PRIMARY REGULAR ENGLISH PROGRAMME
Good strategies will only be able to transform students' results if they are motivated
Your child may have been attending English tuition but has not been seeing improvement.
Why is that so?
The fact is, the lessons your child has been attending are not pitched according to his/her level of readiness.
If students are unable to grasp the lesson, forcing them to finish their English assignments demotivates them.
If the lessons are too simple, your child will be bored and unmotivated.
At Cognitus Academy, our programme is crafted to MEET every child’s level of readiness and motivate them to achieve their FULL potential.
Through our own passion for the English language, our trained and experienced teachers ignite students’ LOVE and INTEREST in English.
With almost two decades of experience in teaching and designing curriculum for teaching Primary English, Cognitus Academy is able to deliver on results that boast almost 100% improvement, with 82% achieving distinction in the 2020 PSLE English examinations.
Having worked closely with primary school students throughout the year, we find that parents have one big question whenever we hear from them:
“Is it too late for my child to do well for PSLE English examination?”
We believe that it is never too late to make improvements. We have taught students who come to us weeks before PSLE and improved by two grades. However, the process was gruelling and filled with anxiety for both students and parents.
Roadmap for Distinction
Here, Cognitus Academy has prepared a path to success in PSLE English examination for your child.
With the end goal in mind, we provide the following programmes for your child.
Our Strategy
Using strategies taught to students in the Gifted Education Programme (GEP), our Primary programme is built upon years of experienced teaching, designing curriculum, marking exams and designing assessment modes in schools. We can’t wait to share them with you!
Credits: This framework is an adaptation and synthesis of Paul and Elder’s theory on Critical Thinking, and books on Critical Reading and Critical Writing.
Critical Reading and Writing principles used in MOE’s Gifted Education Programme form the basis of Cognitus Academy’s English programmes.
Don’t worry. Although these strategies are taught to gifted students, our programmes are DOWN-TO-EARTH techniques that have helped students of all abilities improve and excel.
At Primary 3, students can experience a jarring transition at the beginning of the year.
- Is your Primary 3 child still not reading with understanding?
- Does Grammar rules still confuse your child?
- Can your child write a full composition independently?
- Is your child constantly struggling with spelling despite several reminders?
- Will your child ultimately be ready for PSLE English examinations?
At Primary 4, students need to prepare for the changes in examination format in PSLE English.
If your child is not scoring Band One for English at Primary 4, he or she may struggle to do well in Primary 5 and 6.
- Is your child able to understand and apply the grammar rules needed to answer Synthesis & Transformation questions?
- Does your child have the skills and steps needed to understand Comprehension Passages?
- Is your child still struggling to come up with clear plots for Compositions?
- Will your child ultimately be ready for PSLE English Examinations?
Built on Critical Reading and Writing, Cognitus Academy’s English Programme produces strong results and lasting improvement through the Critical Reading and Writing (CRW) Strategy.
How we apply the CRW strategy in our lessons
Our weekly lessons are divided into two parts. The first part brings world knowledge into the classroom while the second part develops our students' language skills.
PART 1: Connecting with the World
We extend our curriculum by using newspaper articles to expose students to current affairs.
Examples of current issues that we will go through with your child include the environment, technology, social trends, crimes, etc.
Our teachers will go through a newspaper article at the beginning of every lesson.
While going through the article, students will identify three main ideas of the article and summarise them in one or two sentences.
Students are then assigned a portion of the article to copy as homework. There are three objectives for this activity:
– Students will be able to emulate the accurate grammar that is used in these articles.
– This broadens their range of vocabulary that will be useful for their writing. We select articles which has content relevant to what students need to write for Continuous Writing.
– This also develops students’ ability to check their own work and avoid careless mistakes. Students can lose up to three marks in exams due to their careless mistakes. Therefore, checking their work develops an important discipline.
PART 2: Connecting with Language
Vocabulary is developed through reading. However, some students find it difficult to cultivate the habit of reading. Without knowing the meaning of some words tested in the exams, how should your child make the right decision and select the correct answer?
Here are some tried and tested strategies.
Every week, students are exposed to one of seven vocabulary elements:
– Roots of words (eg. aqua-, botan-)
– Prefixes (eg. anti-, dis-)
– Suffixes (eg. -tion, -sive)
– Compound Words (eg. ice cream, raindrop, long-haired)
Idioms (eg. A taste of your own medicine)
Phrasal Verbs (eg. act on, act up, aim at)
– Binomial Pairs (eg. all or nothing, bits and pieces)
Our teachers expose students to the meanings of numerous roots of words, prefixes and suffixes and help students deduce the meanings of words which contain them. This strategy equips students with the required tools to break up any new word they encounter and accurately deduce its meaning.
