Important Notices Monday 23 April is Entry Point to our new theme "The Olympics". The

letter will be sent out along with the weekly planner (by end of this week). Monday 23 April - Parents please take your child to JH Kim, Turf City

for Taekwondo CCA. Lesson will be from 5pm to 6pm. All the best to our students who will be doing their grading!

Tuesday 1 May is Labour Day Holiday. School is closed. Please contact Ms Tatty if there are any parents or guest speakers who will

be able to give a talk or do an activity with the students for the new theme "The Olympics".

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER April 9 — 20th, 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

“ The beauty of MLE is that it

captures that moment of self-awareness and self-worth through its

exercises where abilities and skills create optimism,

empowerment, task accomplishment and

continuous self-reflection on the

learner’s abilities and achievements.”

Here’s a typical real-life scenario: A parent who pleads for guidance from a school official on how to help their slow-learning child at home and is assured - sympatheti-cally, that there isn’t anything that can make much of a difference because the child is “Born This Way” which, translates to poor genes. It means expected failure at school and eventually, in society. That is resignation at worst and consolation at best. What it all boils down to is an absence of continuity. Why? Can the same be said for passing on cultural traditions? Does a parent pass on family traditions to the next generation via genes or is this done proactively and religiously in the home environ-ment where it is learned and forms a habit? It’s the latter and that is what the Medi-ated Learning Experience (“MLE”) is all about. In this process, a “mediator” (the in-structor who has a humanistic approach and just a “fellow explorer”) is conduit be-tween the stimulus (the exercises from homework to assignments and tests) and the learner (who does all the thinking and begins to understand how). The MLE has a simple agenda: a universal criteria which is present in all interpersonal interactions, necessary to create conditions for general development, a nurturing environment that works for extended elaborated learning. It is purposeful, demand-ing focused attention and clear communication and clear directions for a given task. MLE is about transcendence, or what some understand to be the application of it to a much broader context. Transcendence takes the immediate encounter to a wider issue of experience and possibly a whole new meaning, identifying rules and recur-ring themes and braces the learner for any anticipated future experience. The beauty of MLE is that it captures that moment of self-awareness and self-worth through its exercises where abilities and skills create optimism, empowerment, task accomplishment and continuous self-reflection on the learner’s abilities and achieve-ments.

… continued on page 4

Mediated Learning!

focus on our 5 senses and there were also stations where we learned more about exercising and nu-trition. Luckily, they was a room where we could re-lax and hear soft calming music for a few minutes. We did a fun workout with one of the instruc-tors and cooled down with some stretching ex-ercises. In Literacy, we have started something really fun! We have been working on writing stories

It was a very good week as usual! We are ending our topic on ‘How are you?’ today. We will move on to the next topic on ‘Olympic’ next week. The children will be learn-ing all about the Olympics and participating in sports-related activities. We vis-ited the Health Zone as our IPC ‘Exit Point’ and the children had heaps of fun participating in all the activities. We played with interactive games that

Page 2

For the past two weeks, our Year 1 students have been learning many different things. In IPC, we are still dis-cussing how to be healthy and how to take good care of our body. Our Year 1 students made their own ‘be healthy’ reminder post-ers which you can see all around the academy. We also discussed the functions of our skeletal system and ways to pre-vent bone disorders like osteoporosis & scoliosis. Also, as part of cele-brating World Health Day on April 7th, the whole class agreed that we should celebrate the day by eating fruit and vegetables. Everyone

using our imagination and creativity. We are creating our stories by using special words that we have chosen specifi-cally for our stories and drawings we have made.

ing more complex word problems. We are also now adding and sub-tracting using mental cal-culations -- good-bye to counters and manipula-tions. Now we can count mentally! In Literacy, the lessons are getting tough-er. Our Year 1 students are already engaged in composition that includes a reading comprehension, writing poetry, writing couplets for their poems, editing and proofreading using proper punctua-tions and capitals. A new topic for this week is reading and writing using hard and soft C’s. We ended the week with a fun field trip to the Health Promotions Board as part of the exit

