last thing he wants…..