We also expose students to a wide range of binomial pairs, phrasal verbs, compound words and idioms. Since phrases in these categories have fixed meanings, exercises are crafted to help students learn these meanings and use the phrases in sentences accurately.
Building a strong foundation for English grammar will set your child up for success in English and all other subjects.
Cognitus Academy’s P3 Primary Regular English Programme guides students in the understanding and mastery of rules for the following grammar items.
List of grammar items:
– Nouns (plural nouns, noun formation from adj)
– articles (a, an, the)
– verbs (SVA – singular, plural, collective nouns)
– sentences (simple, compound, complex)
– relative pronouns (who, which, that, whose, where)
– tenses (simple present, simple past, present continuous, past continuous, present perfect, past perfect, future)
– quantifiers (countable/ uncountable, enough/ not enough, no, all/ both, each/ every)
– possessives (my, your, his, her, its, our, their)
– possessive pronouns (mines, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs)
– reflexive pronouns (myself, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, themselves)
– demonstratives (this, that, these, those)
– interrogatives (who, what, which, whose, whom)
– indefinite pronouns (anyone, anybody, anything, someone, somebody, something, no one, nobody, nothing, everyone, everybody, everything)
– reciprocal pronouns (each other, one another)
– adjectives (comparatives, superlatives)
– participles (-ing, -en, -ed)
– modal verbs (whole list) p2t3w1
– adverbs
– prepositions (position, direction, time, purpose and means, possession, accompaniment, comparison, support or opposition, exception, concession)
– sentence types (interrogatives, exclamatory, imperatives, conditionals)
– reported speech
– question tags
This section is the ultimate test of a student’s grammatical competency. Students need to rewrite two short sentences as one without altering the original meaning of the two given sentences. They need to make a series of decisions on whether to change the position or word class of the provided words
There is no shortcut to mastering this section.
Our aim is for the students to get full exposure to the different types of questions and teach them the necessary grammar rules and conventions effectively.
We have studied all S&T questions and distilled them into the 12 most commonly tested question types:
– Addition – And, together with, both, as well as, none of, most of, all of, in addition to, furthermore
– Sequence – before, after, then, while, as soon as
– Contrast – but, however, although, even though, despite
– Reason – because, as, for, due to, so…that,
– Purpose – To, in order to, so that
We will be covering a set of these 12 question types over the duration of one term (11 weeks), so your child will practise up to four rounds of practices in a full year.
Applying Critical Reading techniques, our students are able to dive deep into the context of the passage by asking the following questions:
– What is happening in this paragraph?
– What is the main idea here?
– How does this paragraph connect with the previous?
– What do you think will happen next?
Next, students will analyse the requirements of the different questions types such as:
– Who: person(s)
– What/which: thing, action etc
– When: time, sequence of events
– Where: place
– Why: reason, implied causes
– How: steps, method
Students will master the techniques for answering questions accurately and comprehensively.
Continuous Writing is a major obstacle for most students because they do not know how to improve specific parts of their composition. Even if they know their weakness, they are unable to fix their particular problem in writing.
Our teachers guide students to conduct question analysis and picture analysis so that they are able to attempt the question confidently and begin planning. When planning, we equip our students with a framework of four plot elements which we recommend they incorporate in their writing. These plot elements help them plan stories that are heart-warming, suspenseful, of mischief or teach a moral value.
Our teachers inspire our students to write expressively by encouraging them to use the most vivid and precise verbs and adjectives. We emphasise the use of Show, Don’t Tell as a technique to present the story in the most compelling and convincing manner possible.
Our teachers will mark students’ first draft with detailed individualised feedback. This feedback is crucial in commending students for the good writing they have presented and for highlighting areas of improvement. After three drafts, students can improve from a low B to a high A while retaining their ideas in the story. Doing so encourages students to improve their work and leaves them with a piece they can be truly proud of.
Primary 5 is the year that your child formally transitions into PSLE mode.
If your child has not developed good study habits and acquired key techniques to handle PSLE English examination components, he or she should start now.
- Is your child fluent with requirements of the new English examination components like Situational Writing, Comprehension Cloze Passage and challenging Synthesis and Transformation question types?
