Differences Parents Must Know Between Primary & Secondary Math

I. Introduction

It is almost the start of anoth­er school year and your child has received their Sec­ondary school post­ing results. If you are not sat­is­fied with the school or stream your child has been post­ed to, you would be hap­py to know that this is not the end of the road. There is always a chance for your child to switch schools and streams which usu­al­ly hap­pens at the end of Sec­ondary 1 and is depen­dent on the aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance of your child in Sec­ondary 1. In oth­er words, do well for Sec­ondary 1 and your child will get the sec­ond bite of the cher­ry. They would be in good stand­ing to switch schools and streams. For more infor­ma­tion on this, you would need to con­tact the par­tic­u­lar school and enquire what their require­ments and process­es are like.

Whether or not you are con­tent with where your child is at cur­rent­ly, we are sure you would like your child to have a smooth tran­si­tion into Sec­ondary school. For this pur­pose, it would be impor­tant for you and your child to appre­ci­ate the dif­fer­ences between Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary school.

Pri­ma­ry school and Sec­ondary school are remote­ly the same. We are not just talk­ing about the mul­ti­tude of sub­jects a Sec­ondary school stu­dent has to take, but are also high­light­ing the dif­fer­ences in con­tent and focus of the three main sub­jects: Eng­lish, Math­e­mat­ics and Sci­ence. For the pur­pos­es of this arti­cle, we will only touch on Math­e­mat­ics. Watch out for our cov­er­age on Eng­lish and Sci­ence in our future arti­cles.

II. Secondary and Primary Mathematics

1. More than just skills based

Unlike Pri­ma­ry school math­e­mat­ics, Sec­ondary school math­e­mat­ics is more than just skills based. At the Pri­ma­ry school lev­el, stu­dents need only solve prob­lem sums using heuris­tics. At the sec­ondary school lev­el, stu­dents will still need to solve prob­lems. How­ev­er, part of being able to solve prob­lems hinges on their mas­tery of math­e­mat­ics vocab­u­lary and ter­mi­nol­o­gy. For exam­ple, stu­dents would be intro­duced to whole num­bers, ratio­nal num­bers and prime num­bers. Ques­tions would revolve around what these num­bers are and how they dif­fer from each oth­er.

2. More topics

In addi­tion to the top­ics learnt in Pri­ma­ry school, Sec­ondary one stu­dents will be taught a range of new top­ics which they have nev­er encoun­tered. These top­ics include:

Primes, HCF and LCM
Approx­i­ma­tion & Esti­ma­tion
Alge­bra & Alge­bra­ic Manip­u­la­tion
Lin­ear Equa­tions & Inequal­i­ties
Func­tions and Lin­ear Graph
Poly­gons

3. More challenging problem-solving skills

Gone are the days of solv­ing prob­lem sums using the mod­el method. In Sec­ondary one, stu­dents would learn the Alge­bra­ic method and will begin to use this method almost exclu­sive­ly to solve more chal­leng­ing prob­lem sums. While alge­bra has been intro­duced in Pri­ma­ry six, stu­dents from Sec­ondary one onwards would need to learn how to present their work­ings and solu­tions accu­rate­ly. Marks will be deduct­ed if the Alge­bra­ic method used does not show clear rea­son­ing and math­e­mat­i­cal think­ing.

An exam­ple of a prob­lem that requires the use of the Alge­bra­ic Method is as fol­lows:

III. TTA is always here for you

The pur­pose of this arti­cle is to out­line some key dif­fer­ences you should know about Sec­ondary and Pri­ma­ry school math­e­mat­ics. As with any­thing that is new and unfa­mil­iar, it would nat­u­ral­ly appear daunt­ing. But rest assured that it would get eas­i­er once your child begins to get the hang of things.

The issue is just that your child would be enter­ing a new phase of his or her life with a new school, new friends and new teach­ers. Add on CCAs and the ~9 sub­jects he/she would have to under­take and we have got­ten our­selves the hall­marks of the ulti­mate stress test.

Should you want to give your child a smoother tran­si­tion into Sec­ondary school life, you can always count on Think Teach to be here for you. At the Sec­ondary school lev­el, we offer expert tutor­ing in Eng­lish, Math­e­mat­ics and Sci­ence. Sim­ply enquire with us to find out more about the nature of our class­es, the sched­ule of our class­es and the pro­file of our teach­ers.

The learn­ing jour­ney con­tin­ues and we will always ensure we give you and your child the best.