With the removal of mid-year exams, how can gauge your child's current progress? We share some tips on how to support your child's learning even without mid-year exams!
Mid-year exams became things of the past last year, in an end to years of tradition that has met both celebration and dismay from parents.
Both reactions make sense. While the death of mid-year exams does mean less stress for students, it can also make mid-year performance assessment harder for their guardians.
Fortunately, there are several ways to address this, many of which we’ve implemented with our own students at Aspire Hub. We’ll share the most effective ones today to show how parents of primary and secondary school students can support learning even without mid-year exams.
Simple, yes, but it’s one of the best ways to see how your child’s education is faring. The best part is that it can also help you build an honest, open relationship with your child. How? By showing them non-judgemental support even when they reveal a weakness.
You can start by asking them what subjects they feel least confident about and why. Primary students may need more guidance identifying these than Secondary students, who are usually old enough to know what they need help with.
Once you’ve identified problem areas, you can put together a plan to support them. Above all, let them know that you’re there as a source of aid and not pressure.
This is a good chance too for you to check on your child’s emotional and mental state. For example, you can try to figure out whether or not your child is overtaxing themselves with study or may need a little break to improve performance.
We’re always saying at Aspire Hub that teachers and parents should act in concert for children’s development. That’s because they’re responsible for managing the two most important learning environments for these young minds.
There are many ways you can work with your child’s teacher to figure out how your child is doing in the first half of the school year. If you have PTMs or parent-teacher meetings scheduled, for instance, attending them is a good start.
Another thing you can do is talk to the teachers of your child’s weaker subjects. The teacher can help you figure out what exactly your child needs help with in those, as well as how you can support them even past the classroom.
At Aspire Hub, we’ll even provide recommendations with our updates to parents when discussing such matters, which is how we build strong parent-teacher relationships that benefit students. With our suggestions, parents can easily support and enhance the learning students get in our classes.
This is where it’s useful to have set goals for your child from the start of the school year. If you have an objective to look at, the two of you can more easily check on progress midway.
The idea is to think about whether or not your child is on track to achieve the goals you’ve set. Are there changes you can make to the routine or schedule that can help? Is there some sort of enrichment activity you can provide that would further their progress?
Talking to your child and their teachers is one way to assess their performance without mid-year exams, of course, but there are others. You can also take a look at things like homework, which shows you a tonne of things. You can learn what they’re studying, how well they understand or apply it, and what they’re getting wrong or right.
You can make plans based on what your review revieals. You may determine that your child needs support in just one subject, for instance, and can afford to spend more time focusing on it in the coming term due to excellent performance in other subjects.
Or you can use insights to create your own assessments, like informal orals and quizzes at home. You can even gamify these to make the process easier!
While the mid-year exams may be gone, other exams remain – and children will still need help taking on those.
That’s why it can be useful to still work on your child’s overall exam-readiness at this point. Giving them timed mock exams or exercises is a good way to do that.
The idea is to get them used to time-based assessments even now, well ahead of things like the final year exams or PSLEs. This also gives you opportunities to show them crucial strategies that can help in the future, like smart answering techniques.
We actually offer time-based practice sessions like these at Aspire Hub, where even non-Aspire-Hub-students may join if they register. Sign your child up for one of these to take advantage of our curated timed exercises in Term 2!
It’s perfectly understandable to be worried about whether or not your assessment and support will be enough to help your child. You have responsibilities and tasks of your own, after all, that may make some of the earlier suggestions a challenge.
That’s where we come in. At Aspire Hub, we have highly experienced tutor-coaches who can not only evaluate your child’s performance but also discover how to motivate them. This can lead to them becoming more invested in learning and their own development.
Our personalised study plans are also based on each student’s strengths and weaknesses, providing an individualised approach for best results. We also even small-group learning to give students a socialised study experience that nevertheless maximises individual student attention from the teacher.
With our help, you can ensure that your child’s education is always kept on track, even without guides like the mid-year exams. We’ll monitor their progress, further it and even try to get them ahead of their peers, and do all we can to motivate them to keep learning!
