I hadn’t really planned to curate grammar notes for my fourth graders today, but since that was the first thing I embarked on, I powered through and complied stuff that they should know in order to get the 10 grammar MCQs correct. In the process, I judiciously utilised notes from my NorthLight and Naval Base Pri days, so it was good, albeit tiring, to repurpose my existing resources.

I had an A-ha moment. For fourth graders, they are expected to know how to derive the answer for ‘b’ verbs without time markers. Fast forward two years, and they are still expected to use the correct ‘b’ verbs without, except that the sentence they have to grapple with literally contains a trap. Take ‘All the children, except John, ______ are going to the museum this afternoon.’ for instance. They are expected to disregard ‘except John’ in the pursuit of the answer. Understanding the progression from P4 to P6 made me feel that I am slowly but surely getting a big-picture view of how English is taught in pri school.