A Review Of 2022 PSLE Science Paper

The PSLE Sci­ence Exam­i­na­tion Paper 2022 has been pub­lished. In this blog­post, we will be giv­ing an overview of the paper and also dis­cussing some ques­tions from Book­let B which many stu­dents found chal­leng­ing.

Booklet A Multiple-Choice Questions (56 marks)

Book­let A which con­sists of 28 MCQs was set to help most stu­dents score well and pass the exam­i­na­tion. Most ques­tions test stu­dents on the con­cepts which stu­dents would have already encoun­tered from past year prac­tice papers in a sim­i­lar type of ques­tion if he or she had done suf­fi­cient revi­sion and prac­tices. There are usu­al­ly only 2 to 3 ques­tions which are not con­cept-based but rather, require the stu­dents to study the infor­ma­tion or data giv­en in the ques­tion and iden­ti­fy the answer that best describes and con­cludes the infor­ma­tion or data. For­tu­nate­ly, the infor­ma­tion or data pro­vid­ed are easy to com­pre­hend and direct. Hence, stu­dents should be able to select the right answer. Over­all, there are no chal­leng­ing ques­tions in Book­let A and those who are strong in their con­cepts should not find it a strug­gle.

Booklet B Open-Ended Questions (44 marks)

The more dif­fi­cult ques­tions lie in Book­let B where stu­dents are required to apply what they have learnt into real-life sce­nar­ios. It is no longer a sur­prise that there will be ques­tions in Book­let B that are chal­leng­ing and out-of-the-box. We have tra­di­tion­al­ly cat­e­gorised these ques­tions as “the dif­fer­en­tia­tors”. These ques­tions sep­a­rate the AL1/2 stu­dents with the rest and are worth approx­i­mate­ly 10 to 15 marks. This mark allo­ca­tion is sim­i­lar to pre­vi­ous years, thus we expect this trend to con­tin­ue in 2023. Inter­est­ing­ly, since the 2021 PSLE Sci­ence Paper, we can see that some ques­tions are not imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous which text­book con­cepts are being test­ed. It is now hard­er for stu­dents to link the ques­tion to the top­ic and con­cepts. We shall now take a look at some of these ques­tions.

The first inter­est­ing appli­ca­tion ques­tion in Book­let B was about the “out­door toi­let used for col­lect­ing human waste”. The set-up shown was an uncom­mon sight for stu­dents. As you can see from the dia­gram below, the human waste was col­lect­ed in the pail and part (a) of the ques­tion was “why mos­qui­toes like to lay their eggs on the waste”.

The dia­gram only showed a pail with waste in it as labelled. There was no clear indi­ca­tion or infor­ma­tion of what the waste con­tained. With no fur­ther elab­o­ra­tion of the waste, stu­dents may not be sure why mos­qui­toes would like to lay their eggs on it.

Stu­dents might assume that the waste is dirty and unhy­gien­ic. Hence,  the waste would attract mos­qui­toes to lay their eggs. This is not true as it is a known text­book con­cept that mos­qui­toes require stag­nant water to lay their eggs.

If a stu­dent is able to remain calm and recall that the young of mos­qui­toes live on the sur­face of stag­nant water and liv­ing things need food to sur­vive, he or she will be able to men­tion that the waste con­tains water and nutri­ents for the young of mos­qui­toes to live in and feed off the nutri­ents.

The sec­ond inter­est­ing appli­ca­tion ques­tion in Book­let B was about a turkey being cooked in the oven. The oven was heat­ed to a tem­per­a­ture of 160˚C. The turkey at room tem­per­a­ture was then placed in the oven to cook for two hours as shown in the dia­gram below.

When a ther­mome­ter was insert­ed into the turkey after two hours, the tem­per­a­ture of the turkey was not at 160˚C. Stu­dents were asked to explain this result. This is a chal­lenge for stu­dents when the ques­tion tests them to apply their known text­book con­cepts on a real-life sce­nario. The answer to this ques­tion requires the appli­ca­tion of the prop­er­ties of heat and iden­ti­fy­ing if the turkey is a good or poor con­duc­tor of heat.

Even though the turkey is in the 160˚C oven for 2 hours, the turkey is a poor con­duc­tor of heat, thus the heat from the oven will be trans­ferred into the inside of the turkey slow­ly. Stu­dents may have found this ques­tion dif­fi­cult because:

1. Stu­dents failed to asso­ciate the turkey as a poor con­duc­tor of heat.
2. Stu­dents are usu­al­ly asked to iden­ti­fy the best or poor­est con­duc­tors of heat based on data pre­sent­ed in the form of a table or graph which shows the increase/decrease in tem­per­a­ture for dif­fer­ent materials/objects.
3. Stu­dents assume that the turkey will be ful­ly cooked and reach the same tem­per­a­ture as the oven after 2 hours as it is a rea­son­ably long time.