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

brought in their favorite fruits and vegetables and we made a few different salads. It was a very suc-cessful lesson because everyone tried the salads and found them enjoya-ble. For International Learning, our students researched the origin of some popular sports or exercises in different countries (e.g. Tai Chi from China). We also re-searched sports/exercises in Singapore. In Maths, our Year 1 students are learning how to develop a strategy to complete more complicated sums with very minimal re-minders. They are learn-ing how to add and sub-tract using a graphical representation and solv-

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS

In Maths, we have em-barked on Symmetry. We are finding sym-metry everywhere! We even used a ruler and looked at our own bod-ies to find symmetry. It’s been a fun week. Enjoy your weekend!

where our students pulled together their les-sons from the unit and celebrated the learning that has taken place. Our Year 1 students had the opportunity to explore the whole gallery. Stu-dent’s where even able to do some rock climbing and sliding after the tour! The class is eager to begin the next IPC unit ‘Olympics’. We will get started on Monday. Well done class!

Page 3

RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS

pore where children went through a series of activities on nutri-tion, personal hygiene and well-being. They were also shown how exercise can be fun and exciting. Fantastic job, class!!

now understand the im-portance of maintaining good health and hygiene! During assembly our class showed everyone their dancing skills! They ex-plained to others students that dancing is a good form of exercise and a fun way to work out our muscles! In Literacy both the young-er and older groups made fantastic progress. The younger group worked on their spelling of c-v-c words (m,a,s,d,t,i,n,p,g,o,c,k,u,b). We also wrote on sand and formed words with clay, while the older group con-tinued with their sentence

some parts of their bod-ies. They also did some movements and dancing to review verbs (action words). During our IPC discussion, the children completed research activi-ties to find out about the incidence of disease in the past. For instance, they now know Tsetse flies cause sleeping sickness in Africa. They also did some research on the discovery of medicine, especially Penicillin. They found out more about Dr. Alexander Flemming and his remark-able work. Along with that the children also learnt about the importance of good hygiene. They know that germs are every-

Hope you all enjoyed term break. The students got back to their routines quickly. The last two weeks of the Unit "How Are You?" have been interesting. The class spent some time learning all about hospitals: people who work in the hospitals, signs they will see in a hospital, and most of importantly, what numbers to call in case of emergencies. In history we looked at some common childhood diseases not only here in Singapore but also around the world. The dis-eases that they learned about made a huge impres-sion on them. The students

A new term marks a fresh start for learning. The children have settled in very well despite the term break. We hope you enjoyed your Easter holi-day with family and friends. As a warm-up week, the children revisit-ed the concept of time during maths session. They practiced reading the time and completed worksheets independent-ly. In Literacy, the chil-dren made The Rainbow of Nouns to review the concepts of common and proper nouns. During mu-sic time, the children were so excited to make the “body band” by tap-ping, clapping, stomping

writing and consonant blends. In Maths, it was everyone's favourite - mon-ey! We learned about the different Singaporean coins, their values and ap-pearance, and even started to count in cents!

where and some of them can be too power-ful to destroy. Now they understand why scien-tists both in the past and at present work diligent-ly to invent new treat-ments to cure diseases.

This week ended with another exciting trip to Health Zone at Health Promotion Board Singa-

We ended the unit with a field trip to Health Promo-tions Board, where the kids gathered more infor-mation about health and tips on how to prevent the spread of germs and dis-eases. We also welcomed Jonathan Lee to our class!

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

Mediated Learning continued.

Self-regulation has an impact on the overall development of personality, prompting an individual to act according to their requirements through well-disciplined internal control mechanisms. Emotions play a significant role in normative behaviour. A learner facing difficulties generally goes through three stages of cognition: the input stage of problem solving (much of it has to do with a lack of executive functioning skills as mentioned in

one of our previous newsletters), the elaboration phase where receptive skills are not mobilized enough to express oneself and, the output phase where trial and error responses abound, as with impulsivity in task response and behaviour MLE helps an active learner breeze through the large frontier of logistics from information gathering, conceptual preci-sion, access and use of multiple sources of information, clear perception and analysis, to inferential thinking.

- Sharon Sophie Solomon, Director