Important Notices Parent Teacher Conferences February 24th. The Academy will be closed. Stu-

dents need not attend.

INSET DAY on Monday 27th February. Academy will be closed.

Welcome to our new Reception 1 student Simeon Chew!

Big thank you to Dillon’s mother Ms. Sweelin Lim for coming in to do a presenta-tion on toys for all the students.

Soccer CCA venue has changed to KHALSA Club pitches at 2 Tessensohn Road for the next three weeks 15

th, 22

nd & 29

th February. In case of heavy rain,

parents will be given prior notice of cancellation and there will be a make-up ses-sion.

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER February 6th — 16th, 2012

1 0 W i n s t e d t R o a d , B l o c k C # 0 1 - 1 6 , S in g a p o r e 2 2 7 9 7 7 T e l : + 6 5 6 8 3 6 1 1 2 8 F a x : + 6 5 6 2 3 5 6 7 9 7 w w w . l e a r n d i f f e r e n t .c o m . s g

“Truth is, the actual

aptitude of a diverse

group of learners is

being masked by

testing that does not

accommodate their

individual needs and

ultimately short

changes them, denying

equal opportunity to

excel.”

“Is this a special needs school?” is the question many of us encounter when “Learn Different” is mentioned. It seems there is not full agreement of the term “Special Needs Education” simply because we all have our own understanding of it. It’s a case of different strokes for different folks. For some, if not most, the traditional definition Special Needs stands firm; physical disabilities that require varied attention, a cognitive impairment that is severe enough to prevent opportunities in a mainstream environment, or being visually impaired, hearing impaired or mute. Google “special needs and Singapore” for the Ministry of Educa-tion’s (MOE) definition (www.moe.gov.sg/education/special-education/) and all roads lead to anything but mainstream education – special schools for special people. Life skills, vocational skills and opportunities serve the special needs community through special needs education. That’s it? In 2007, the Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development (“OECD”) published a paper on “Students with Disabilities, Learning Difficulties and Disadvantages” together with policies, statistics and indicators for the common good. Rich in data, it makes good fodder for policy makers and educators. But what got me hooked was the admission that special needs education lacks a single, unifying definition. The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) set the record straight with the term “Special Needs Education”. It now covers “those who are failing in school for a wide variety of other reasons that are known to be likely to impede a child’s optimal progress.” It sounds harsh to say “failing in school” because a large population are not necessarily “failing” but are just getting by albeit with some challenges that are obvious enough to raise concerns amongst the classroom teacher, the school head and parents. It is not about passing a test or an exam, it is more about the journey. The biggest hurdle has to do with the individual challenges themselves, and for every minute of intellectual demand placed on the learner to deliver like the norm, think of multiplying a hundred times for its emotional equivalent. Note that recent local research indicates at least 10% of Singaporeans have some form of learning difficulty; Asperger’s Syndrome, Dyspraxia, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) and Dyslexia. From a numbers perspective that is nothing to shy away from – we’re not all that “gifted” as purported to be. The OECD paper proposed a straightforward classification scheme for students on special needs education. A tripartite system was drawn up with three categories, one of which is the cross-national category “B/Difficulties” whose focus is on the student with a behavioural or emotional disorder or, a learning difficulty. When you visit the MOE website and key in “special needs education”, (www.moe.gov.sg/education/programmes/support-for-children-special-needs/) you are now witness to a government that has made leaps and bounds in special needs education and is proactive in addressing the concerns of those with “mild special needs” “including Dyslexia, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and ADHD”, the latter being nothing “mild” to say the least unless the student is on a good dose of medication. Schools adopt an inclusive approach for this group of learners who are in desperate need of additional support. This translates to engaging Allied Educators (Learning and Behavioural Support) for literacy or other skills. But does the curriculum change? Sadly, not at all. The difficulty is in the number of learners and large classroom sizes. Not all schools have the luxury to adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of the diverse learner. So students with ASD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, Asperger’s, ADHD are going to have to adapt and change to meet the demands of the curriculum. We have an additional 3,200 teachers who have been trained in special needs to assist students with mild special needs to date, according the MOE website, but are we really able to include these learners when inclusion means a form of accountability to deliver and, that means remodelling the achievement tests marking system? This auto-matically translates into a conflict between the student and the educational context. These diverse learners sit for the same tests as everyone else. A dyslexic learner for example, is going to make noticeable blunders unintentionally because that is how his/her brain works. Yet, the marking criteria remains the same for everyone. The question of real learning then arises. Truth is, the actual aptitude of a diverse group of learners is being masked by testing that does not accommodate their needs and ultimately short changes them, denying equal opportunity to excel. One parent put it in a painfully graphic way, “It’s like failing a wheelchair-bound individual for not being able to run”. Do we make that differentiated learner work for the system or should the system work for the individual? Parents, you decide; are we a special needs school or a school that provides special needs education? - Sharon Sophie Solomon, Director

1Learn Different Academy strives for inclusion but we adopt a pragmatic approach.

