First Topical Tests

Anthea had her 1st topical test for English & Chinese last week and she had her topical test on Math this week.

I was a little stressed over her topical tests. Reason being if she does not do well, she may need to go back for remedial classes. I have nothing against remedial classes; it’s just that I don’t want her nap routine to be disrupted. Nap is especially important as she had tuition classes in the evening on alternate days.

Last Friday, she brought back her English and Chinese test papers and I was very happy with her attempts. She had FULL marks for both papers. She scored 25/25 for English and she had 50/50 for Chinese. I went through both set of test papers. For English paper, I would say its set quite easily but of course, it follows what the teacher had taught in class. As for Chinese paper, most of it was in 汉语拼音, so to be able to score well; she must be familiar with the 拼音。

This week Wednesday, she had her Math test. I knew that she had some problem in her Math and on Tuesday evening, I had asked Adrian to give her a bit of coaching in the subject matter. After the coaching, she seems to understand the concept better. On Thursday she brought back the Math test paper and I was happy with her result - 24/25. Her mistake was on spelling error of the word “EIGHT”. She spelled “eighth”; I think she got a little confused with tuition class spelling…hee.

Both Adrian and me gave her praises for her effort. We told her it’s perfectly ok to make mistakes in test as we learn from mistake.

So far, I am very happy with her performance in both her school work & tuition work, though some time I do worried if she may be too “pressurized” with all the homework. I have been giving her my assurance that if she felt that there is too much work, then we can stop either the tuition classes or Chinese enrichment class.

Nowadays coaching a child in his/her study is no longer so simple. Many times, I tried coaching Anthea in her studies and ended up getting angry with her. I think my way of coaching is not right.

As for Adrian ways of coaching, she enjoyed it and can absorb the concept better. Think I must learn from Adrian about his coaching or go and find out more about correct ways of coaching. Adrian will be going on oversea detachment in the 2nd half year of 2009, so I better trained myself well as the 2nd half year is more crucial for Anthea.

Both Adrian and me are non-graduates and our wish for our children is to 青出于蓝; so far we are very happy with her performance and will give her our greatest encouragement through her school years.