[Review] Vitamin M Let's Score! PSLE Chinese Listening Comprehension Practice

 

https://vitaminm.sg/product/pslechineselisteningcompre/

Newly released Vitamin M PSLE Chinese Listening Comprehension Practice.

This package consists of 5 practices, each practice consists of 7 passages and 10 questions.  First 2 sets are thoughtfully broken down into smaller parts for practice, and 3 sets designed like an actual exam.

Suitable for P5 & P6 students.

The practices are arranged in the order of difficulty. I have tried all the questions myself and find some questions really tricky. Practice 5 is the hardest and you really have to listen and consider each option carefully. I appreciate how the questions are designed and believe with more practice, students can improve on the listening skills and get the difficult questions right.

It is priced reasonably at $15 so it's definitely worth every cent!

Here's a sample you can listen to get a feel of it.

Also, remember to check out their best selling PSLE Chinese Video Oral Practice -- review here.

Price is $38, and you get to enjoy additional $5 OFF if you use this promo code SGPSCH5

Pitaya P5 P6 Math and Science Online Course!!

TL;DR = Scroll to the bottom. I have a very special discount code to share for P5 and P6 parents!! But I still suggest you read through. 😁

I really love Pitaya! Not the fruit, but pitaya.com.sg! 

If I were to use a word to describe them, it has got to be GENEROUS.

Where can you find a online top schools test paper platform for FREE, with so many other features like AI-powered question bank, wrong questions collection, leaderboard (kids favourite), REDEMPTION (another kids favourite).   TOTALLY FREE! 😱

You can read more about my previous post on Pitaya's free online top schools test paper platform here.

Other than the features mentioned above, they also provide many free useful downloads under their "Resources" section, and they are updating this section frequently with more freebies.

And that's not all!

They also provide paid LIVE zoom Science class for 2024 P6, past year English, Math, Science prelim paper classes, and pre-recorded P5 and P6 Math and Science course!

My daughter will be P6 in 2024, and we have started watching the pre-recorded course for P6 Math and Science during this holiday. 

Science is taught by Teacher Elicia. Teacher Elicia specializes in teaching primary mainstream science and GEP science for 12 years and she used to be the Academic Director at The Learning Lab for 3 years. She explains the concepts clearly and shows interesting videos and even do some experiments during the lessons.

Math is taught by Teacher Dicky. My daughter is familiar with teacher Dicky because she used to attend his live lessons some time back. Teacher Dicky is a very experienced teacher, he is very patient and detailed when teaching. He was the Chief Presiding Examiner (CPE) for PSLE for more than 10 years and the Assistant Supervisor for Marking (ASM) of Mathematics (6 years) and Foundation Mathematics (1 year).

My daughter enjoys watching the lessons because each topic is divided into a few short lessons so that she doesn't feel overwhelmed by the new information.

Side track: I recently bought a portable projector just so she can watch the Pitaya lessons in her room, projected onto the wall like watching movie 😂 She's enjoying the novelty LOL.

Another thing that keeps her wanting to watch more is that the reward for watching each lesson is 100 points! (Yay to toys redemption!) She really love seeing her points going up and climbing the leaderboard. 😂

If you are keen to experience the lessons, you can go straight to the Pitaya Class page and there are some free lessons to watch. 

For Science

Overview tab: Introduction of the course and teacher

Lessons tab: some free lessons you can watch to have a feel of the course.

Similarly,

For Math

Overview tab: Introduction of the course and teacher

Lessons tab: some free lessons you can watch to have a feel of the course.

In the course page, there are links for the lessons, duration of each lesson, "Download", and "Practice".

Each topic is divided into short digestible lessons so that students will not get tired or bored watching.

Click on the "Download" and you will get the pdf of the tutorial for the class. 

"Practice" provides more questions to practice for the topic.

One thing I like about the video lesson is that at times, the question will pop up for student to answer. This creates more engagement during the lesson.

Same goes for Math course

For your convenience, here are videos of Teacher Elicia and Teacher Dicky going through questions, which Pitaya has shared on Youtube. 

If you are keen to sign up, here's the exciting news!!
Pitaya is generously offering super special discount of $200, YES $200 OFF (that's 33.3% discount leh omg!) for sgprimaryschool.com readers!

The usual price for 1 course is $599, but you can sign up for the course and get a discount of $200 by using our discount code! That's only $399 for the ENTIRE COURSE, covering all topics of the level! 😍😍😍 

Here's the exclusive discount code WLvf8TOj

Just head over to Pitaya Class page, click [Buy Now] on the recorded course you want to purchase, enter the discount code WLvf8TOj under "Have a promo code?" field and hit [Apply] 

You will get $200 off immediately! 

