Part 1: An overview of the 5 major categories of learning abilities a child needs

Part 2: An analyse of the learning process based on example questions

In this final part, we will provide parents with some behavioural indicators that they can use to carry out a ‘DIY’ assessment of their child’s level of learning abilities.

(Do NOTE, however, that these indicators are not meant for any diagnosis purposes, but rather to provide parents with a better understanding of the area(s) of learning their child may be having difficulty with)

In Part 1, we mentioned that for a child to display academic performance, they need to be equipped with 5 major categories of underlying abilities for learning.

Using the 2 example questions below, we are going to analyse the learning processes that each child goes through in order to get to the correct answer:

In a school learning environment, students are given many different types of academic tasks to assess their level of content knowledge and understanding; and the quality of their answers and work will determine their academic performance.

When we see a child’s performance in tasks such as spelling, mental sums, reading comprehension, problem sums, composition writing, oral conversation, reading, grammer,  etc, we are actually seeing a display of his/her ability to learn. 

Entering Primary 1 is a very exciting time for a child and the parents but it is also a time of great adjustment and transition. Being well prepared and ready for school would make a great start to the exciting learning journey ahead.
How then can parents make sure their child is well-prepared and ready for learning at the next level?

Personally, having seen 3 cohorts (that makes about 600 + of them) of children transitioning from Kindergarten to Primary and having the privilege to assess each of them on their readiness for school has given us one very important insight – school readiness is more than and beyond just the academics.

Some questions to get us thinking about what our children are learning and more importantly, HOW are they learning.

Question 1: Does your child learn English, Maths, Science and Mother Tongue in school?

Question 2: Is your child given tasks/homework such as spelling, mental sums, comprehension, composition, problem sums, reading?

Summing up the above two questions:

All children learn the same subjects in school and are given academic tasks to perform so that we can evaluate their achievement levels, as compared to the rest of their peers.

The myriad of records that Singapore has amassed over the years has certainly made our tiny red dot stand tall on the global stage. But like a coin with dual faces, there are always good records and not so good records. Among the latter is something that all parents should be concerned about, i.e. Singapore has one of the highest prevalence of myopia in the world!

No thanks to children being engaged more frequently in ‘near work’ such as working on the computer, playing handheld video games, reading, writing or doing intricate craftwork, statistics show that about 30% of Primary 1 children and more than 60% of Primary 6 children have defective vision in Singapore. And the worrying fact is that the proportion of Singaporeans with high myopia is much larger compared to those in Western populations.

Your child’s table companion

Sometimes, we may confuse a child’s level of school maturity with his/her readiness for school learning. No doubt these two concepts are related; but they are actually referring to quite different aspects of a child’s development.

School maturity usually refers to the biological growing process in a child’s development, in other words, has the child reached the age for certain levels of education. For example, when a child is 5 years old, they are usually ready for Kindergarten 1 and when they reach 7 years old, its time for them to enter Primary 1.

However, a child’s biological maturity does not guarantee that he/she will automatically be ready for learning at the ‘expected’ level.