- Does your child possess methods that help to score for Compositions consistently?
- Can your child handle longer and more complex passages and more inferential questions in Comprehension Open-ended?
English is a subject that takes time to master and getting consistently good results take effort. The best time to start building confidence in your child is now.
Your Primary 6 child is taking the PSLE English examination this year and may not be fully prepared yet.
With PSLE coming, is your child still:
- Lacking confidence when answering Synthesis & Transformation questions?
- Putting in the effort but scoring 10/20 for Comprehension Open-ended?
- Struggling with Plot, Character and Language in Composition?
From our experience, students are struggling in S&T because they are unsure of the Grammar rules, resulting in inconsistent performance for this section.
Students are also losing marks in Comprehension as they are unable to understand the context of the passage and lack answering techniques.
Composition is a major obstacle for students because they do not know how to improve specific parts of their composition and are unable to identify and fix particular weaknesses in their compositions.
We believe we have found the best strategy to help any child improve within the shortest possible time, so read on to find out more.
How we apply the CRW strategy in our lessons
Our weekly lessons are divided into two parts. The first part brings world knowledge into the classroom while the second part develops our students' language skills.
PART 1: Connecting with the World
We extend our curriculum by using newspaper articles to expose students to current affairs.
Examples of current issues that we will go through with your child include the environment, technology, social trends, crimes, etc.
Our teachers will go through a newspaper article at the beginning of every lesson.
While going through the article, students will identify three main ideas of the article and summarise them in one or two sentences.
Students are then assigned a portion of the article to copy as homework. There are three objectives for this activity:
– Students will be able to emulate the accurate grammar that is used in these articles.
– This broadens their range of vocabulary that will be useful for their writing. We select articles which has content relevant to what students need to write for Continuous Writing.
– This also develops students’ ability to check their own work and avoid careless mistakes. Students can lose up to three marks in exams due to their careless mistakes. Therefore, checking their work develops an important discipline.
PART 2: Connecting with Language
Vocabulary is developed through reading. However, some students find it difficult to cultivate the habit of reading. Without knowing the meaning of some words tested in the exams, how should your child make the right decision and select the correct answer?
Here are some tried and tested strategies.
Every week, students are exposed to one of seven vocabulary elements:
– Roots of words (eg. aqua-, botan-)
– Prefixes (eg. anti-, dis-)
– Suffixes (eg. -tion, -sive)
– Compound Words (eg. ice cream, raindrop, long-haired)
Idioms (eg. A taste of your own medicine)
Phrasal Verbs (eg. act on, act up, aim at)
– Binomial Pairs (eg. all or nothing, bits and pieces)
Our teachers expose students to the meanings of numerous roots of words, prefixes and suffixes and help students deduce the meanings of words which contain them. This strategy equips students with the required tools to break up any new word they encounter and accurately deduce its meaning.
We also expose students to a wide range of binomial pairs, phrasal verbs, compound words and idioms. Since phrases in these categories have fixed meanings, exercises are crafted to help students learn these meanings and use the phrases in sentences accurately.
This section is the ultimate test of a student’s grammatical competency. Students need to rewrite two short sentences as one without altering the original meaning of the two given sentences. They need to make a series of decisions on whether to change the position or word class of the provided words
There is no shortcut to mastering this section.
Our aim is for the students to get full exposure to the different types of questions and teach them the necessary grammar rules and conventions effectively.
We have studied all S&T questions and distilled them into the 12 most commonly tested question types:
– Relative Pronouns
– Conjunction of Time
– Quantity
– Cause and effect/Reason
– Choice
– Contrast
– Purpose
– Condition
– Voice
– Reordering Main Clause
– Subordinate Clause
– Reported Speech
– And others
We will be covering a set of these 12 question types over the duration of one term (11 weeks), so your child will practise up to four rounds of practices in a full year.
Applying Critical Reading techniques, our students are able to dive deep into the context of the passage by asking the following questions:
– What is happening in this paragraph?
– What is the main idea here?
– How does this paragraph connect with the previous?
– What do you think will happen next?
Next, students will analyse the requirements of the different questions types such as:
– Who: person(s)
– What/which: thing, action etc
– When: time, sequence of events
– Where: place
– Why: reason, implied causes
– How: steps, method
Students will master the techniques for answering questions accurately and comprehensively.
Situational Writing may appear to be more straightforward than Continuous Writing, but securing the full 15 marks is a feat few students can lay claim to.
