Science in Singapore has its heart in the right place. Exam questions are set based on real-life phenomena - things that parents and children alike encounter in their everyday lives. The challenging thing is having to be very precise in your explanation so as not to miss out on any scientific principle that is involved in a chain of events.

Even though my son is in the first grade, I took it upon myself to expose him to the water cycle today. The reason being, it’s easy to find real-life examples on the water cycle. Used this example to introduce him to the standard way of answering WCLCW.

Water from the rice evaporates to form warm vapour.
Warm water vapour from the rice
comes in contact with cooler surrounding air, loses heat and condenses into
water droplets (white fumes)

I know this makes the Science curriculum in my country sound very reductive. Like all we care about is whether students can produce the keywords in the correct places. There is certainly truth in this line of thought. However, it’s precisely because of the provision of these keywords that I feel that we are cultivating the importance of precise communication in our young. Maybe I’m used to the poison served up in my educational system since I’m a public school teacher myself.

Of course, it wasn’t easy to teach my student the WCLCW mnemonic. But he has since become comfortable with terms like evaporation and condensation, so I think that there is a win in itself!