What's more, you gain 1,000 points upon enrolling!!

Hope your kids will enjoy the courses as much as my girl does! 

Remember to sign up an account at Pitaya to enjoy the amazing features of their free online test papers!

Also, consider joining their Facebook group for more updates and freebies!

Merry Christmas and Happy 2024!!!

[REVIEW] Pitaya - FREE!! Primary School Top Schools Test Papers Online Platform

 Who doesnt like free stuff? Auntie here LOVES free stuff, especially when it is GOOOD too!

I can't believe this platform with such amazing features is COMPLETELY FREE! 

I'm referring to this test papers online platform called Pitaya. 

Take a look here:

It has [Paper Center], in which there are 2 modes, Mock Exam and Practice. 

[Mock Exam] will be timed and scores recorded.

For [Practice], you can choose the school/subject/paper to do.

[Test Centre] It has [Question Bank] [Wrong Question] and [Favourite]

[Question Bank] is powered by AI, which push questions for you to do.

[Wrong Question] records all the past wrong questions that you had done on the platform, for easy reviewing. I LOVE this feature the most! 

[Favourites] is like bookmark. It allows you to "star" whichever questions you encountered along the way, and they are all stored under this section.

For the questions at [Test Center], you can further filter them according to their topics. Lovely!

[Leaderboard] This is my daughter's favourite... kids are so competitive 😂

[Redeem] They even have redemption?! Hmm.. I'm not sure, a bit paiseh to redeem  when I'm not even paying anything. 😅 but my girl is so motivated to gain points and wanting to redeem something when she saves enough.

If you have signed up and find it good, you can share with your friends and earn more points!

Pitaya has all that I could ask for. Although we do spot mistakes here and there (1 million questions in the bank though, can't expect totally error-free. We just notify them to fix it whenever we encounter any. - yes you can report mistakes)

This is our referral link to Pitaya. If you find this post useful, please click on our link to sign up an account on Pitaya! 

They are currently taking order for 2023 PSLE Top Schools Prelim papers as well. Members can contact them to purchase and will be delivered to door-step by 1st week of September. 

I see that they are coming up with online classes in future too, so stay tuned!

[Review] Vitamin M Let’s Score! PSLE Chinese Video Oral Practice

 Vitamin M had recently launched their new product, Let’s Score! PSLE Chinese Video Oral Practice 一起考好！PSLE 录像口试练习 

Features included:

– 10 High Quality Video Oral Exam Questions

– Suggested Video Answers for modelling

– 10 Reading Passages with Teacher’s Reading Sample

– Interactive Vocabulary Practice Related to Oral Topics

– Downloadable Notes to Revise Answering Techniques

– Discount code to book mock oral sessions

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The 2 things I'm most worried about for J exams -- oral and compo. 😬 I have been trying my best to source for suitable resources to help her. 

Last year, I signed her up for Vitamin M's Vitamin Hour. The package came with 1 hour online lesson + 2 interactive videos (GamiStory) per week. During the lesson, teacher would guide the students on how to tackle oral questions among other things like watching videos and playing vocab games. She had so much fun attending the lessons and playing games and competing with her classmates!  I also introduced the course to my friends and all the feedback were positive!

The interactive videos (GamiStory) are of high quality and the contents and concepts are so interesting! I always watch them together with J because I enjoyed as much as she did. Side note, if you are keen on the GamiStory, they do have a package with GamiStory alone without the online lessons.

Now that I've tried out this new oral package, I can't wait to show J! As with the GamiStory, the videos in this oral package are interactive and of quality. Although the fun element is sort of reduced (because, how fun can a oral topic be? 😅 ), I can see that it is a useful tool to help the children in tackling oral questions.

There are 10 lessons in total, all the common oral topics which have high chance of coming out in exam. E.g., 公路安全， 环保，公德心   Sharing some screenshots of the first lesson here to show you how it looks like:

Every lesson begins with a passage for reading. There is a feature for you to record your own reading. Playback and listen to your own recording helps to identify problem areas.

Following that, you can play the video of teacher's reading sample. The sentence being read is highlighted accordingly.

Next will be the video of the oral topic.

Tips and answering technique is shown here, that can help you to form your own answer.

Now, this is the part I like most. For each of the questions, there will be a video that shows teacher asking student questions, and student answering the teacher. I believe this will help our children to visualize oral exam settings better, and to get used to the questions and answers. The feeling of reading model answers from text, compared to listening to the model answers coming from a child of similar age is very different.

