How Daily Practice of Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skill, Reading and Writing Will Help Boost Students’ Chances of Success at Scholarship and Selective High School Test

The Scholarship and Selective High School Test for the admission of students to Year 7 in 2025, is scheduled to be conducted on May 9, 2024. Therefore, with time ticking, it is crucial for students to formulate the advanced preparation strategies for the exam, to ensure better chances of securing a higher rank in the Selective High School Placement Test. The following Test includes a combination of Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skill, Reading and Writing- all of which require a circumstantial pedagogy of daily practice, strategic approach to preparations, and regular mock tests for an insightful conceptualization. 

To cater to the students’ requirements, a detailed insight into the Daily Practice of Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skill, Reading and Writing has been mentioned below. This blog is designed to help boost students’ chances of success at the Scholarship and Selective High School Test. 

Daily Practice Tips for Preparing for Scholarship and Selective High School Test 

They say, “the secret to success is hard work combined with determination.” Like any other aspect of life, preparing for a Test requires a qualitative research of preparation strategies, along with daily practice sessions. For example, you want to learn the music of a particular song. What do you do? You listen to it a number of times and start practicing the notes regularly. You continue your daily practice sessions until each one of your notes hits the right tune. Similarly, in order to prepare for the Scholarship and Selective High School Test, it is important to know of the right strategies, to help you keep on track for the best guidance to ace the exam. 

But how to prepare for Selective High School Test? Here are some of the daily practice tips on preparing for the Scholarship and Selective High School Test, for students to take a look at: 

1. An Insight into the Exam Pattern: The first and foremost step to preparations for the exam is to know of the exam pattern and the marking scheme. As of the current date, the Scholarship and Selective High School Test pattern consists of: 

• One Writing test = 1 Question (30 minutes)

• One Reading test = 30 Questions (40 minutes)

• One Mathematical Reasoning test = 35 Questions (40 minutes)

• One Thinking Skill Test = 40 Questions (40 minutes)

• All questions in Reading, Thinking Skill and Mathematical Reasoning are multiple-choice questions. Each one of them hold different weightage. The Writing section of the exam is an open-response Category. 

1. Timed Daily Practice Sessions: Students must be indulged in timed daily practice sessions in order to track and enhance their time management skills. Additionally, this is important for a quick understanding of the problems and quicker responses to them. It will not only help the students to actively focus on solving the questions but also to keep a calm mind while doing so, increasing their chances of answering correct responses.
   

2. Conducting Daily Practice Mock Tests: Mock Tests are an excellent resource for exam preparations as they not only lay out a guideline of what to prepare for, but also help in understanding the exam structure better. Mock Tests are important to test and track a student’s progress, and help in articulating the strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, conducting Daily Practice Mock Tests are a sure way to enhance the student’s performance in the Test.
   

3. Daily Practice Revisions: While exam preparations are of utmost importance, it is foolish to disregard the power of revisions while preparing for the Test. Daily practice revisions are a way to track the areas of study which are lacking adequate focus and preparations. Thus, one must not forget to indulge quality of time into proper revision sessions while preparing for the Scholarship and Selective High School Test.

Daily Practice of Mathematical Reasoning, Thinking Skill, Reading and Writing – Do’s and Don’ts

Now, with daily practice tips in mind, it is highly recommended for students to actively focus on approaching the test subjects individually, targeting the difficult areas and ensuring that all parts of the test subjects are well-prepared for. While the last stretch of the selective test preparation may seem a little daunting from the outset, we have compiled a list of tips below, to brush up the final challenges succouring the test preparations, and how to tackle them with daily practice tips for individual test subjects:

Mathematical Reasoning 

• Knowledge of the Basics: The core idea of securing a good score in the Mathematical Reasoning section of the Test is to be well-versed with the knowledge of basics. This particular section requires students to apply their existing knowledge of the basic concepts of Primary Mathematics to harder situations. Moreover, there will be no calculators provided at the Test. It is, therefore, vital to have a solid foundation in basic Mathematics, to be able to carry out subtractions, additions, multiplications and divisions manually, in order to ace the Test. 
  

• Strategic Approach to Preparations: It is important to focus on prioritising frequent revisions of the weaker sections in basic Mathematics. However, in order to do so, one must practice Mathematics daily, to identify the weaker sections, and create a list of all advanced topics to be focused on. Next, a student must start revising with the weaker areas first, in order to stress more on the challenges of understanding. Thirdly, one must be confident under pressure, and of the answers they write in the Tests. For gaining confidence in their answers, students must practice selective practice exams under timed conditions.
  

