March 2009 Archives

The Best in School N.E.mation (Part 2)

March 31, 2009

Read Part 1 of Schoolbag's coverage here.

Ask Hwa Chong Institution students Fransisca Santosa, Winnie Foo, Tan Bai Hui and Rachel Tan what best represents Singapore and they will tell you: "love". Their team came in first runner-up at the N.E.mation! III competition after exploring the softer side of Singaporeans in their animation clip Seeds of Love.

"Since saga seeds are said to represent love, we chose them to be our medium of animation," reveals team leader Fransisca. Which was how they ended up spending a few weeks picking and collecting saga seeds before they could get started on the production of their clip.

Unsurprisingly, that led to many fun and memorable moments.

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The Best in School N.E.mation (Part 1)

March 27, 2009

For the third year running, the N.E.mation! III competition saw teams from secondary schools, junior colleges and the centralised institutes competing to see who could best communicate their ideas about Total Defence through an animation clip. The results were finally announced at the Total Defence Day event at Suntec City Tropics Atrium on 15 February.

This year's top honours for the animation competition went to the team from Yishun Junior College (YJC) for its entry Our Home. They won a fully-paid trip to DreamWorks Animation studio in the US. The first and second runners-up awards were respectively clinched by teams from Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) for Seeds of Love and National Junior College (NJC) for the cleverly-titled Feel in the Blank.

For the winners, the event was a culmination of the hard work that had kicked in June last year, when they registered for the competition.

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Making Sense of the World through Mathematics

March 24, 2009

Racking your brains over when would be the perfect time to buy a car or a HDB flat? Are you wondering who might be the best person to ask?

Well, you could try asking one of Mr Christopher Chee's students from Northlight School. In his Mathematics classes, graphs are not an indecipherable alphabet soup of Xs and Ys, but rooted in real-world examples.

For instance, Mr Chee guided his students as they pored over data of COE and HDB prices in order to examine the trend in prices. "My students really appreciated that lesson. Now they will always remember that January and February are the best months of the year to buy cars!" he says.

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PLAY Time at Greendale Primary School

March 20, 2009

When the bell rings to signal the end of the school day on Thursdays, most of the Pri 1 and Pri 2 pupils at Greendale Primary School don't dash off home. Instead, they eagerly stay back in school for an hour of PLAY time.

No, it's not ironic. PLAY time at this schools refers to a host of 24 activities spread across three categories: performing arts, clubs/societies, and sports and games. Activities include hip-hop dance, line dance, frisbee, floorball, maths games, speech and drama, LEGO club and Bakers Inc., just to name a few.

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A Closer Look at New Learning Spaces in Primary Schools

March 18, 2009

A quick glance at school buildings in Singapore might leave the impression that not much has changed in the last decade or so - but zoom in close on some primary schools and you might see a landscape that's surprisingly different from what most of us think a school looks like. Different types of classrooms and spaces are popping up, and learning doesn't have to take place only in a typical classroom set-up.

Looking at the design of primary school facilities was one of the priorities raised by the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) Committee, which made its preliminary recommendations to MOE in January 2009. The idea is that primary schools ought to have spaces that facilitate engaged learning, both academic and non-academic. For example, they could have:

• Redesigned classrooms that encourage greater interaction and self-discovery;
• Outdoor experiential learning facilities for hands-on learning;
• Special rooms and facilities to support the new Programme for Active Learning, which would provide all pupils with the opportunity to participate in sports and outdoor education, and performing art and music.

Take a closer look at some primary schools that are already leading the way in creating these new learning spaces. Based on these schools' experiences, MOE is studying the possibility of providing some of these facilities to all our primary schools. Someday soon, all primary schools might look like this!

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Dancing Their Way into Their Choice School

March 13, 2009

For Noor Syafeeqah Bte Abdul Hamid, Chong Xue Yi, Jeyashangari and Nurul Nadhirah Bte Hamdan, the new school year has been a special one. All dance enthusiasts, these Sec 1 students literally danced their way into their choice school under the Direct School Admission (DSA) scheme - even before they took their PSLE last year.

Now enrolled at Riverside Secondary School, these four students were among the 52 applicants who took part in the school's DSA Exercise from May to August 2008. The admission criteria included the students' academic results, dance qualifications and achievements. They also had to undergo rigorous dance auditions and interviews.

By the end of August, 16 successful applicants were offered places in the school.

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Learning Music with Just a Little Pluck

March 10, 2009

"Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do!"

Familiar strains from the musical "The Sound of Music" and other classic tunes waft through the hallways of Eunos Primary School. But it's not the reedy tones of recorders that you'd usually hear. Instead, you'll find small clusters of pupils sitting together while plucking the strings of what look like miniature guitars and singing along.

If you were to ask the pupils what on earth they're playing, it won't be the first time they've heard that question. When many of them proudly brought the instrument home for the first time last year, they were greeted with a bewildered "What is that?"

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Parents Take Centrestage at Canberra Primary School

March 3, 2009

Pri 2 pupils of Canberra Primary School could have been forgiven for thinking Chinese New Year had come a week early. During curriculum time in January, their Chinese language teachers brought them to the school hall - and there, brightly decorated, were six booths featuring Chinese New Year ornaments and goodies.

The booths were manned by parent-volunteers such as Mrs Chris Ong, whose son Axell Ong is a Pri 2 pupil. She was in charge of a booth featuring tidbits associated with the New Year. "We introduced the food to one class at a time, and I enjoyed the opportunity to relate to my son's friends at a different level when I spoke to them about the New Year goodies and their significance," she says. "Those who knew me as Axell's mother saw me as a parent-educator and presenter that day. We could still connect, but on another level."

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