The record feature is here as well, so that you can do a comparison and see if you missed out anything.

And of course, what is Vitamin M without some games and fun? The last section is a game that requires you to match the English definition to the correct Chinese term.

Second part of the game is slightly harder, which is to click on the words to form the Chinese term of the given English definition. Remember to scroll down further if you can't find the word you are looking for.

The lesson ends with a colourful PDF lesson notes. Although some of the pages are wordy (which is actually necessary), I think it's a great tool for parents who are helping the children to practise for their oral exams.

Price is $38, which I feel is very reasonable for such a unique package! 

And, you get to enjoy additional $5 OFF if you use this promo code SGPSCH5

Upon signing up, you get a discount code ($15 off) if you would like to sign up for their 45mins 1-to-1 mock oral session.

[Review] Superstar Teacher

There have been keen interest among parents on Superstar Teacher. I'm on my 4th year as a Superstar Teacher subscriber (subscribed P2, P3, P4, P5 for J), so I would like to share with you more about Superstar Teacher.

If you are keen to try it out, I strongly encourage you to sign up a trial account to see if you like it.  If you sign up using my referral link, and later you decide to subscribe, you will get $50. 

(Here's my short review and comparison of Superstar Teacher, Geniebook, 88Tuition and Koobits, if you haven't read about it)

Before I was a subscriber, I always see their booth at Popular bookstores, but never really check them out. I knew it was sort of a e-learning provider, but at that time, "tuition" wasn't what I was interested in yet since J was still young.

It was towards the end of Primary 1 that I got curious and signed up for a trial account to take a look. I realised the benefit of watching the videos at our own free time because it is more flexible. It also meant lesser stress for me as a parent because although J didn't attend any tuition, we signed her up for various enrichment classes and bringing her here and there and waiting for her was no joke.

And so I signed up for a P2 English and Math. She enjoyed watching the videos, so when it came to end of P2 and there was a good promo, we signed up for P3 English, Math, Science, Chinese. 

Then came P3 when I thought it would be nice to have additional help on English compo. I contacted my account manager to inquire but ended up getting Compo + P4 4 subjects as well, because there was a promotion of free Samsung Galaxy Tab at that time.

Nearing the end of P4, account manager told me they were going to revise the pricing soon. So after discussion with husband, we decided to get the P5 3 subjects package.

So this was how we kept subscribing year after year. If you are keen, do check with your account manager for the latest promotion! We are really happy to get the Samsung Tab as it is super useful for online lessons, HBL, Zoom and stuff, not just Superstar Teacher. It came at the right time.

One thing to note about subscribing is that you can't do it directly on their website. You will have to contact their customer service or account manager to confirm what you are subscribing, and they will generate a Star Code for you to enter in your Parent account, and then proceed with payment from there.

Yes, parent and child have separate account, parent account for the admin stuff like purchasing, activating, assigning tokens, while child account do the studying and redemption of toys. 

Accounts can be logged in via mobile app or desktop. Personally I prefer desktop version because there are some features that are not available in app. App can access lesson videos, more for learning while travelling, however, desktop can access Barry's Mart (toys redemption) , for example.

Here's a run-through for the child's account:

HOME - dashboard for the account.

LEARN - access lessons from here

Within the topic, we can choose to "Master" or "Practise".

"Master" is to go for video lessons

I like it that whenever they have additional info during lesson, the video will auto pause, and the right bar will pop out to give supplementary note, for example, a photo in this case, to show the child what the teacher is describing.

The right bar will also appear once in a while to ask questions in the middle of the lesson, according to what the teacher is saying, so as to prevent the child from daydreaming.

And I really really like Teacher Monica (aka Mrs Leong). She teachers English and Math. She's very clear with her explanations, and use funny examples or shares her experiences to make the lessons interesting. Amazing teacher! 💓

After learning, the child can proceed to "Practise" to answer questions.

REVISE - exercises and quizzes

ASK - If the child has questions or need homework help, and parents/siblings unable to help, he/she can use this feature to ask a teacher question. Do note that 1 question requires 1 token, tokens are given upon subscription, and can be purchased separately or redeemed from Barry's Mart if you require more.

I usually guide J on her work, but there are times when I don't know how to answer. We will then use this feature to get answers. System will assign teacher to answer the question in real time, and they are not the teacher you see in the lesson videos (just in case you are wondering).

REDEEM - most exciting place for J. There are many things here to redeem, but recently she's into lucky draw instead. 😅

That's about it.  If you are keen to try it out, I strongly encourage you to sign up a trial account to see if you like it.  If you sign up using my referral link, and later you decide to subscribe, you will get $50.