Happy Children's Day!

It's February!

I'll update my web blog with my monthly blog entry while for you, my students, I want to read your weekly journal entries. So it's February now, and here's my new post :)

Writing regularly helps improve your language and thinking skills. Through web journaling, I can identify students who are able to express opinions, thoughts and ideas freely and readily, unhampered by some constraints of the classroom environment (especially for students who are shy but actually have lots of viewpoints). Having the opportunity to express your personal thoughts and feelings about issues that affect you is important as you will learn to value time for self reflection and respect one another's ideas and perspectives.

A few of you are just getting the hang of writing regular blog entries, and I'm happy to see the improvement from Week 1 to Week 3 so far in some of your blog entries.

Students are learning to write more about how they feel instead of just stating events that happened. Many students are taking time to read others' blog and give constructive comments, as well as learn to improve their own blogs after seeing some of the fantastic blogs done by fellow classmates.

In fact, some of the blogs have such advanced features that I'm really very impressed with the technological know-how :)

Alright... please continue with your weekly journal posts on your web blogs from Week 5 to Week 7. Do remember that your class test commences on 25 Feb (HMT), followed by your main papers from 1 Mar to 4 Mar. Please plan your study schedule and be fully prepared for your tests.

All the best 6 Courage, remember our vision - Turn Our Dreams into Reality !

Check out some of our best blogs:
http://von-der-man.blogspot.com/ - original
http://yunling6co.blogspot.com/ - organised
http://nur-qamariah98.blogspot.com/ - creative
http://stepintomystory.blogspot.com/ - super cute... I love animals :)

First Day of School

The day has yet to end, I'm still in school, preparing for tomorrow's lesson with 6 CO. I enjoyed today's self-introductions presented by individual students. In particular, I was impressed by some students who were able to articulate confidently, graciously and at the same time inject tasteful humour. It's great to hear students sharing about their aspirations, family members as well as on interesting hobbies like gardening and golfing. I think we should learn to cultivate a passion in doing something that will define us as a unique individual and I believe this will enrich our lives. We did not have much time to prepare and present, but to improve, students must learn to elaborate on the little points that they share. For example, if you're talking about family members, mention something special about your loved ones that endears you to him/her, like my younger brother who hates his hair as it's curlier than mine, but I love it and I like to ruffle his hair :)

Tomorrow, the class will do some group discussions on our class VVM and rules. I'll also share more about our points system, and I'll be awarding points from tomorrow.

Got to stop now, need to be at the canteen for P1 dismissal.

Preparing for 2010

I'm drinking coffee, sitting in front of my TV, watching or more like listening to the repeat telecast of Friends and typing on my MacBook at the same time. Yes, I'm having some butterflies in my stomach as I think of my new class of 2010, P6 Courage. Butterflies of anticipation as I 'so' look forward to starting the year with some of my previous 5 CO students and new students.

I'm not a digital native, but I love using technology to explore, share, teach and learn. Thus students from my former classes know that when they are in my class, they will expect lots of comp lab time with me and ICT-based assignments.

We will be commencing with the WEB BLOG, yeah!! I must thank my previous group of talented techies from 5 CO like Brendan, Nadirah and Ruiting... They have impressed me with their digital know-how and abilities and have assisted to maintain a wonderful class blog throughout the year - check it out at http://5courage09.blogspot.com/

Our class assignment for WEB BLOG 123 will be an on-going task, students will need to create their own web blog and post their web address at Thinkquest, and maintain it throughout the year. (1) Weekly personal journals must be posted as well as (2) fortnightly article reviews which must be assessed by group members. Lastly (3) each student must update their blog with at least 3 new posts opining on current affairs per month.

I'll grade the blogs in end Jan using the following rubric:

A-Well-Organised, Interesting Content, Creative Layout/Graphics
B-Fair Organisation, Ave Content, Gd Layout/Graphics
C-Poor Organisation, Weak Content, Ave Layout/Graphics

But every month thereafter, I'll give points for the best 5 blogs... Talking about points, we have a very 'evolved' point system for our class, to be maintained by our highly honoured monitor and monitress as well as group leaders. Let me give further thought on this before posting more details on our class point system.

Alright now, my coffee is cold, I need to replenish it, will update another day...

Appreciation Message on Teacher's Day

Dear Teachers,

Your presence, your support and dedication, your valued contributions, time expended and efforts on all matters related to ARTs and the school, are truly appreciated and sincerely, we thank you for being the wondrous teacher and colleague that you are. Happy Teacher's Day!

Dear Pupils from P5 Courage,

This year has been a beautiful year of fun, laughter, lots of hard work and sweat poured into our countless projects and school work, and last but not least, I've learnt as much from you as you have from me :) You've impressed me with your maturity, your dedication and ernest attitude to improve yourselves and reach out for the best, for yourself, your members in your group, and for our class. We are the best because we want the best for us. This is the positivity that I'm glad we have achieved as a class. Thanks, P5 Courage, I'm so happy and thankful to be teaching you :)

Reproduction Video (Goh Xin Yi)

This video resource presents the process of fertilisation in human sexual reproduction very clearly. Thanks Xin Yi, for taking the time to look for a good video clip to share with everyone :)