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This Week in Miss Grace Chua's Class

Sunday, January 25, 2015 • 12:21 AM • 0 comments

Dear girls,

This week we had a challenging yet enriching time learning from the mistakes made in the practice papers.

Comprehension OE

We applied the comprehension skills covered in Term 1 Week 1 in our study of Hero Rats. It is of paramount importance that you make the reading process a deliberate and critical one. Adopt the four roles (Director, Judge, Mind Reader and Archer) in your reading of the passage.

Research has shown that slow reading helps pupils to better appreciate the themes, nuances and problems presented in the passage. As a result, after a process of slow reading, you would be in a better position to answer the questions!

Plot Elements

The plot elements were also reinforced this week through the study of the suspenseful text, THE ESCAPE and the humorous story, WORST FRIENDS. An engaging piece of writing contains all five plot elements (EXPOSITION, RISING ACTION, CLIMAX, FALLING ACTION, RESOLUTION & CONCLUSION) that build effectively on each other. It is important to remember to include these elements in your writing.

Situational Writing

We reviewed our skills in Situational Writing. Situational Writing is the BONUS of the Paper 1 component. To achieve full marks for this section, make sure you include all the relevant information needed and check your work thoroughly to eradicate grammatical, spelling and spelling errors. Make sure you include the PURPOSE STATEMENT, which would indicate to the examiner that you fully understand the purpose of the writing.

Narnia

We ended the week with the examination of the FANTASY GENRE and proceeded to identify the features of fantasy in Chapters 1-2 of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is quintessentially fantastical because in the story, you encounter magical creatures, talking animals and witches. A persisting motif in the book is the battle between good and evil. Like many fantasy stories, Narnia featured heroes who overcome their maleficent adversaries against all odds.

We did our very first situational writing piece of the year. You were introduced to the objectives and relevance of situational writing to your lives. We then proceeded to do class writing as I explained the required format and expectations for the component.

We conquered Synthesis 1-2 this week. Looking at the work you have submitted, I am proud to see that most of you were able to form accurate sentences using ‘who’, ‘whose’ and the most challenging of all, WHOM! We will reinforced the concepts taught in the term to ensure you will be able to use the relative pronouns with confidence.

Quizlet

Remember to complete your Quizlet quest and compete for the top three positions for this week’s Quizlet challenge! :D

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This Week in Miss Chua's Class Term 1 Week 1

Sunday, January 11, 2015 • 1:12 PM • 0 comments

Dear parents,

Thank you for the information given to me in the Getting to Know Your Child form. It has helped me to understand your child better and will enable me to better aid her in her learning and growth. Thank you for all the affirming adjectives used to describe your child. It makes me glad to see that my girls are growing in nurturing homes with encouraging and loving parents.

Your comments have also helped me to understand the expectations you have for your daughter and gave me insight into the methods I could use to motivate your child. Many of you have requested for 'Engaging and Fun activities' and 'Drilling and Repetition Practices' to be conducted in lessons. I will try my best to integrate both elements in my instruction procedures to ensure that the children are given inspiring yet exam-focused lessons in the year.

P6

Inference-Making Session

We started the week with a blast with the learning of the process of inference-making. Using our hilarious class production (2014), the pupils are introduced to the steps taken in inference-making.

This video is unlisted and will not be available on search engines or public walls.

Information gathering

Knowledge:Linking Information gathered to background knowledge

Conclusions drawn

The girls were then provided with several media sources: TV Commercial, advertisements and Public advocacy poster and were asked to determine the CONCLUSION, MESSAGE, INTENT of the characters in the media sources.

Such an activity is not merely an engaging or fun one. Familiarity with media sources is especially essential in helping pupils to cope with the new PSLE Stimulus-Based Conversation Component where they would be given a wide variety of visual sources: Pamphlets, Schedules, Adverts and asked to comment on their validity, effectiveness, appeal. The pupil's ability to make connections, evaluate, make conjectures and counterarguments will distinguish her from pupils who merely provide mundane analysis of the source.

