It is mandatory for prospective students to enroll for a trial lesson, prior to the commencement of lessons with The Pique Lab.

For us, we’re all about the best fit. There are two main qualifying criteria when we shortlist students for our regular classes:

1) Learning Attitude

2) Learning Aptitude (Ability)

1) A student with a good learning attitude and aptitude will be the best fit for our Science programme. We’re best able to help him/her improve in the shortest period of time (In some cases, we’ve had students who saw their grades jumping from 70s to high 80s in less than 3 months)

2) A student with a good learning attitude and poor learning aptitude will eventually improve, so long as they put in the hard work to memorise, revise and apply what they learn. They’ll probably take a longer time to absorb the subject matter, but we’ve seen them improve once they’re equipped with the right skills to excel.

3) We’ve also worked with students with poor learning attitudes (i.e. lazy) and good learning aptitudes. Assuming that these students comfortable with the learning environment, we can try to work with them to overcome their learning challenges. However, a lot of effort is often required to get them to a state where they’re ready to learn and improve. Parents usually commit for one term to assess if our classes work for their kids. In certain cases, we’ve managed to inspire and motivate them to change for the better.

4) The regular classes are not suitable for students with poor learning attitudes and aptitudes. In most cases, these students tend to be disinterested in the subject matter and have problems trying to pay attention in class. (Read more below on these students can be helped)

We recognise that our primary school Science programmes are not a one-size-fits-all solution for every student. While we strive to provide the best learning environment for our students, we also understand that not every student will benefit fully from our programmes. As such, we’ve decided to put in place a behavioural assessment during the trial lesson to quickly assess if the student has a higher propensity of improvement under our guidance.

During the trial lesson, the teacher is able to observe the student’s performance and highlight any potential challenges so that parents can make an informed decision before committing to our regular classes. This is especially important as it is crucial for parents and teachers to align their expectations and work hand-in-hand to maximise a student’s potential.

On the contrary, if a student exhibits signs of inattentiveness, disruption and/or laziness, it’s not that he/she cannot be helped. Rather, a different learning approach should be adopted & it’s typically best administered through a private 1 to 1 arrangement, which we do not offer at our centre. As different students have different learning needs, our role as educators is to find one that best fits them, so they can spend their time meaningfully every week.

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Through our teaching experience, we have noticed that one of the key challenges for students who enrolled with us at a later stage is that they have missed out on the lower-block topics taught in the P3 & P4 GAP. As a result, students tend to be more “lost” during the revision phase in the weekly lessons.

By incorporating the P4 CCI Science Course as a mandatory part of our programme, this ensures that students in our weekly classes are able to gain access to the materials and methodology for the lower block topics that were covered before they enrolled with us and ensures that they have a strong foundation in Science before moving up to P5.

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Through our teaching experience, we have noticed that one of the key challenges for students transitioning from lower block to the upper block Science is that they tend to use the P3 and P4 style of answering questions to tackle P5 questions. As a result, students tend to lose marks unnecessarily. Hence, our academic team has made the P5 CCI Science Course compulsory to ensure that our regular students develop a better understanding of how to tackle open-ended questions at a Primary 5 level.

During the June Holidays, we’ll able to leverage on the extra time we have with our students to consolidate their understanding of major topics. This allows us to complete the P5 syllabus by the end of July and begin overall SA2 revision way ahead of the school curriculum. By doing so, this enables us to help our students overcome their biggest challenge – the application of their content knowledge (what they have learnt) to the various examination type questions. It gives the students a longer runway to practise the techniques and application taught in the CCI to prepare in advance for SA2 examination.

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In most cases, joining a group tuition class at any point in time would often mean that content that was taught previously is unlikely to be covered again in detail. This is because the teacher has to manage the learning progression of every student in the class. Therefore, it will not be appropriate to cover the exact same content in-depth again for a student who just joined the group class.

As such, all incoming students will be required to attend the CCI™ Science Course & the Electrical Circuit as doing so provides the opportunity for our PSLE Science Specialists to work with your child outside of the P6 Grade Accelerator Programme™ so that your child can catch up on the material that was covered previously. This will help him/her make better sense of what we are discussing in class, especially during the examination revision phase towards the end of the year.

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