PT3 2019 Project Dates for Sejarah, Geografi, RBT and ASK

PT3 2019 candidates are required to do some practical projects as part of their PT3 2019 assessments.

The breakdown of the marks and dates are as follows:

Sejarah 

20% Project
80% Written Examinations

Dates: May - June

Geografi

20% Project
80% Written Examinations

Dates: June - July

RBT or Rekabentuk dan Teknologi

30% Project
70% Written Examinations

Dates: March - August

ASK or Asas Sains Komputer

30% Project
70% Written Examinations

Dates: March - August

You can download the project guidelines for all of the subjects above here. Some of the guides are 30-40 pages long.

The written examination format for PT3 2019 for all subjects including Sejarah, Geografi, RBT, ASK, BM, BI, BC, Mathematics, Science etc can be found here.

How to Support Your Child in Learning English

As parents we want to support our child's learning as much as we can. In a multilingual society, it is important that we help our children learn English as they grow and mature as they will be learning several languages all at once.

Here are some tips we found from the British Council Malaysia Resources, Articles and Tips for Parents and Educators.

1. The best age for a child to start learning languages is from age 6 to 9

Children of this age are very eager to learn and experiment with languages. At this age, children learn intuitively by engaging all their senses. They are not afraid to make mistakes. Knowing this as a parent helps because it means we do not have to stress grammar mistakes as they are not going to be able to tell the difference between a past participle or a gerund anyway. There's no fun in that. We can teach them in other ways by making learning fun.

 

2. Make learning English fun!

If we are not going to stress on grammar mistakes, how can we help our child learn English? There are a variety of ways to make learning English fun as suggested by the British Council. They include teaching English through games, videos, songs and story books. We can help to point out new words and phrases as they go through these fun activities.

3. Do not continually point out your child's mistake

Instead of correcting our children's mistake, we should try "recasting". "Recasting" means repeating their sentences but without a mistake. In this way they will learn the correct form and eventually start speaking or writing correctly without prompting.

4. How to help your preteen and teen child learn English

As children grow, we should continue to support their learning. Preteens and teenagers learn languages differently. At this age, they are more analytical. Even though they are learning several languages at the same time, a teen can use their knowledge of their own language (whether it is Chinese, Malay or Tamil), to help them learn English.

Now, this is the time to introduce grammar instruction to them. At the same time you can teach them studying skills, time management and note-taking. This will not only help them in learning English, it will be useful when they apply it to other subjects too.

5. Encourage your child's self awareness

As they grow, your child will become more self aware. You can help your primary school going child by asking them questions that make them think.

"What causes their problems in writing?"

"What can they do to improve?"

 "What do successful writers do?"

 "Can they use any of the same techniques?"

 Asking analytical questions like these is not only helpful for learning English, it is important for every area of their lives and useful as a skill from primary to secondary school.

These tips were reproduced with the permission of British Council Malaysia.

The British Council offers a variety of courses for Young Learners from age 5 all the way until age 17 and topics revolving around grammar, formal language structures and study skills are all taught according to the ability and learning styles of the various age groups. Furthermore, soft skills are also taught during classes through group activities and games.

The new term at British Council will start on 23 March 2019. You can drop by the centres or visit www.britishcouncil.org/children to find out how they can help your child develop a love for English.

How to Find Chinese Character Stroke Order Using Yellow Bridge

One of the challenging things parents have to do is trying to teach their children a language which they themselves have no knowledge of. This is even more so for Chinese Mandarin. Learning Mandarin is like no other language. There are all those Chinese characters that you need to know. Not only that, you have to know how to write them correctly, stroke by stroke.

If you have no knowledge of Mandarin, it can be quite challenging trying to help your child with Chinese Mandarin homework. This is where apps and Chinese online dictionaries come in handy.

Here's an online dictionary which you can use to find the stroke order for Chinese characters but just how do you do that. It is quite confusing to use if you have no knowledge of Chinese whatsoever. This mini tutorial is to help parents find the stroke order for Chinese Mandarin characters so they can help their children and in the process learn some Chinese too!

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Open up this link: Yellow Bridge You will see the following page. Click on "Chinese-English Dictionary & Thesaurus.

Step 2. Next, you will arrive on this page. Type in the word you want to search in the "English to Chinese" search bar. The example I have used is "book"

Step 3: You will be presented with a list of words related to your search term. Select the one you want. I have selected the single character 书 . Click on the character.

Step 4: Click on the "Strokes" tab to view the stroke order for the word.

Step 5: By default, the animate mode is selected. Your Chinese character will auto play. Select "trace outline" if you want to practice writing the strokes using your mouse. That's it! You have learned a new Chinese character stroke and will be able to teach your child how to write the characters correctly. In Chinese Mandarin, children are often tested on the order of strokes too so this it is very important to get it right.

Finally, I recommend returning to the main screen to click on "Animated Stroke Order Rules" to learn the basic rules for writing Chinese character strokes. This will help you a lot in future exercises. Happy learning!

SPM 2019 Dates and Calendar

SPM 2019 Dates

The SPM 2019 dates have been finalized by the Ministry of Education. (Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia)

SPM 2019 starts on Monday 14th October 2019 to Thursday 28 October 2019 overall. The exam may begin or end earlier for some students depending on the papers they are sitting for.

