Important Notices Field trip to Tropical Aeroponics Farm next Friday 23 March, 11.30a.m. to
3.30p.m. Parents please send in reply slips along with payment by Monday 19th March.
CCAs letter for Term 4 are out. We have added 'Speech and Drama' on Thursdays. Please remember to send in your sign-up slips by Friday 23 March.
Taekwondo CCA, extra lesson on Monday 26 March. Please bring along gear and stay in school for the lesson on that day.
Thank you to the visitors who came in and did talks with the students about dental hygiene and the role good nutrition plays in the body: Dr. Song Sara Ok, Dentist, and Ms. Cheryl Lin, Nutritionist.
Cheryl Lin Salveo Nutrition Manager UFIT Urban Fitness Pte. Ltd. 87 Amoy Street Singapore 069906 E: [email protected] T: 6225 5059 M: 9734 7281 www.ufit.com.sg Dr. Song Sara Ok One Orchard Boulevard Camden Medical Centre, 17th Floor, Singapore 248649 T: 6733 1388 E: [email protected] www.t32dental.com
BIWEEKLY
NEWSLETTER March 5th — 16th, 2012
1 0 W i n s t e d t
“ I do not mean to belie the real struggles these types of learners face, but merely to point out the importance of providing learners, especially early learners, an environment to be appreciated.”
It is assumed that if you have been labeled with a learning difficulty, it’s a bad thing. Words like disorder, disability, delay, all connoting a deficit in some area, are used to describe the learner. In the academic world where there is an alarming trend toward ‘sameness’ with standardized testing, one-methodology teaching, one-size -fits-all curriculums, maybe it’s time to appreciate the strengths or talents that often accom-pany certain learning styles. Recently the New York Times published an article of “The Upside of Dyslexia” by Annie Murphy Paul (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/05/opinion/sunday/the-upside-of-dyslexia.html). The article highlights that many dyslexic learners possess distinctive perceptual abilities and are able to evaluate visual scenes faster than the average learner. The article goes on to state “Given that dyslexia is universally referred to as a “learning disabil-ity”, the latter experiment is especially remarkable: in some situations, it turns out, those with dyslexia are actually the superior learners.” In Edward M. Hallowell’s and Peter S. Jensen’s book, Super Parenting for ADD : An Innovative Approach to Raising Your Distracted Child, both parents of ADD children, they highlight the necessity of framing the label as a strength or gift, rather than its counterpart – a deficit. In fact, they suggest that for every negative aspect associat-ed with ADD/ADHD there is a mirror opposite strength. Nowadays, we often hear stories of exceptionally successful and creative Autistic people, talented Asperger’s software engineers or math savants. Just visit the bookstore and you’ll find a recent book about someone overcoming their deficit. I do not mean to belie the real struggles these types of learners face, but merely to point out the importance of providing learners, especially early learners, an environment to be appreciated. A place where they can be exposed to as many different types of activities and teaching methodologies so they may intrinsically become aware of their own aptitudes and abilities without fear of judgment or failure. Once that is in place, it becomes easier to build on those strengths and, ultimately, understand the learner to be able to guide them toward their success. -Jennifer Chadam
When a learning challenge has advantages!
teaching us the methods to proper brushing of teeth. She highlighted about the hidden ‘sugar bugs’ that are in our teeth and showed us ways to take good care of our teeth.