Without going much into detail, Situational Writing tasks are generally categorised into two types – formal writing and informal writing.
Students will be taught the format of the different communication types, such as emails, letters, reports, etc.
Our teachers guide students to answer the question by following the PAC checklist:
– Purpose
– Audience
– Context
Our teachers will also follow the PSLE marking rubrics for assessing these assignments.
Continuous Writing is a major obstacle for most students because they do not know how to improve specific parts of their composition. Even if they know their weakness, they are unable to fix their particular problem in writing.
Our teachers guide students to conduct question analysis and picture analysis so that they are able to attempt the question confidently and begin planning. When planning, we equip our students with a framework of four plot elements which we recommend they incorporate in their writing. These plot elements help them plan stories that are heart-warming, suspenseful, of mischief or teach a moral value.
Our teachers inspire our students to write expressively by encouraging them to use the most vivid and precise verbs and adjectives. We emphasise the use of Show, Don’t Tell as a technique to present the story in the most compelling and convincing manner possible.
Our teachers will mark students’ first draft with detailed individualised feedback. This feedback is crucial in commending students for the good writing they have presented and for highlighting areas of improvement. After three drafts, students can improve from a low B to a high A while retaining their ideas in the story. Doing so encourages students to improve their work and leaves them with a piece they can be truly proud of.
Termly Assessment
Our students come from a range of different schools with different academic cultures.
Do you know how your child compares with another student from a different school?
We conduct termly assessments for our students to assess their current progress and see where they stand relative to their classmates from different schools.
Our tests comprise of the most challenging questions from past year exams and will be able to diagnose students' weaknesses. From there, we will reinforce confusing grammar rules and exam strategies.
You may wonder, how do we fit in so many topics into our lessons?
Our weekly lessons are divided into two parts. The first part brings world knowledge into the classroom while the second part develops our students' language skills.
| Week | Component |
|---|---|
|
1 |
Situational Writing, Continuous Writing |
|
2 |
S&T – Relative Pronouns and Conjunction of Time, Comprehension Cloze |
|
3 |
Comprehension Open-ended, Visual Text Comprehension |
|
4 |
S&T – Quantity and Cause-and-effect/Reason, Comprehension Cloze |
|
5 |
Comprehension Open-ended, Visual Text Comprehension |
|
6 |
Situational Writing, Continuous Writing |
|
7 |
Termly Assessment |
|
8 |
S&T – Choice, Condition and Contrast, Comprehension Cloze |
|
9 |
Comprehension Open-ended, Visual Text Comprehension |
|
10 |
S&T – Voice, Subordinate clause and Reported/Indirect Speech, Comprehension Cloze |
|
11 |
Situational Writing, Continuous Writing |
*Lesson schedule may change due to students’ school exam schedules.
Our Teaching Team
Cognitus Academy takes pride in helping our students achieve breakthroughs in their results.
We are able to do that because of the strong team that we have built to teach, organise and administer our robust English programmes.
Having been a teacher trainer at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Dr Daniel Chua has not only crafted a solid curriculum for our students, but also an effective training programme for our teachers.
At Cognitus Academy, teachers form the foundation of our English and Mathematics programmes. Prospective teachers are screened meticulously and undergo a rigorous 3-month training programme to develop core competencies of a teacher. Teaching interns also develop academic and philosophical roots in their pedagogy by studying the relevant materials in-depth and observing senior teachers in action before they enter the classrooms to teach.
After the completion of formal training, new teachers will continue to go through robust training and meet regularly to sharpen their problem-solving skills, explore innovative and effective curriculum for students, and refine teaching methods to enhance the students' mastery of the subject.
Our curriculum and pedagogy are continuously refined and updated in accordance with the changes in the education system by our curriculum team comprising of ex-MOE teachers, Heads of Department, Senior Teachers, PSLE markers and experienced Cognitus teachers.
Hear What Some Of Our Parents Say
Don't just take it from us!
Emily enjoys the company of the classmates in Cognitus and she is self-motivated to complete her assignment with quality so as to win a thumbs-up from her tutor.”
Strongly recommend Cognitus to parents looking for a fun and effective English programme.”
Cognitus helped him improve and prepare well for all his English test, including oral, situational writing, composition and comprehension. Thanks to Cognitus, he scored AL1 for English in his recent P5 exam.
