The Pre-Primary 1 Parents Must-Have:
The P1 Parents’ Survival Guide to Primary School
Being a mother of a Primary (Elementary) school student and having been a teacher in a Primary (Elementary) school in Singapore, I will like to share with you about how you can prepare your child in the years before your child enter primary school. In this series of tips, I will be writing about some areas that you should look into years before your child enters primary school.
Survival Tip 1: Ensure your child has a good grasp of the English and Mother tongue language
For the English language, is your child able to:
- converse in English?
- read simple English words?
- understand instructions in English?
- read, understand and spell the words found in simple big books?
- read and understand instructions and passages?
- construct simple sentences.
Thus, you should check that your child not only can converse in grammatically correct English sentences, he can also read simple words. Ideally, he has learned phonics in his pre-school.
For the mother tongue language, is your child able to
- converse in his mother tongue language
- read simple mother tongue words.
- For Chinese, he will be taught the Chinese version of phonics “Han yu pin yin” within the first few months of Primary 1 and expected to grasp it well.
In order to ensure that your child has picked up the necessary skills in both the English and mother tongue language, you should choose a pre-school where your child is taught the basic English and mother tongue language skills.
For English, you may like to consider a school that
• use phonics to teach the pupils to read simple words.
• has a rich and fun bilingual learning environment.
You may also consider supplementing your child’s lessons in his pre-school with enrichment classes. When your child is proficient in the English language, then he will be able to cope with other subjects like Mathematics and Science.
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