Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Announcements

English test in week 9:
Topics tested: Food Fit for a King and Magnetic Max
Format of the test is also similar to the previous 2 unit reviews.
Will post more once I have looked through in detail the actual grammar items we need to study.


Learnlogy assignments: these are optional. Please do not feel so stressed that these need to be completed on the very same day or week. There is no harsh deadline. Just try your best to complete the assignments.
Learning should really be fun.


Next lesson on AnimateImagine:
This coming Monday is the only lesson we will be doing the actual filming of the drawings that they have completed. So, if they have completed at least 2 stories, they are encouraged to bring them on Friday for safe-keeping in school. :)
For those who did not bring them this Friday, just remember to bring them back next Monday.

We'll also be starting lessons on Art Rage. This is a paid software to draw using this software. It's much more interesting than using Paint last year to draw the monster and fairies.
You may want to see some samples of drawings done previously by another group of students.


Some of the children have received some letters for them to get spectacles or to get their eye sight tested further. Please let me know if your child needs to sit in front in the interim period.




Thanks/regards,
Mdm Chan

The Ant and the Grasshopper

Unit 9: The Ant and the Grasshopper
This is the book we are reading in Term 3.
There's this interesting video on youtube to introduce this famous fable.
Pls help here.  

Maths unit review in week 8

Maths test is held in week 8. 
Pls note that they need to be very clear on the number of groups x the number of items in the group. 
Maths language: divide this by this.....
Product means multiply. 
Etc..

Tables 2,3,4,5 and 10 will be tested. Thanks. 

Regards, 
Mdm chan

Monday, April 28, 2014

The Actual rubrics

Show and tell in week 7



Here the rubrics for the show and tell.
Pls prepare for the presentation next Monday. Thanks.

Topic: What food would you serve a guest who is visiting from overseas. Do bring a picture of it. 
Option: You may draw the picture.

We'll be looking at:
1) Posture, eye contact
2) Clarity 
3) Volume of voice
4) Vocabulary (the words used)
5) Prepardness (how prepared is the child) 



Regards,  
Mdm Chan

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Career talk this week




Photos taken during the 2 days of career talk. Thank you parents for making the efforts in coming to class! :) 

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Composition Done - Composition 1

Dear all,

Here's the first composition about the greedy boy:
The greedy boy

Here's the second composition about the mischief committed in the restaurants.
These are the groups' compositions which they wrote as a small group.

Thanks and regards,
Mdm Chan

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Raising a Moral Child By ADAM GRANT April 11, 2014

An interesting article from NY times.

Please read on if you are also keen to find out how we can model to be good parents. 😄


What does it take to be a good parent? We know some of the tricks for teaching kids to become high achievers. For example, research suggests that when parents praise effort rather than ability, children develop a stronger work ethic and become more motivated.

Yet although some parents live vicariously through their children’s accomplishments, success is not the No. 1 priority for most parents. We’re much more concerned about our children becoming kind, compassionate and helpful. Surveys reveal that in the United States, parents from European, Asian, Hispanic and African ethnic groups all place far greater importance on caring than achievement. These patterns hold around the world: When people in 50 countries were asked to report their guiding principles in life, the value that mattered most was not achievement, but caring.

Despite the significance that it holds in our lives, teaching children to care about others is no simple task. In an Israeli study of nearly 600 families, parents who valued kindness and compassion frequently failed to raise children who shared those values.

Are some children simply good-natured — or not? For the past decade, I’ve been studying the surprising success of people who frequently help others without any strings attached. As the father of two daughters and a son, I’ve become increasingly curious about how these generous tendencies develop.

RUTU MODAN

Genetic twin studies suggest that anywhere from a quarter to more thanhalf of our propensity to be giving and caring is inherited. That leaves a lot of room for nurture, and the evidence on how parents raise kind and compassionate children flies in the face of what many of even the most well-intentioned parents do in praising good behavior, responding to bad behavior, and communicating their values.