The uncon­ven­tion­al way the ques­tion is set may have dis­ori­ent­ed many stu­dents. Stu­dents were thrown off guard since this turkey ques­tion was sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from the com­mon types of ques­tions stu­dents would see in their school prac­tices and exam­i­na­tion papers. This ques­tion aimed to test their abil­i­ty to apply and adapt the con­cepts they have learnt.

The last appli­ca­tion ques­tion in Book­let B involved an elec­tri­cal cir­cuit. AB and CD are iden­ti­cal iron rods that are fixed in posi­tion. PQ is an iron bar with a ham­mer at one end that rests on a fixed met­al nail. When the switch was closed, the ham­mer struck the bell repeat­ed­ly to give a con­tin­u­ous “ting…ting…ting” sound. Stu­dents had to explain how the sound was pro­duced.

For a 2 marks ques­tion, the answer is lengthy and tedious since stu­dents are required to explain the con­tin­u­ous ‘ting’ sound giv­en off by the bell by analysing a set-up many stu­dents would find com­pli­cat­ed. With­out the prop­er writ­ing tech­nique, stu­dents might lose marks if they do not explain the set-up metic­u­lous­ly in a com­plete loop that repeats con­tin­u­ous­ly.

At Think Teach Acad­e­my, we pro­vide our stu­dents with writ­ing tech­niques to bet­ter guide them to answer such com­mon­ly test­ed and high dif­fi­cul­ty ques­tions. For such ques­tions which cov­er the top­ic of elec­tric­i­ty, we pro­vide a 4‑steps tech­nique to struc­ture their answers to open-end­ed ques­tions in a man­ner that will con­sis­tent­ly secure marks ful­ly.

The 4‑steps tech­nique is as fol­lows:

1. Sit­u­a­tion
2. Open/closed cir­cuit
3. Elec­tric cur­rent flow
4. Out­come

Here is how stu­dents are coached to apply this writ­ing tech­nique to answer the ques­tion.

(1. Sit­u­a­tion) When he closed the switch,

(2. Open/closed cir­cuit) a closed cir­cuit is formed, allow­ing

(3. Elec­tric cur­rent flow) elec­tric cur­rent to flow through the coils,

(4. Out­come) caus­ing AB and CD to become elec­tro­mag­nets and attract iron bar PQ, caus­ing its ham­mer to hit the bell pro­duc­ing a ‘ting’ sound.

(1. Sit­u­a­tion) Sub­se­quent­ly, iron bar PQ does not touch the fixed met­al nail when it is attract­ed to AB and CD,

(2. Open/closed cir­cuit) caus­ing an open cir­cuit to be formed

(3. Elec­tric cur­rent flow) thus there is no longer an elec­tric cur­rent flow­ing through the cir­cuit.

(4. Out­come) This caus­es AB and CD to lose mag­net­ism, and can no longer attract PQ. Thus PQ returns to the fixed met­al nail. Doing so forms a closed cir­cuit again which allows an elec­tric cur­rent to flow again, repeat­ing the cycle that caus­es the con­tin­u­ous ‘ting’…’ting’ sound.

With this tech­nique, stu­dents will be able to craft their answer accu­rate­ly, reduc­ing the chance of los­ing marks.

Concluding Remarks

Con­sis­tent with his­tor­i­cal trends, the answers to the PSLE Sci­ence exam­i­na­tion ques­tions span the full breadth of con­cepts stu­dents have learnt from P3 to P6. Recent­ly, the key to suc­cess in the PSLE Sci­ence exam­i­na­tion is the abil­i­ty to link known text­book con­cepts to real life sit­u­a­tions.

At Think Teach Acad­e­my, we pro­vide top­i­cal Sci­ence posts at the end of every top­ic to broad­en our stu­dents’ hori­zons, shar­ing with them how sci­ence con­cepts learnt in the class­room are applic­a­ble to every­day things hap­pen­ing around them. This helps our stu­dents avoid the pit­fall of being too fix­at­ed on being com­fort­able only with ques­tions they fre­quent­ly see, and move away from mem­o­ris­ing answers to struc­tur­ing answers.

Our vision for all stu­dents who learn Sci­ence at Think Teach Acad­e­my is that each child  devel­ops crit­i­cal think­ing skills from their for­ma­tive years, set­ting the stage for them to become Thinkers of Tomor­row.