Venn and Graphs

What I like about the school is that they welcome parents with open arms. In fact, the principal, class teacher, parent and child signed a "contract" in which the signed individuals agree on the responsibilities each has and will work closely towards the mission statement of the school. Their newsletter encourages parents to come and visit the school, have lunch with their child and volunteer in the class or at school. So I have signed up to volunteer myself.

I visited Afzal for lunch last Friday and stayed in the class after that. Mrs Smith told me that she will be teaching them graphs... that will be interesting. I saw the pocket chart containing a square, circle and triangle. The children were asked to choose their favorite shape. Mrs Smith flashed cards that contain the children's names to see whether the children can identify their names ... a bit too simple if based on the Singapore system but for some children, this is their first time in a school environment. The children made their choices by putting their namecard on the pocket slot under their favorite shape. After everyone had done it, Mrs Smith went on to explain most and least, and how you can see it from the graphs. Then she moved on with their favorite letters A, B and C and went through the same routine.

I heard Mrs Smith explaining to the children that yesterday they learned about the Venn... that's marvellous I thought and so when we reached home, I asked Afzal to explain what was the Venn that he learned yesterday. I drew two overlapping circles but Afzal said no. He drew a circle and told me that all those who takes the car to and from school goes into that circle. Those who takes bus and other modes of going home are outside the circle. So he told me that he is outside the circle cos he takes the school bus. Asked him to explain more, and that is all he could tell me for now. But I liked what he is doing in school. They even have a review or reflective session in which the children are encouraged to 'write' something in their journal. Some children draw something, others doodle all over their book. I saw Afzal's journal. It was the first page and it contained some words that he already knew how to write by memory... words like boy, box, go, see etc...I didn't get to see all that he wrote but I'll get to take a peek at it one day.

Each of the kindergarten teachers has their own style and each of them does something a bit different for their own classes. I saw what another class did. The teachers pasted their works on the wall outside their classroom based on the book "If you take a mouse to school". There was a chart divided into two parts. On the left side "what mouse brought to school", and on the right side, "what we brought to school". The teacher circled the same things that mouse and the children brought to school and write the word "same". Besides language, the teachers were teaching a very basic maths concept, and I am impressed cos it looks fun and just the sort of things we should be doing.

In Farzana's grade 1 class, her teacher was teaching rhymes, but it's more so to get the children understand ending sounds. Farzana's mom, Sarina, was pleased too because she felt that the school goes a bit more in depth as compared to the "touch and go" situation back home. I'm sure there are pros and cons, but it's good to expose our children to their way of teaching as well. I also see a lot of language experience approach in the kindergarten and grade 1 classes. For Farzana's class, they read "The purple cow" and the children are encouraged to write about a purple animal that they have never seen before. Farzana wrote, "I never saw a purple cat."

Bcos the school is emphasising manuscript handwriting, Afzal's "l" and "u" have a little curved tail at the end now. After 5 days in school, I felt that he is writing much better, in terms of having all his letters on the line and the lowercase letters not going beyond the middle dotted line. I have never forced Afzal to write properly bcos I just want him to enjoy writing first. He seemed to be enjoying writing now and at home, we have been doing language experience approach rather than writing in workbooks. Afzal loves it because he wants to write stories as he plans to publish his books and open a bookstore in Australia. Yup his ambition now is to be a police officer, an author and a bookstore owner and mum is the cashier. Yeah...we've got things planned out, didn't we? While it's still burning hot, I am encouraging every single bit of writing experience that he wants to do :)