By age 2, children experience some moral emotions — feelings triggered by right and wrong. To reinforce caring as the right behavior, research indicates, praise is more effective than rewards. Rewards run the risk of leading children to be kind only when a carrot is offered, whereas praise communicates that sharing is intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake. But what kind of praise should we give when our children show early signs of generosity?

Many parents believe it’s important to compliment the behavior, not the child — that way, the child learns to repeat the behavior. Indeed, I know one couple who are careful to say, “That was such a helpful thing to do,” instead of, “You’re a helpful person.”

But is that the right approach? In aclever experiment, the researchers Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler set out to investigate what happens when we commend generous behavior versus generous character. After 7- and 8-year-olds won marbles and donated some to poor children, the experimenter remarked, “Gee, you shared quite a bit.”

RUTU MODAN

The researchers randomly assigned the children to receive different types of praise. For some of the children, they praised the action: “It was good that you gave some of your marbles to those poor children. Yes, that was a nice and helpful thing to do.” For others, they praised the character behind the action: “I guess you’re the kind of person who likes to help others whenever you can. Yes, you are a very nice and helpful person.”

A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a helpful person. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them “to help,” it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them to “be a helper.” Cheating was cut in half when instead of, “Please don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please don’t be a cheater.” When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us.

Praise appears to be particularly influential in the critical periods when children develop a stronger sense of identity. When the researchers Joan E. Grusec and Erica Redler praised the character of 5-year-olds, any benefits that may have emerged didn’t have a lasting impact: They may have been too young to internalize moral character as part of a stable sense of self. And by the time children turned 10, the differences between praising character and praising actions vanished: Both were effective. Tying generosity to character appears to matter most around age 8, when children may be starting to crystallize notions of identity.

Praise in response to good behavior may be half the battle, but our responses to bad behavior have consequences, too. When children cause harm, they typically feel one of two moral emotions: shame or guilt. Despite the common belief that these emotions are interchangeable, research led by the psychologist June Price Tangney reveals that they have very different causes and consequences.

Shame is the feeling that I am a bad person, whereas guilt is the feeling that I have done a bad thing. Shame is a negative judgment about the core self, which is devastating: Shame makes children feel small and worthless, and they respond either by lashing out at the target or escaping the situation altogether. In contrast, guilt is a negative judgment about an action, which can be repaired by good behavior. When children feel guilt, they tend to experience remorse and regret, empathize with the person they have harmed, and aim to make it right.

In one study spearheaded by the psychologist Karen Caplovitz Barrett, parents rated their toddlers’ tendencies to experience shame and guilt at home. The toddlers received a rag doll, and the leg fell off while they were playing with it alone. The shame-prone toddlers avoided the researcher and did not volunteer that they broke the doll. The guilt-prone toddlers were more likely to fix the doll, approach the experimenter, and explain what happened. The ashamed toddlers were avoiders; the guilty toddlers were amenders.

If we want our children to care about others, we need to teach them to feel guilt rather than shame when they misbehave. In a review of research on emotions and moral development, the psychologist Nancy Eisenberg suggests that shame emerges when parents express anger, withdraw their love, or try to assert their power through threats of punishment: Children may begin to believe that they are bad people. Fearing this effect, some parents fail to exercise discipline at all, which can hinder the development of strong moral standards.

The most effective response to bad behavior is to express disappointment. According to independent reviews by Professor Eisenberg and David R. Shaffer, parents raise caring children by expressing disappointment and explaining why the behavior was wrong, how it affected others, and how they can rectify the situation. This enables children to develop standards for judging their actions, feelings of empathy and responsibility for others, and a sense of moral identity, which are conducive to becoming a helpful person. The beauty of expressing disappointment is that it communicates disapproval of the bad behavior, coupled with high expectations and the potential for improvement: “You’re a good person, even if you did a bad thing, and I know you can do better.”

As powerful as it is to criticize bad behavior and praise good character, raising a generous child involves more than waiting for opportunities to react to the actions of our children. As parents, we want to be proactive in communicating our values to our children. Yet many of us do this the wrong way.

