Recently, T1 had her Mid Year Examination at school and her French teacher who happens to teach her English, commended her on her essay. When I’d gone to the school for report card day, the teacher was appalled that I hadn’t yet read her essay from her test paper. *Gulp*

GUILTY AS CHARGED!!! Hello, I don’t have time to go through all her test papers, OK? She’ll be 8 in September. Wow, 8? Yeah, 8! OMG. My baby T1 is going to be 8??? Hang on a minute. Wasn’t it just yesterday that we met? Oh gosh.

Anyway, in a few months…….T1 will be a grand EIGHT.

Just for the record, she started International School this year and is loving it to the max. The curriculum is a lot more interesting and the approach of learning is very much cognitive. She is a learning a hell of a lot more in EVERYTHING than she did when she was doing the local syllabus.

I wanted to share her essay with you since the teacher thought it was so great for a 7+ year old, she just came from teaching in the UK and said that the kids there were not at this standard. But despite saying it was a fantastic essay, her grade for it was only 85%.

T1 is officially in Year 3, but is actually performing Year 4 of the British curriculum. Don’t ask me why. The school is kiasu but it’s a great school.

What do you think? Is this generally the standard of a 7+ year old or a Year 4 student? To me, it is an average essay of a 7 year old la. When I was that age, I wrote like that too!

The Brief: Imagine you have just been to the Zoo. Tell us what creatures you saw, including what their behaviour was like and their appearance. (There were no helping words given at all. This brief was all that was given and a free hand to write)

T1’s Essay:

Yesterday, I went to the zoo. In the zoo, I saw many different animals such as lions, tigers, monkeys and horses. My favourite animal was the monkey. My sister’s favourite animal was also the monkey. My mother’s favourite animal was the flamingo and my father’s was the lion. 

The lion was very fierce. It’s mane was very furry and it also roared very loudly. The flamingo was pink in colour and it was very graceful. The monkey was the funniest yet the craziest. It was jumping from tree to tree and my sister and I were going crazy while watching them. It was eleven o’clock and it was the animals feeding time. We saw the penguins which looked like black, white and yellow things. The zookeeper threw live fish and the penguin jumped down to fetch it and he ate it. 

At twelve o’clock, we had our lunch at the restaurant (she was penalised for wrong spelling of the word restaurant) in the zoo which had a playpen (she was penalised for wrong spelling of the word playpen) full of puppies and another playpen full of kittens. After lunch, we went back to the zoo. We saw more animals and then it was time to go home. My mother asked, “Did you like the zoo?” and I said, “Yes.” My sister said, “Let’s come again!” My father said, “Maybe next year?”

I must say I was impressed that she used the words mane and graceful because I hadn’t realised she knew them.

Since I’ve posted her English essay, I might as well post her Bahasa essay below.

The Brief: Keluarga kamu telah menyambut hari lahir kamu. Ceritakan sambutan majlis itu.

T1’s Essay:

Hari jadi saya ialah pada Mei. (which is bullshit) Pada hari jadi saya, saya ada banyak kawan datang. Saya ada hari jadi di rumah. Kek saya ialah “pokemon”. Kawan saya menyanyikan lagu hari jadi ke saya. Saya berasa gembira. Kawan saya makan tiga kek. Saya makan dua sahaja. Kek saya berasa coklat. Kawan saya berasa gembira. Kawan saya hadir dan memberikan hadiah. Adik saya makan lima kek. Kwan saya pulang di rumah. Ibu saya cakap tak ada jam (OMG!!! She’s translating me saying No TIME! No TIME!). Jam ialah pukul 3:00. Saya, kawan, adik saya dan ibubapa saya berasa sangat gembira.

Of course, this is her weakest subject of all. I copied it word for word above so as you can imagine, it was full of REDS!!! But she still managed a 74% for it. Interestingly, despite her weakness in Bahasa, she miraculously scored a 98% for her Bahasa grammar paper. She also did 99% for Mandarin too thanks to her Mandarin tuition teacher who teaches at another international school and T2’s Nanny, because the Hubs and I only know Wor Ai Ni – jack Mandarin.

Below is her Mandarin Essay. I’m sure Mandarin is wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyy tougher in a Chinese School but I am already amazed that she can write sentences in Mandarin for I haven’t a clue AT ALL!

For her Mandarin grammar (is there such a thing?):

She didn’t get any 100% for any subject (although several close!) but everything else were A’s – I really cannot remember what exactly her scores were but high marks for Science and Math and a lower score for Geography. Her Geography questions I thought were tough! These were the questions for Geography. The rest of the paper was objective.

1. Your community has decided to clean up a ocal beach. Give suggestions to your community leaders on how they can clean up the beach.  (12 empty lines were given with 6 marks allocated)

2. Name 3 items that you can recycle from home. (3 marks)

3. Write a short paragraph trying to persuade a friend to recycle. Be sure to tell your friend at least two reasons why he should recycle. (15 empty lines given with 8 marks allocated)

The UK is moving further away from the scoring system for Primary School Kids as statistics show that they are not conducive at all to the development of young children. I completely agree. Below the age of 12 (plus minus), children should focus on developing their self esteem, confidence, creativity and social skills to lay on a solid, GOOD foundation. So parents, now is really not the time to score and compare grades. Think about this – a 3 year old could read if you taught her how to read but teaching a bright and intelligent 3 year old to read would take at least 2-3 months. Yet, if you taught a 7 year old to read, it would take 2-3 days. This only means that whilst struggling to read at 3 years old, your 3 year old child (although he can now read!) has lost out on 2-3 months of everything else. Is it worth it?

Absolutely not.

 

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