How to better prepare Pri 6 pupils for secondary school

Given that the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) will end by the first week of October, Primary 6 pupils will have almost three months before they embark on a brand-new journey in their secondary schools in the coming year.

As a mother of two children, I am often thinking about how we can better help our children and students get ready for secondary school life holistically.

Not in terms of setting them up to be strong academic performers but to show them how to live wisely and healthily.

Otherwise, they may end up resorting to unhealthy ways to cope with their emotional and mental well-being in the early years of secondary school.

Students who have been through the grind have said that secondary school education can be so overwhelming.

These included coping with the stresses and pressures of having to excel academically, identifying a “good” co-curricular activity, managing the “minefields” of peer pressure, navigating the unspoken rules of friendships and, sometimes, the challenging relationships between them and the adults in their lives.

Coupled with having to manage puberty and the physiological, emotional and hormonal changes that come with the growth spurt, it can be a bewildering time for them.

Being prepared will certainly put the child and the parents at an advantage because it can be quite a rude shock for many students when they first enter secondary school.

For example, from the four main subjects that they must study in primary school, they will have to manage nine subjects in secondary school.

It will also be a new physical environment, with new friends to make and new social dynamics to handle.

One may call this a preparatory programme in which they familiarise themselves with what to expect and how to manage themselves in the journey ahead.

This may include how to:

• Manage their time and energy

• Develop proper studying techniques

• Learn relaxation techniques and the art of resting properly

• Increase mental toughness

• Embark on a practice of reflecting and writing journals

• Boost their digital literacy

• Identify signs of digital addictions

• Become financially literate

This list is not exhaustive and parents would know which areas need more work or focus for their child.

The last three months of the year are precious because the Pri 6 pupils are still relatively “malleable” in their thinking and with the PSLE off their minds, they can hopefully be more receptive in learning new and interesting skills and competencies without having the thought of achieving top scores.

With this generation of digital natives, parents may also want to think about using tech-savvy and gamification techniques when putting together this preparatory programme in order to increase its efficacy.

Padlet, a digital tool that works like an online notice board, is a visually appealing platform that may be used to start children on the practice of reflecting and writing journals.

Parents may even leave comments on what their children have “posted” on the notice board and share their own reflections by creating their own notes on the main wall.

Children may also be introduced to the Pomodoro time-management technique, which trains them to work in intervals of 25 minutes before taking a break of five minutes and resuming another block of 25 minutes — with the cycle repeating itself.

The Pomodoro technique is especially useful for students who tend to procrastinate, get distracted or get overwhelmed by large amounts of tasks, and a Pomodoro mobile application can help them to manage their work in bite-sized chunks.

Students may be taught how to use Google Drive and Evernote as well, to keep notes and reference materials in an orderly manner.

There are good apps that help students to create mind-maps in a more efficient manner. This will be especially useful when they start studying more subjects in secondary school.

A recent development I have noticed and am concerned about is that students are progressively given digital devices from the Ministry of Education for e-learning.

What happens then is that instead of seeking help and guidance from trusted adults and reliable sources of information, the children may resort to seeking help from Google because of the promise of anonymity, ease, speed, convenience of “solutions” being provided and, most dangerous of it all, there is this illusion that search engines seem to know everything.

If time and resources permit — and these do not have to be completed before they enter secondary school — I would recommend a few more activities for children to build their sense of civic-mindedness.

Being at the cusp of young adulthood, they should get used to being problem-solvers by employing critical thinking and be provided with the knowledge and values to make right decisions.

This can be facilitated with good books such as Wonder, depicting the life of a special-needs child and how he triumphed despite being bullied in school, and movies such as Hidden Figures, where the protagonists faced discrimination and how they triumphed with sheer hard work, excellent work ethics and by banding together to support one another.

The children may be taught to do a simple debate on what they have read or watched.

In preparing for the debate, they can learn how to do research, identify credible sources of information from the internet, learn to agree to disagree with teammates, learn to speak respectfully, mediate, apologise if and when tempers flare, and show grace to opposing team members.

Wisdom must be exercised, of course. It will be unrealistic to expect to cover too many areas in the three months of preparation.

After an intensive year of PSLE preparation in the midst of a pandemic, the children ought to be given purposeful rest. And certainly, “rest” here does not mean spending unlimited time on mobile devices and online games.

The preparatory programme can continue even into the first six months of secondary school.

Schools may even invite inspirational alumni to speak to the juniors via Zoom, to encourage them with their own experiences and talk about how they overcame difficulties as new students.

In the corporate world, much attention is given to the first 100 days of a new C-suite leader or new manager.

In the same vein, we can also focus on the first 100 days of a Secondary 1 student and ensure the student knows how to pace his or her studies, have a healthy understanding of what success looks like in school, know where to seek help if needed, know how to truly rest and how to identify distress in oneself and their peers.

As the adage goes, it takes a village to raise a child. It does not have to be the role of only the Ministry of Education or schools to equip our students for the road ahead.

If you are an entrepreneur, perhaps you may reach out to your alma mater or your children’s schools to ask if you can give a talk on the entrepreneurial journey you have taken.

If you have just left secondary school and have found ways to keep calm in the midst of the daily pressures of school work, perhaps you may produce TikTok videos to offer some tips. 

We can all start watching out for our young ones, help one another and strengthen community resilience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Yvonne Kong-Ho works in a university, specialising in workforce development. She has a son aged 12 taking his PSLE this year and a daughter who is 10.