Discover How Your Child Can ACE His/Her Social Studies Paper And Pull Up The Overall Humanities Grade In Our ‘O’ Level Social Studies Skills Booster September 2019

Is your child able to fully comprehend the scope of the Social Studies syllabus?

Is your child confident in giving higher level answers and scoring the maximum marks for his/her source based questions in the exams?

Does your child have real world examples at your fingertips that he/she can use to support his/her points in the structured response questions?

Is your child able to discuss societal issues in Singapore such as the controversy over the reserved presidential elections and CPF policies with ease?

If your answer is ‘no’ to any of the above questions, Brain Matter is holding a highly focused Skills Booster in September that is designed to bring you up to speed in the shortest amount of time.

This course is suitable for both Secondary 4 and 5 students, taking their ‘O’ Levels in November.

We have conducted this Social Studies intensive revision course every year since 2013, and have helped hundreds of Sec 4 & 5 students score higher in their Social Studies, and pull up their overall Humanities Grade in O levels.

SBQ Skills Booster for Sec 4 students

This Skills Booster is for students who are in are sitting for their O level examinations in 6 weeks and have not been scoring well in Social Studies. If you are worried about Social Studies pulling down what might be a strong Combined Humanities mark, this Skills Booster is for you.

This Skills Booster is built on the assumption that all the basic SBQ skills brought over from Lower Secondary and Secondary 3 are sound, but the newer SBQ types taught in Sec 3 and 4, such as higher level answers for:

• Reliability
• Utility(Usefulness) SBQ, as well as
• Assertion(Evaluation)
• Surprise
• Hybrid questions(Comparison + Reliability/Surprise) …

… are still a matter of uncertainty to students and they wish for more reinforcement.

Furthermore, this Skills Booster is also built around providing the skills/tips necessary for students to better understand and approach SRQ questions, especially SRQ a),which can be troubling due to its General Paper/Free Writing association.

The course will have 3 modules:

Module #1 of the course will be spent on analysing actual past year SS O level questions as examples of Bias, Motive, Purpose, Tone, and Sufficiency and even Cross-referencing(Yes it can be the highest level!).

Module #2 will be devoted to analysing actual past year SS O level questions as examples of Surprise, Hybrid SBQ as well as the 3 different models of higher level Assertion SBQ answers that students can attempt.

Module #3 will be spent on analysing actual past year SS O level questions for examples of Anomalies: SBQ questions that seem to defy any type of category, and appear only rarely. This is to expose students to these infrequent SBQ types and show them that no matter how obscure or unrecognisable the question,the answering skills required are ALWAYS based on the skills they’ve been taught – namely inferring, comparing, analysing purpose/motive/bias, cross-referring and … well just plain logical thought. After which some tips for answering SRQ a) will also be shared and various question types and answering techniques will also be covered.

Course Details:

About the Teacher

Mr Noel Ong
(Secondary Social Studies, History)

• Bachelor of Arts and Social Science, NUS (Majored in Political Science and English Literature, Minored in History)
• Post Graduate Diploma in Education, NIE
• More than 18 years of teaching experience in MOE schools

Mr Noel Ong is a NIE-trained MOE teacher who has more than 18 years of teaching experience. Having spent all his 18 years teaching in a typical Singapore neighbourhood school, he has much experience in raising the grades of students who were formerly struggling with SS and History. He was teaching SS when the subject was introduced in 2001, and so has a wealth of knowledge concerning how this subject is taught, examined and assessed. Mr Noel is also very well versed in the current SS syllabus (rolled out in 2016) as he was part of the team of MOE teachers selected to evaluate the textbook as it was being written, and also to pilot the lesson plans and materials that were included with the syllabus text. Finally, he strongly believes that both SS and History need not be dry or ‘boring’; What could be more interesting than learning more about your country, your world and the story of mankind?

How To Register? 

We are limiting the Intensive Revision Course to only 10 students per class so as to ensure maximum engagement and coaching to our students.

Registration will close on 31st Aug or earlier when all places are taken up. Your seat is only confirmed upon payment.