When being called “Special” has its irony in Society.

errors in sentences. We

have been focusing on

uppercases at the begin-

ning of sentences, spacing

between words and, of

course, full stops at the

end of a sentence. We

love finding speech marks

We have covered plenty of

work in the past two

weeks and just in time to

show the Mums and Dads

all of our hard work! We

have finished up our

maths themes on sorting

and classifying and also

graphing. We learned

about pictographs and bar

graphs and while some of

it was very challenging, we

did our best! In literacy

we have been looking at

Page 2

For the past few weeks, our students have been engaged with our IPC Unit “Inventions and Machines”. Last week, our Year One stu-dents created, moulded and painted a favourite, self-selected invention using spe-cial air-drying clay. We linked this activity to History, Tech-nology and Society so they were encouraged to think of advantages and disad-vantages of each invention.

They also were asked to find ways to improve the inven-tion without diminishing the advantages. They were also asked to conduct an inter-view with a grown up about

in our stories and are re-

ally getting into adding

adjectives to jazz up our

sentence writing.

Our 'Toys' theme is com-

ing to a bitter sweet end

as we have really enjoyed

making different toys

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

inventions and machines from their past. They were then asked to present their findings to the class. Ashwin inter-viewed his Dad’s friend about televisions, and he concluded that not too many houses had televisions back then because there was no electricity! A car battery used to run the TV, and you had to get off the sofa to change channels because there were no remote controls. Our young explorers seemed to find this approach to the histo-ry of technology quite stimu-lating. Later in the week, after trial and error to create a functional invention, our Year One class

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS

such as our memory

game and paper air-

planes. Our last activity

will be making a kite. We

hope it can fly!

incredible huge machines be-ing used for specific purposes to manufacture Yakult. The tour ended well and everyone had the chance to buy and bring home a pack of Yakult. Our students were quite in-quisitive about good bacteria (probiotics) which Yakult uses to fight the bad bacteria that can be found in our bodies. It has been a busy two weeks. We look forward to seeing you at the Parent Teacher Confer-ences coming up soon on Feb-ruary 24th.

began to make their own 3D version of their inventions from recyclable materials. We’ll keep you posted on our progress! In our literacy lessons, we learned how to use and spell words that begin with /spr/ and words that ends with /ck/ and /k/. Students are also learning how to structure para-graphs for creative writing! For maths, we are working on different ways of adding by manipulating objects and by playing interactive online games about numbers. These activities are carefully selected and integrated into our lessons to complement the topics cov-ered in the week. At the end of each month, there will be mini tests to measure how well the students understand what is being taught. We ended this week with an exciting field trip in the Yakult factory. It was interesting to see all the different kinds of

Page 3

RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS

In Maths, the children

created their pattern cu-

bes and played the

pattern game making

patterns using their body

movements.

The trip to Yakult Factory

has ended the week with

another blast. They en-

joyed the tour and talked

about how good bacteria

fights bad ones. They also

practiced their buying-

selling skills by buying the

Yakult using their own

money after the tour.

What an adventurous

end to this week.

Great job everyone!

distance calls with our plas-tic cups and metal cans - toy telephones! For Literacy, everyone showed a lot of improve-ment and progress in their sentence writing. We also are taking up C-C-V-C (4-letter words) to add to our

After the talk, the children

collected their pictures

when they were babies and

toddlers and looked at the

toys they played with dur-

ing that time. The collec-

tion of such memorable

pictures led them to cre-

ating their toy timelines.

Their toy timelines clearly

show that they played with

different toys as they grew

up. They all enjoyed the

journey down memory

lane! Linking the top-

spinning game and toy

timeline, the children took

part in a research activity

to find out where such a

game comes from. We

used the information found

The Reception 1 students have been busy over the past two weeks. The kids are really enjoying this IPC unit. They had the chance to ex-perience playing with classic and ‘primitive’ toys which Ms. Sweelin Lim (Dillon’s mum) brought in, and she told everyone how simple it was being a kid during her childhood years. We also had a fantastic time making our own simple toys such as boats and airplanes with different kinds of papers. We used them to experiment which material is most suita-ble in making these toys. We also pretended to have long

The children have been

delving into the world of

spinning tops for the past

two weeks. They experi-

mented with different mate-

rials that they could use to

make tops. They also inves-

tigated where tops get the

energy to spin. The children

have successfully made Jap-

anese paper tops and exper-

imented with different

shapes.

Having Ms. Sweelin, Dillon's

mum, deliver a presentation

about toys from the past

helped the children under-

stand that some toys in the

past are still used and en-

joyed today by adults and

children alike.

vocabulary wall. In Maths,

we moved from using

blocks to rulers (inches) in

measuring heights and

lengths. We also learned

that 1 paperclip is equiva-

lent to 1 inch when we

used paperclips and rulers

to measure objects. We

ended our week with a

field trip to the Yakult fac-

tory where we were shown

on the internet and discov-

ered that the ‘dreidel’, ‘tsa

-lin’, and ‘koma asobi’ are

the types of spinning tops

that have been played

since ancient time!

In Literacy, the children

explored the book "Stitch

The Witch" and acted out

the story impressively.

how Yakult is manufac-tured. We learned good bacteria in Yakult helps to fight the bad bacteria in our tummy to prevent stomach aches and other sickness.

Lastly, we welcomed a

new member to our class.

Welcome to Reception 1

Simeon Chew!

Every child deserves the right to be taught in the way he or she learns best!