preparing my son for exam?

[user1484133884]

Hi Everyone
I am a father of 2 boys.This is my first post here.
Would appreciate your advice.
My sons attend a private school.I see my sons once a week and alternate weekends,all going smoothly.
I help them with home work and attend all school activities.

Older boy in year 3 has exams in May this year.I want to help him prepare and do well in exams as i dont want to give my ex any excuse to stop contact with boys.
I grew up in Asia and and i am a qualified profession,and work full time.

Just wondering what i can do at home for my son to do well in his year 3 exam?
Regards
A

I think it would be helpful to talk this over with your ex if you're on good enough terms to make it a useful discussion. I would imagine in Y3 the amount of preparation they do outside of school should be minimal but you could always discuss ways of helping your DS' academics in more general ways? Trips to museums that interest them? Read up on their favourite topics? etc. If there's homework that needs doing over your weekend or small amounts of exam prep. you'd presumably need to lease with your ex?

I guess asking ex what she would like you to do on your weekends is out of the question?
e.g. She may want your son to just relax, or to do practice papers, or to work on his maths or whatever.

Are these exams important ones (e.g. to get into the next school), or 'just' end of year ones?
Are they in all subjects, or just maths & English?

With DD2 for y6 SATs last year I focussed on

• not getting stressed / panicked
• exam technique:

knowing when to miss out a question and move on reading the question properly

Some Asian countries can be over the top on academics to English views (just saw a documentary on S.Korea). Make sure your input is 'in line' with your ex / school's expectations. If you are worried about excuses to cut contact, doing too little or too much could both trigger that.

katie is spamming all the boards tonight....

As it is only year 3 I would just go over what work he has covered little and often from Easter onwards.

Maybe even see if there are games etc so he doesn't even realise that he is "revising" or learning.

Maybe for English when you are in the car do exercises such as how many words can you think of that mean "big" or "nice". Then discuss how the other words make a sentence more interesting. If he then has to write any story he'll probably remember different words = interesting.

If he has done any form of MFL already then just do memory testing of vocab with him. Assuming it is very low levl point at eg. the chair and ask if he knows what it is in French. This can just be done when eating a meal and so on.

The less structure the better at that age. If you go in too heavy too soon he'll be bored by the time the exams come.

Times tables and perhaps online maths games if he wants to .. no pressure...can you communicate with teacher?