(Click to enlarge)

In the exercise assigned, I told pupils to determine the message of the advert and list the clues that enabled them to draw their conclusions. This allows me to understand the extent to which pupils are able to 1) Identify the right type of information for inference-making and 2) Make conclusions based on the information provided.

The pupils will subsequently be required to apply inferential skills as they attempt their comprehension questions.

P5/P6

Comprehension Lesson

Our first comprehension lesson was a highly-scaffolded one. Pupils are introduced to the steps taken when handling the Comprehension passage and were introduced to 4 research-based reading comprehension skills that will aid them in their learning.

The four skills are:

1) Visualisation --> Being a director; thinking about how the scene would appear in a movie.
2) Questioning --> Determining the intent, feelings, thoughts of the characters.
3) Evaluation --> Evaluating the personality and actions of characters
4) Referencing --> Cataphoric and Anaphoric referencing to aid understanding.

Annotations is a research-based method to enable pupils to fully 'interact' with the text and slow down in their reading. It is an effective strategy as it compels pupils to think about make inferences as they read the passage (identifying motivation, character, thoughts) and visualise as they read.

The pupils are also asked to stop at the end of every paragraph (The Gateway) to write down a few key words to summarise the essence of the paragraph. According to educational researchers, summarising teaches pupils to 'discern the most important ideas in the story, ignore irrelevant information' and 'integrate central ideas in a meaningful way' (Jones, R.,2007)

I demonstrated the process in which questions are to be analysed. Pupils are taught to determine the TYPE OF INFORMATION/WORDS required by the question and to search for the relevant information when reading the text.

(Click to enlarge)

As we progress through the year and pupils get more familiar with the processes of reading, they would be given full autonomy to analyse the questions, annotate the passage and attempt the questions.

Compo Pre-Assessment

The girls had their first Composition Pre-test this week to help me to ascertain the level of skill the children have acquired in writing and to plan lessons to guide them to overcome their weaknesses.

Before the test, the children were 'recruited' by the CIA to identify the mistakes children make in their writing and to evaluate its relevance to the question given.

Following that, they were given guidelines on how they could avoid the mistakes the children have made.

Finally, the children were given 45 minutes to complete writing task.

Whoo Hoo Quizzes

The girls did their first Whoo Hoo Quiz this week. The Whoo Hoo Quiz will be conducted weekly to reinforce the pupils' skills in Grammar MCQ and synthesis. The quiz gives the pupils ample exposure to a wide variety of examination questions and prepares them to answer challenging questions in the examinations. The questions are retrieved from past year papers of high-performing primary schools in Singapore.

Through my experience, the Whoo Hoo quiz has enabled my P5s to excel in the Synthesis component and in fact, they have done better than their peers in the section because of the weekly exposure given.

These are the highlights of the week!

Have a brilliant week and...

Regards,
Miss Grace Chua

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First Day of School

Friday, January 2, 2015 • 1:43 PM • 0 comments

Dear girls,

I am absolutely delighted to meet all of you today. It was refreshing to see your beautiful faces and hear your girlish voices after the break.

I hope you have had a restful and meaningful December holidays. The journey ahead might be an challenging one but I believe we will survive...and EXCEL with the support of one another.

Remember...

We are a family. This means that no one gets left behind or forgotten in the class.

Remember to get all your learning materials ready for the new week.

6Grace

1) Blog Acknowledgement Slip

2) Identity Thumb Print

3) Getting to Know Your Child Form

4) Report Book

5) Thermometers

6) Mini Whiteboards

7) Companion booklets (Entire pack)

8) Lock for your lockers

5Grace

1) Blog Acknowledgement Slip

2) Facebook Form

3) Getting to Know Your Child Form

4) Mini White boards

5) Companion Booklets (Entire Pack)

Have a brilliant weekend! Don't forget to be AWESOME!

Always here for you,

Miss Grace Chua