I highly recommend Cognitus to my friends and relatives. This is an English enrichment centre that has caring teachers who will go into the details of which are your child’s areas of development and take constructive steps to help him/her improve.”
Frequently Asked Questions
After more than ten years of refinement, our Critical Reading & Writing (CRW) Strategy has helped hundreds of students improve their English results by at least one grade, with several achieving Distinction (A and A*) for PSLE, O Levels and A Levels. The CRW Strategy is adapted from the Critical Thinking framework that is being used to teach students in the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). We have infused the essence of the Critical Thinking approach and created the CRW Strategy that has an impact on students’ Comprehension Open-ended, Comprehension Cloze Passage, Comprehension Short Answer Questions (SAQ) and Summary. The CRW Strategy also develops students’ writing ability, helping them in their Continuous Writing and General paper essays. We are proud to share our students’ essays with you in our Blog. For more information about the CRW Strategy, you can see Our Strategy, Primary English Programme, Secondary English Programme and General Paper Programme.
Cognitus Academy shares the same concern with the parents of all our students. We want the teachers teaching your child to be the best at what they do and demonstrate the professionalism befitting an educator. All Cognitus Academy teachers undergo a stringent interview process, rigorous training programme and aptitude tests before they are allowed to teach our students. All our teachers have completed university education with high achievements and have wealth of experience teaching English, including writing. Guided by Dr Daniel Chua, an NIE-trained ex-teacher and a former NIE lecturer himself, our teachers meet weekly for professional development and mentoring.
Not all our teachers are former MOE teachers. While we believe that the training and experience of a former school teacher can be invaluable, our observation has been that students taught by former school teachers may not always do well when it matters. Otherwise, parents would have sought their children’s school teachers for guidance. Armed with our strategy and teacher development programme, we believe that our team of teachers will help your child improve and excel.
Yes, we offer a 90-minute immersion session for students who are new to Cognitus Academy. We understand that parents need to know that our programmes can meet the needs of their children before they commit their time and resources at our centre. Therefore, we will arrange for an immersion session in one of our available class slots for new students to try out the teaching approach, lesson material and classroom environment before joining us. The teacher will conduct a brief diagnostic session with the student 15 minutes before the lesson. After the lesson, the teacher will conduct a 15-minute feedback session with the parent. Please note that the teacher may conduct these sessions over a phone call due to the teacher’s lesson schedule.
To fully benefit from the programme, students are strongly encouraged to attend lessons consistently. In the event that students are unable to attend a class due to school events or medical leave, we offer replacement lessons to be scheduled within the same lesson week. Students are allowed to join an existing class of the same level if there are available seats. Should your child be unable to attend a replacement lesson during the week, lesson materials will be passed to him/her in his/her next lesson. While Cognitus Academy will try our best to schedule a replacement lesson for our students, we regret that replacements classes are not guaranteed. We also seek your understanding that fees collected are not refundable because resources have been committed to provide the lesson for your child on the scheduled time.
We keep our class sizes small for conducive learning. Our maximum capacity for a class is 8 students for both physical and online lessons.
For Primary English lessons, Cognitus Academy conducts 90-minute lessons that are engaging, energetic and paced appropriately to maximise our students’ learning. After experimenting with different lesson durations, we conclude that a 90-minute session is optimal for primary school students because it gives them optimal concentration, helps them absorb the strategies and lessons taught and leaves them wanting for more at the end of every lesson. Students are expected to reinforce the lessons taught through homework assigned by teachers every week. A small class size also allows our teachers to fully focus on each student’s areas of weakness and give targeted support.
In addition to weekly lessons with our teachers, Cognitus Academy offers the following channels to help our students improve their English results.
– Our Blog pages feature study tips, exam techniques and model compositions to support our students and parents
– Our Parents’ Support Group on Facebook invites students and parents to ask challenging questions, which our teachers will reply
– Our teachers conduct weekly Cognitus Connect sessions online to meet with groups of students to answer their questions and revise strategies for comprehension and writing strategies.
– Our student online portal, Cognitus Online, provides supplementary materials, such as past exam papers, for students to practise before their exams.
– Free use of The Straits Times online account
– Our teachers hand-pick more than 200 titles for our Centre library, which exposes students to a range of genres and literature.
Still can’t decide which English Programme to enrol in?
We understand that choosing the right English programme is an important decision because we have worked with hundreds of parents who are just as concerned as you about their child's English results. If you would like to discuss your needs with one of our English specialists, fill out the form below and we will be in touch with you.