• Jotting the Problem Areas to Focus Directly on Them: Maintaining a record of all the errors made during the practice sessions is an important step for identifying the weaknesses in the preparation strategy. For example, you might be making a number of errors in a specific area questions, indicating the need for emphasis on the problem area for future preparations. 
  

Thinking Skill 

• Enhance Time Management Skills: Students must remember that critical thinking is time constrained. Therefore, to ace the Test, one must be very well-prepared for working under pressure. In order to enhance time management skills, students must practice daily and solve questions under timed conditions to help improve their pace and thinking strategies. While critical thinking demands patience and a calm mind to solve the questions, time is a good test-taker of pressure. Thus, solving a wide range of problems with proper strategies combined with timed performances is the way to approach the preparation tactics of the Thinking Skill Test.
  

• Identifying Weaknesses: To identify weaknesses, students must focus their time on the types of questions that they are the least confident in. Trying to understand the frequency of errors in a particular area, and exploring the reasoning that is commonly used in those types of situations, is a given bonus. This will ensure your focus is on the quality of your daily practice over the quantity of preparation strategies. 
  

• Practicing Past Papers: Once you build confidence in each area of your critical thinking skill, it’s recommended that you revisit your practice questions out of order in timed conditions. This serves two purposes: Firstly, revisiting the questions in timed conditions will aid in understanding the exam technique better. And secondly, scrambling the order of the questions will serve your ability to answer unpredictable questions in an apt manner.
  

Reading 

• Comprehensive Reading to Improve Skills: The reading section of the test is dedicated to a variety of poems, short stories, classics, etc. with an array of complexities in text types and language. A student will be asked to break down and analyse a certain portion of the text mentioned, elaborating on its literary significance and other information. Therefore, a great way to prepare for it is by reading extensively, to increase your knowledge of literature and the language. In order to be at par with the preparations, students must focus on daily practice of reading new texts of varied text types, and practice engaging with them by analysing the central theme, the plot, the setting, the characterization, the type of literary devices employed, and the moral of the write-up.
  

• Widening of Vocabulary: A good way to approach the improvement of your language efficiency is to focus on developing your vocabulary skills. Learning new words will ensure a widened concept of the language, in return helping in conceptualising the core of sentence formation. Moreover, the application of definitions to display specific situations through the art of reading/writing will aid in solidifying your understanding of the unfamiliar words and meanings. Therefore, daily practice of learning vocabulary is a crucial aspect of preparation for the Reading section of the test. 
  

• Practicing Sample Papers in Timed Conditions: How to track your improvements? A lot of students might wonder how to track their progress of learning while preparing for the reading section of the Scholarship and Selective High School Test. A simple way to answer it is by timing your performances to help manage time and pressure. Timed performances may often throw students off and affect their ability to work under pressure. Moreover, solving sample papers from the past years are a good way of generating an essence of the Test. Not only it will lay out an idea of what to expect but also help build a guided suggestion of how to prepare for it. Therefore, preparations by solving practice papers without time management skills will be deemed purposeless while gearing up for the Scholarship and Selective High School Test. Daily practice of timed performances and solving sample papers are crucial to securing a high rank in the Scholarship and Selective High School Test. 
  

Writing

• Language and Sentence Building: What differentiates good writing from exceptional writing is one’s ability to express and capture the reader through the art of realistic projection of expressions. Thus, it is important for students to learn and practice the different forms of sentence building, and brush up on the uses of language. Daily practice of expressing one’s inner thoughts and emotions through the art of writing is bound to help in beautifying the process of sentence building and projection.
  

• Adapting and Exploring Different Styles of Writing: For those who are adventurous and like to differ from the crowd, exploring and adapting the different styles of writing is sure to make a good impression in the Scholarship and Selective High School Test. While students with an adept qualification in language have higher chances to secure a good rank in the following Test, it is important to note that with daily practice and proper guidance, one should be able to achieve excellence in the category of the Writing section. 
  

• Generate Feedbacks on Your Writing for Improvement: One must not forget that no matter how good they are in language, “there’s always room for betterment.” To say that preparations without proper feedbacks are pointless, is an understatement. Hence, to have an upper hand in the Scholarship and Selective High School Test, one must not forget to scrutinise and generate feedbacks on their preparations, to help improve the weaker areas and strive for perfection. 
  

To Conclude: 

There is no doubt that the preparations for Scholarship and Selective High School Test require extensive knowledge and smart skills to crack the Test. However, preparations without daily practice for Scholarship and Selective High School Test fall under the category of poor quality preparation strategy. Thus, focusing on the need for daily practice for Scholarship and Selective High School Test is not only going to aid students in securing a higher rank in the exam, but in gaining a vast knowledge of basic Mathematics, Critical Thinking, Reading and Writing skills for future reference.