P6 Revision Timetables: Parents Share Their Kids’ Study Routines

If your child is in Primary 6 this year, what is his or her revision strategy?


A study plan is particularly useful for
PSLE preparations, to give students not only a big-picture view of what needs to be accomplished, but a clear idea of the daily steps that they should take. Ideally, students should come up with their own plans, but many primary schoolers will still require a little hand-holding. Here’s what parents in our community have to say.


For my daughter in Primary 6, co-curricular activities have almost come to a halt, but the weekdays are still packed with extra lessons and schoolwork. To me, this already counts as revision work and I don’t assign more. Her mid-year exams begin in end-April, and these are the expectations that we’ve discussed for the four subjects:

English: My daughter’s scores for oral and composition could be better, but as her grammar is sound, I’m fine to let her be—in time, her conversational skills will improve as she gains social exposure, and she will gradually incorporate depth into her writing as she matures. Our current priority is vocabulary, and she spends 10 minutes a day testing herself using a vocabulary app. I’ve also asked her to work on a handful of practice papers running up to the exam, although I’m sceptical of the long-term benefits of working on English test and exam papers. The saving grace for me is that she encounters new words through these papers, which she feeds into her vocabulary app. In all, I don’t expect her to spend much time “revising” for English; it’s more important to me that she spends an hour or so on daily reading, for pleasure, and that she eventually gains enough interest and confidence to be inventive with the language, in her own way.

Chinese: Each week, my daughter has a one-hour supplementary Chinese class in school, and for now, a one-hour lesson with her tutor—in preparation for the PSLE, we may increase the tutoring to twice weekly during the school holidays. As we’re an interracial family that doesn’t speak Mandarin at home, the tutor has asked my daughter to memorise some choice phrases for the oral and composition exams. Apart from that, she’s had to learn how to write the characters that she will be tested on, and she’s been working on practice papers since the start of the year.

Math: I asked my daughter to choose between working on practice papers and topical exercises, and she picked practice papers. To save time, I’ve told her to focus on Paper 2 problem sums, and I’m shortlisting five papers from schools that are known for their exacting standards, such as Nanyang, Tao Nan, Nan Hua, and RGPS. My daughter marks her own work, and I would also want her to spend time redoing the questions that she got wrong, to make sure that she fully understands how to solve these problems.

Science: My daughter attends a weekly two-hour Science enrichment class, where the tutor plans to wrap up the Primary 6 syllabus by May so that they can launch into revision mode before June. She also attends a one-hour supplementary class in school, so there has already been consistent weekday revision taking place. All the same, my daughter has made a list of the topics that she will be tested on for the mid-year exams, and next to each topic, she has put two checkboxes, one for reading (her notes), and the other for review (topical exercises). She would probably need about two hours to go through the upper primary topics, and perhaps an hour for the lower primary topics.

Click here to view a sample of my daughter’s holiday study plan, as well as some of the assessment books she is using this year. — thebottomsupblog


When my daughter was in Primary 6, I planned a timetable for her during the school holidays, and not on school days. On school days, her time was spent on homework and remedial classes.

For the holidays, her daily routine would kick off between 10:00 and 10:30 a.m., and these were her responsibilities:

  1. Do assessments (one subject a day)
  2. Piano practice
  3. Lunch time, bath
  4. Read newspapers (alternating between English and Chinese newspapers each day)—write out the difficult words, find the meanings, and compose a sentence with the difficult words.
  5. Read storybooks (we borrowed Chinese and English storybooks from the library for her to read during the holidays)
  6. Play time
  7. Holiday homework

Before bedtime, we watched the Chinese news at 10:00 p.m. together. If she didn’t understand what was going on, I would explain it to her. We would pick a news event to discuss if we had the time.  

I would also mark her assessments and go through the mistakes with her at night. — daisyt


My son’s teacher gave the class a holiday timetable for the November/December school holidays in 2017. Each day’s schedule incorporated two hours of revision for each subject. In between these two-hour sessions, time was allocated for meals, TV, and reading. It even stated the total time taken for these activities: 8 hours (revision), 6.5 hours (rest and relaxation), and 9.5 hours (sleep). The recommended daily routine started at 8:30 a.m. and ended at 11:00 p.m.

The topics for Science—from Primary 3 to Primary 5—were suggested for each week. The timetable didn’t take overseas vacations into consideration, so the kids were expected to revise every day during the holidays. — Nadine


Need more study plan ideas? Click here to read a KSP member’s year-long PSLE study plan, and here to participate in the 2018 PSLE discussion thread.