The Nutritionist visited us this week giving us good health tips about eating healthy food. The children were engrossed watching the slides of good eating habits and how to main-tain a healthy lifestyle. They were able to under-stand the importance of using the food pyramid when it comes to choosing the right food for their body. We also had a dentist vis-iting us last Monday,
Page 2
For the past two weeks, our Year 1 students have been busy. As you know we have moved on from our last IPC unit to our new unit ‘Fit & Right’. We started the unit with a creative en-try point, the Learn Different Friendship Games. As the new unit is about our health, we thought we would first focus on the im-portance of exercise. The students completed obstacle courses and other physical activities all for the sake of good sportsmanship and fun! Everyone was excited and didn’t want the games to end. It was nice to see the children
For Maths, the children are continuing their knowledge on Time. We are focusing on the quar-ter hands and the quar-ter to two hands. The children are trying to skip count in 5’s in order to try to read the time without facilitation. As for our Literacy, we introduced the letters ‘oa’ and ‘ew’, its sounds and the words. Upon the introduction, and exam-ples of short sentences,
hension is essential and so answering questions with graphic stimuli is a good test suitable for Year 1. Literacy is getting tougher each lesson but we watch the progress carefully and go at a pace at which the class is com-fortable . This week we had two special guests for our new IPC unit. Last Monday, we had a dentist who en-couraged our students to brush their teeth regular-ly. The students really en-joyed the presentation as evidenced by them asking so many questions. Thanks to Dr. Ok . Last Thursday, we had a nutritionist, Cheryl Lin, who gave the students
RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS
cheering for each other and showing great team spirit! In Maths, our Year 1 stu-dents are now learning how to develop strategies for more complicated sums where they need to apply their prior knowledge on numbers bonds, addi-tion, subtraction and place value, all in 1 prob-lem. Pretty challenging for Year 1! In Literacy, our students are now learning a new skill that includes exercis-ing and developing their higher order thinking. Now that they know how to read, it’s about under-standing what we are reading. Reading compre-
YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS
the children were able to come up with a few sen-tences using the words that we have introduced. Thumbs up guys!
some tips not only on healthy eating, but on the critical role of exercise for healthy body and mind. Being healthy re-quires eating well and be-ing physically active. It was informative and at least some students seemed responsive to the suggestions to try to eat more healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. Our year one students are always excited and look-ing forward each week to more surprises and chal-lenges.
Page 3
RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS
RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS
In Maths, we are
learning about how
to read time on both
digital and analog
clocks. The children
made their own ana-
log clocks so that
they would be able to
read the time by hour
and half-past the
hour.
Lastly, we welcomed
a new member to our
class, Nabil Habibi
Haikal. Welcome to
Reception 2!
job! During the assembly, Reception 1 Class pre-pared a short play about germs specifically what germs can do to us and how to prevent them from making us ill. The students all played their parts well, and the audi-ence loved their perfor-mance. In the new IPC theme, we are learning about the different parts of our body and what ill-nesses/diseases we might have if germs invade those parts of our body. Sounds scary but the stu-
the proper way of brushing our teeth from our guest dentist, Dr Sara Song OK. We all had fun afterwards brushing our teeth with our new tooth-brushes to prevent the sugar-bugs from eating our teeth away. Thank you for the goodie bags Dr. Sara! In Literacy, the stu-
dents explored the
Everyone is excited about the new IPC unit “How are you?” because we will be learning about our Health. We started off with the first official Learn Different Friendly Games, wherein students from different classes were put into different groups and they tried to challenge each other's times in com-pleting obstacle courses and other fun activities. Everyone was so competi-tive and motivated to do their best, and in the end, all of them did an awe-
During Inquiry, the Re-ception 2 students did some in-depth research using the Internet about food and things that make our bodies grow healthy and strong. They also picked up three main points of a selected food and wrote about them in their journals. We also cut out some pictures from magazines to show how much we re-ally understand about being healthy and watched a video on “Importance of Varie-ties in our Food Con-sumption”. We learned
-dents are learning a lot! In Literacy, the younger group has been working very hard in their seg-menting and blending (m,a,s,d,t,i,n,p,g,o) sounds, while the older group continues with their consonant blends (br,bl,dr,gr) and writing sentences with the words they have learned. In Maths, we are done with measurement and are now moving on to time. They learned about telling time with clocks, their parts and why time
book “Chips”, focusing on proper nouns, plu-rals and singular. We made a ‘Noun Table’ and the children par-ticipated in adding their own words to the table. We also concen-trated on how to place a capital letter at the start of a sentence, spacing and a full stop at the end of a sen-tence.
is important in our lives. This week we had two visitors come to our school for us to learn how to be healthy. One was Ms. Sarah (a den-tist) who talked about why we need to take care of our teeth and how to protect them from ‘sugar bugs’, and the other one was Ms. Cheryl (a nutritionist) who shared with us ways we can be healthy role models. Thank you very much for visiting Learn Different.
Every child deserves the right to be taught in the way he or she learns best!
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