Over the second half of last year, the class had gone through a marked change in their behaviour. At Chua Chu Kang Primary School, we have a pervasive Personal and Social Effectiveness (PSE) programme which has several prongs. One of these hinges on the school’s core values of Care, Respect, Teamwork and Life-long Learning. Another is an adaptation of the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” Programme by Stephen Covey, which provides a framework for our pupils to manage themselves as well as their relationships with others.

Students of Pri 3G were ecstatic to have won the Outstanding Class Award for the Primary 3 level in 2007.

To build my class’s sense of community and responsibility, I tapped on these resources. I was on a constant lookout for opportunities to talk about the school values or habits and I used every chance I could to emphasise the importance of being responsible members of the school community.

Adaptations from Stephen Covey’s framework also proved highly effective. The first “borrowed habit” was our class chant - “Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood”. This was a fairly simple procedure, where I would say the first clause of the chant, and the students would have to reply with the second clause. Besides acting as a useful way to get my class’s attention when I needed to explain something important, it also served as a way for the pupils to internalise the importance of mutual respect, co-operation and empathy for others.

Another “borrowed habit”, “Beginning with the End in Mind”, helped us to set (and keep to!) our targets for classroom discipline. At the end of Term 3, I sat down with the class to review what the term had been like and to discuss how we wanted Term 4 to be. Together, we came up with a picture of our ideal classroom, listed in specific detail and outcomes. For example, We wanted our classmates to cooperate with each other, we wanted to build a classroom filled with caring and sharing and we wanted our classmates to respect us just as they wished to be respected.

Letters and notes of thank-you and appreciation remind Ms Sulaiman of the impact she has made in her student’s lives.

The list became a vision of our ideal classroom, and we displayed it prominently in class. After that, if any pupil in the class misbehaved or performed in a disappointing manner, all I had to do was point to the list and ask the pupil if his or her actions had helped in moving towards the list. Slowly, my efforts bore fruit and I began to see a pattern where the children began to take responsibility for their actions and began regulating their own behaviour.

I also encouraged the children to apply this system in their personal goal-setting. The children would set individual targets before each major examination period, using a target-setting template provided by the school. They would track their progress and result according to the template, and worked hard to keep on improving to their desired result.

When Pri 3G was nominated for and consequently won the Outstanding Class Award for the level, it reflected not only how they had changed their behaviour within a few short months, but also how this change had been noticed and observed by other teachers. I remembered how immensely proud I was of the class. Of course, my students were ecstatic and it furthered their motivation to keep performing up to standard.

We may have started on a difficult note but Pri 3G’s turn from less-than-model pupils to a group of mature, responsible and co-operative children has boosted my confidence in my teaching abilities and will always be a reminder of why I love teaching so.

Contributed by:
Ms Renee Sulaiman
Chua Chu Kang Primary School