In a classic experiment, the psychologist J. Philippe Rushton gave 140 elementary- and middle-school-age children tokens for winning a game, which they could keep entirely or donate some to a child in poverty. They first watched a teacher figure play the game either selfishly or generously, and then preach to them the value of taking, giving or neither. The adult’s influence was significant: Actions spoke louder than words. When the adult behaved selfishly, children followed suit. The words didn’t make much difference — children gave fewer tokens after observing the adult’s selfish actions, regardless of whether the adult verbally advocated selfishness or generosity. When the adult acted generously, students gave the same amount whether generosity was preached or not — they donated 85 percent more than the norm in both cases. When the adult preached selfishness, even after the adult acted generously, the students still gave 49 percent more than the norm. Children learn generosity not by listening to what their role models say, but by observing what they do.

To test whether these role-modeling effects persisted over time, two months later researchers observed the children playing the game again. Would the modeling or the preaching influence whether the children gave — and would they even remember it from two months earlier?

The most generous children were those who watched the teacher give but not say anything. Two months later, these children were 31 percent more generous than those who observed the same behavior but also heard it preached. The message from this research is loud and clear: If you don’t model generosity, preaching it may not help in the short run, and in the long run, preaching is less effective than giving while saying nothing at all.

People often believe that character causes action, but when it comes to producing moral children, we need to remember that action also shapes character. As the psychologist Karl Weick is fond of asking, “How can I know who I am until I see what I do? How can I know what I value until I see where I walk?”

Adam Grant is a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.”

Adam Grant is a professor of management and psychology at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success.”

Maths Unit review

Dear all,

Good work everyone. We have improved from the previous unit review's result to another new high. Please keep up the good work, everyone! :)

Unit Review and upcoming assessment

Please note the upcoming unit reviews and assessment. The next upcoming test is next week, week 5 English where the assessment is similar to the first unit review we did in Term 1.
It is 5% for this component.


Thanks and regards,
Mdm Chan

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Things due for this term (English)

Unit review 3 will be coming in week 5. ( the week after Good Friday.) Please refer to the first unit review format as a gauge to study and prepare for the next test. 

Things tested: 
unit 5: Beware of the Cat
unit 6: life in the shell

How to prepare:
-----------------------
1) past tense, present tense is a must know. When to use past, when to use present tense. 
This is so especially for irregular verbs. 
E.g, eat, give, drink, go, say, run, meet, etc.. 

2) grammar items from life in the shell- plural forms of special nouns. 
Eg: leaf, change to leaves 
Fly, change to flies
These will be tested. 

3) open-ended compre: Read and read, and of course with understanding of the clues. 😄

Regards
Mdm Chan

Composition 1

Dear all, please note that we are completing composition 1. 


How will this be done:
==================

1) pupils to complete group writing in small groups of 3. 
2) teacher to mark group essays and provide feedback for group essays
3) pupils to complete individual essays (revised) based on their group essays. 

We have completed step 1 on Thursday. 
Will will proceed to do step 3 next week once I have completed marking. 

Thanks. 
Regards 
Mdm Chan


Thursday, April 10, 2014

Spelling list

Spelling list
X5 times for handwriting exercise today. Thanks. 

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Photos memories




Visual arts: 2H's clay pictures









Photos from the SYF competition

Some photos from the SYF competition 2014.

Shaun from our class represented the school in this competition. 

Here's the link to the photos. 

Cheers, 
Mdm Chan

Misconceptions: English

Misconceptions in the sea creatures;
Clams, scallops, mussels. They can be misunderstood. Take note of the difference between them. 
 
Plural of words ending with 'y':
Eg: baby, babies. Have to change to 'ies'
Eg: leaf, leaves. Have to change to 'ves'
It was already mentioned in class but these mis-conceptions may appear again in the unit review. Thanks. 

Another part:
Past tense, plural and singular for present tenses. We will revise these again as they will again be tested. 

Regards 
Mdm Chan