If you’re interested, enquire now for more information on our programmes, as well as our 15 centres islandwide!
Mid-year exams became things of the past last year, in an end to years of tradition that has met both celebration and dismay from parents.
Both reactions make sense. While the death of mid-year exams does mean less stress for students, it can also make mid-year performance assessment harder for their guardians.
Fortunately, there are several ways to address this, many of which we’ve implemented with our own students at Aspire Hub. We’ll share the most effective ones today to show how parents of primary and secondary school students can support learning even without mid-year exams.
Simple, yes, but it’s one of the best ways to see how your child’s education is faring. The best part is that it can also help you build an honest, open relationship with your child. How? By showing them non-judgemental support even when they reveal a weakness.
You can start by asking them what subjects they feel least confident about and why. Primary students may need more guidance identifying these than Secondary students, who are usually old enough to know what they need help with.
Once you’ve identified problem areas, you can put together a plan to support them. Above all, let them know that you’re there as a source of aid and not pressure.
This is a good chance too for you to check on your child’s emotional and mental state. For example, you can try to figure out whether or not your child is overtaxing themselves with study or may need a little break to improve performance.
We’re always saying at Aspire Hub that teachers and parents should act in concert for children’s development. That’s because they’re responsible for managing the two most important learning environments for these young minds.
There are many ways you can work with your child’s teacher to figure out how your child is doing in the first half of the school year. If you have PTMs or parent-teacher meetings scheduled, for instance, attending them is a good start.
Another thing you can do is talk to the teachers of your child’s weaker subjects. The teacher can help you figure out what exactly your child needs help with in those, as well as how you can support them even past the classroom.
At Aspire Hub, we’ll even provide recommendations with our updates to parents when discussing such matters, which is how we build strong parent-teacher relationships that benefit students. With our suggestions, parents can easily support and enhance the learning students get in our classes.
This is where it’s useful to have set goals for your child from the start of the school year. If you have an objective to look at, the two of you can more easily check on progress midway.
The idea is to think about whether or not your child is on track to achieve the goals you’ve set. Are there changes you can make to the routine or schedule that can help? Is there some sort of enrichment activity you can provide that would further their progress?
Talking to your child and their teachers is one way to assess their performance without mid-year exams, of course, but there are others. You can also take a look at things like homework, which shows you a tonne of things. You can learn what they’re studying, how well they understand or apply it, and what they’re getting wrong or right.
You can make plans based on what your review revieals. You may determine that your child needs support in just one subject, for instance, and can afford to spend more time focusing on it in the coming term due to excellent performance in other subjects.
Or you can use insights to create your own assessments, like informal orals and quizzes at home. You can even gamify these to make the process easier!
While the mid-year exams may be gone, other exams remain – and children will still need help taking on those.
That’s why it can be useful to still work on your child’s overall exam-readiness at this point. Giving them timed mock exams or exercises is a good way to do that.
The idea is to get them used to time-based assessments even now, well ahead of things like the final year exams or PSLEs. This also gives you opportunities to show them crucial strategies that can help in the future, like smart answering techniques.
We actually offer time-based practice sessions like these at Aspire Hub, where even non-Aspire-Hub-students may join if they register. Sign your child up for one of these to take advantage of our curated timed exercises in Term 2!
It’s perfectly understandable to be worried about whether or not your assessment and support will be enough to help your child. You have responsibilities and tasks of your own, after all, that may make some of the earlier suggestions a challenge.
That’s where we come in. At Aspire Hub, we have highly experienced tutor-coaches who can not only evaluate your child’s performance but also discover how to motivate them. This can lead to them becoming more invested in learning and their own development.
Our personalised study plans are also based on each student’s strengths and weaknesses, providing an individualised approach for best results. We also even small-group learning to give students a socialised study experience that nevertheless maximises individual student attention from the teacher.
With our help, you can ensure that your child’s education is always kept on track, even without guides like the mid-year exams. We’ll monitor their progress, further it and even try to get them ahead of their peers, and do all we can to motivate them to keep learning!
If you’re interested, enquire now for more information on our programmes, as well as our 15 centres islandwide!