Previously in 2018, the SPM examinations was from 13 November to 13 December 2018. The SPM exams in 2019 has been brought forward to in view of the weather conditions so that the exams will not be disrupted in the states with heavy rain at this time of the year.

SPM 2019 Calendar

The SPM 2019 Calendar has also been finalized. The schedule is different for students from different streams and also depending on the elective subjects they are sitting for. When you look at the calendar, it is not easy to see the actual schedule, so we are analyzing how a typical schedule may look like for a science stream student for example. The arts stream students may select different subjects so we will not be doing an analysis for that. You can refer to the summary of papers students typically sit for at the end of this post.

Below is how the SPM 2019 Calendar may look for a Science stream student who also sits for Chinese paper.

Wednesday 16 October 2019

Bahasa Cina 1 (1 hour 45 minutes) - Morning
Bahasa Cina 2 (2 hours 15 minutes) - Afternoon

19 days break...

Tuesday 5 November 2019
Bahasa Melayu 1 (2 hours 15 minutes) - Morning
Bahasa Melayu 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Afternoon

Wednesday 6 November 2019

Bahasa Inggeris 1 (1 hour 45 minutes) - Morning
Bahasa Inggeris 2 (2 hours 15 minutes) - Afternoon

Thursday 7 November 2019

Mathematics 1 (1 hour 15 minutes) - Morning
Mathematics 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Afternoon

5 days break....

Wednesday 13 November 2019

Pendidikan Moral 1 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Morning

Thursday 14 November 2019

Additional Mathematics 1 (2 hours) - Morning
Additional Mathematics 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Afternoon

3 days break....

Monday 18 November 2019

Sejarah 1 (1 hour) - Morning
Sejarah 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Morning

Tuesday 19 November 2019

Sejarah 3 (3 hours) - Afternoon

1 day break.....

Thursday 21 November 2019

Chemistry 1 (1 hour 15 minutes) - Morning
Chemistry 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Morning
Chemistry 3 (1 hour 30 minutes) - Afternoon

3 days break....

Monday 25 November 2019

Biology 1 (1 hour 15 minutes) - Morning
Biology 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Morning
Biology 3 (1 hour 30 minutes) - Afternoon

1 day break.....

Wednesday 27 November 2019

Physics 1 (1 hour 15 minutes) - Morning
Physics 2 (2 hours 30 minutes) - Morning
Physics 3 (1 hour 30 minutes) - Afternoon

Here's a summary of some of the popular papers students typically sit for. There are many other papers not included in this summary. Please refer to the full schedule here for the full SPM 2019 calendar.

14 October -     English for Science  Technology 1 & 2
15 October -     Pendidikan Seni Visual 1
16 October -     Bahasa Arab,  Bahasa Cina, Bahasa Tamil Papers 1 & 2
17 October -     Geografi 1 & 2, Literature in English, Kesusasteraan Melayu, Kesusasteraan Cina,                               Kesusasteraan Tamil
5 November  -  Bahasa Melayu 1 & 2
6 November -   Bahasa Inggeris 1 & 2
7 November -   Mathematics 1 & 2
13 November - Moral 1
14 November - Additional Mathematics 1 & 2
18 November - Sejarah 1 & 2
19 November - Pendidikan Seni Visual Halus 2, Sejarah 3
20 November - Sains Komputer 1
21 November - Additional Science 1, 2 & 3, Chemistry 1, 2 & 3
25 November - Biology 1, 2 & 3, Perniagaan 1 & 2
26 November - Ekonomi 1 & 2
27 November - Science 1 & 2, Physics 1, 2 & 3
28 November - Prinsip Perakaunan 1 & 2


The exam starts on 5 November and ends on 27 November for a Science stream student who is not sitting for the Chinese paper. That's about 3 weeks and a total of 41 hours and 45 minutes of testing period for the whole exam. The Science subjects have long hours of 5 hours 15 minutes of testing periods per day.

The full calendar can be downloaded here from the Lembaga Peperiksaan website.

Good Luck to all SPM 2019 students.

What do you think of the SPM 2019 exam schedule?

Download Links For Free Digital School eTextbooks for Primary and Secondary Schools

Digital textbooks for primary and secondary schools from Standard 1 to Form 5 are now available for free download online by the MOE (Ministry of Education) or KPM (Kementerian Pendidikan Malaysia)

Currently the books are available in pdf format only. It's a good start. With digital texbooks available for free download, we now have an extra reference at home. Kids can leave heavy school textbooks in school and still be able to access their textbooks at home or anywhere from digital devices.

The BTDA (Buku Teks Digital Asas) or Basic Digital Textbooks in pdf format can be downloaded from the following links:

Download Links For Digital Textbooks for Form 1, Form 2, Form 3, Form 4 and Form 5

From One Drive: http://gg.gg/bukuteksdigital

From Google Drive: http://gg.gg/bukuteksdigitalKPM

From BTP Portal (BTP = Bahagian Teknologi Pendidikan): http://btp.moe.gov.my/article/240

Download link for digital textbooks for Standard 1, Standard 3,  Standard 5  (Note that at this point of writing, the links for Std 2, 4 and 6 are not working. Hopefully they will upload them later). You will find separate folders for SK, SJKC and SJKT.

From BTP Portal: http://btp.moe.gov.my/article/240

This post has been updated here: https://mumsgather.blogspot.com/2020/01/digital-textbooks-for-sk-sjkc-sjkt-and.html