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How to kickstart the love for learning from a young age?

Posted on By illac_admin
Source: Foodoppi.com

You must have heard of the old adage, “If you love your job, you wouldn’t have to work a day in your life” and it applies to children too! The love for learning can make them love every single activity, every single subject, and every single learning opportunity. Imagine your child being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about learning, would you ever need to worry about their academic performance?

What are needed to kickstart the love for learning?

1) Strengthen their working memory

Working memory is used to hold multiple information at the same time. For example, I gave you 3 apples, you ate 1 and bought another 4, how many apples do you have? Your working memory is actively engaged in order to hold and process the information given.

Children who have good working memory are able to handle complicated tasks like “picking up their shoes, putting it onto the shoe rack, before queuing up to enter the classroom” all as per instructed by the teacher. These may sound easy but children with weak working memory might “line up immediately without picking up the shoes”, or, “pick up the shoe and queue up without going to the shoe rack”.

Children with good working memory therefore excel in the classroom and are more motivated for new challenges ahead.

2) Enhance their Mental Flexibility

With so many things to learn and so many stimulants to handle everyday, it is stressful and taxing to the little brain. Enhancing on the mental flexibility of the child can help them learn to handle different situations using different “gears”, therefore, maneuvring safely and confidently around “obstacles”.

A child with poor mental flexibility might find it really hard to share, because he is used to playing with a toy his way. When another child comes along wanting to play together, he gets all uncomfortable, not able to process the new situation nor come out with a new playing method, thus cries out loud.

Mental Flexibility helps a child adapt to new situations and pick up new knowledge readily.

3) Heighten the Inhibitory Control

“Naughty”, “Hyper”, “Not focused”…

If these phrases sound familiar to you, no worries, they are used extensively on most children. It’s not their fault, children are meant to explore, play and be active. All that they need to learn are rules and boundaries. As soon as they are able to self-regulate their behaviour and manage their emotions according to the rules, they will be able to enjoy school and look forward to a great learning journey every day.

A heightened inhibitory control will allow your child to focus in class, capture teacher’s instructions and learn effectively. Imagine the praises they will get because of that.

Want to know more about how to improve your child’s working memory, mental flexibility and inhibitory control? Join us at our parenting workshop!

Date: 12 Oct 2019, Saturday
Time: 3 to 5pm
Venue: Westgate, #04-09 (beside Jurong East MRT station)

GEP or Not?

Posted on By Clarice Lim

Congratulations! Now that your child has been selected for the GEP program, what’s next for him/her?

It might be an extremely straightforward answer for some parents but not so for some others. My opinion is, go for it. Reasons being:

PROS:

  1. It’s a great confidence-booster.
    • Your gifted child knows what “gifted” means and there is no better way to inform your child that he/she is really good at what he/she has been doing than being identified as the top 1% of the cohort in Singapore. A generally high self-confidence can lead to higher competency in everything else that the child attempts and an even stronger love for learning.
  2. It’s a label that will follow your child for life (in a good way)
    • We are always cautious about having labels put on our children but this is one label you want stuck to your child. With the label of being the top 1% of the cohort, your child can potentially find him/herself in more favourable situations in his/her adult-life, starting with the choice of secondary schools such as Anglo-Chinese School, Dunman High School, Hwa Chong Institution, Nanyang Girls’ High School, NUS High School of Mathematics and Science, Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary) and Raffles Institution which offers IP programs for GEP students.
    • (Source: https://www.moe.gov.sg/education/programmes/gifted-education-programme/development-and-growth)
  3. Life is more than English, Mathematics, Science and Mother Tongue!
    • Not only will your child be changing school (if he/she is not already in one of the assigned GEP school), he/she will be experiencing more than the main-stream curriculum has to offer. The GEP program is administered under an enrichment model where the curriculum:
      • extends beyond the basic syllabus in depth and breadth
      • covers more advanced topics whenever necessary
      • caters more to individual needs and interests
      • makes interdisciplinary connections
      • encourages the investigation of real-life problems
      • promotes the examination of affective issues in the various subject areas

(Source: https://www.moe.gov.sg/education/programmes/gifted-education-programme/enrichment-model)

CONS:

  1. GEP students are not necessarily top PSLE students
    • GEP students are very busy. Not only do they attend mainstream lessons and continue mainstream work, they have projects, camps and out-of-the-classroom programs to participate in. Their PSLE results may not show their intelligence since PSLE preparation requires much drills and regurgitation which are not in the interest of GEP students.
  2. Danger of complacency
    • We all know and have heard of children who think they are too smart for their pants and end up failing in life. And yes, these are true/real stories that will happen if left unguided. Some GEP students end up doing really well but unfortunately, some will slide off the grid and end up in mediocre vocations just like any others. The key that parents need to remind themselves is to psychologically support their children in continuous hard work and effort so as to ground them in thoughts of continuous improvement of themselves.

For those parents who think that the GEP program will be extremely beneficial for their children, they are right. The program will bring children beyond what they are capable of and help them reach their peak potential.

However, you are NOT advised to “train” your child for GEP by signing up for GEP-training classes at centers that claim to “create” GEP students because talent, although can be groomed, cannot be “naturalised” into a child. Meaning, if your child is not naturally prepared for the high demands of the GEP program, you will only do more harm than benefits by artificially fitting your child into the GEP program. Think of the stress the child has to go through just to remain in that GEP class you have planted her/him into. If it works out, good for him/her. If it doesn’t, the poor kid suffers the repercussion for life.

Once again, congratulations for being the parent of a gifted child, embrace the learning journey with your child, support her/him throughout the program and remind them of the importance of effort to achieve great success in life.

Why Shouldn’t You Scold Your Child for Their Bad Results

Posted on By Clarice Lim

It’s easy to blame your child for the bad results he received.

“Why didn’t you pay attention in class?!”

“You don’t know and you didn’t ask?!”

“What were you doing when the teacher was teaching?!”

These might have been your first thoughts but it’s really unfair for you to blame your child for her bad results simply because:

  1. They didn’t mean it! – No child in the right mind will want to do badly in their examination. It is every human being’s instinct to want to excel in life. They may have been careless in their work or in your opinion, not “interested” in ensuring perfection. However, they are still young. They are like “L” plate drivers who are tentative and tend to make mistakes. Be understanding and forgiving, cut them some slack.

 

  1. They don’t know what they don’t know. – Languages, Mathematics and Sciences are not topics that you can master just because you “pay attention” in class or “ask” when you don’t understand. We have to remind ourselves that not all teachers are made equal and not all learning environment is the same. Even if you pay 100% attention every time the teacher is teaching, you may not understand or be taught what you need to know in order to deal with the examination questions.

Let me give you a simple example, which of the following is correct?

a) An FBI agent

b) A FBI agent

If your answer is “a”, you are wrong. Because “F” is read as /effe/, which is sounded with an /e/ at the beginning thus you use an “an” in front of it (It’s actually not about the spelling but the sounds of the first syllable.).

If you got it right, good for you, you are one of the lucky ones who had gotten a great English teacher when you were young.

Now try this:

____________ more dustbins in school ___________ in reducing littering?

1) does, help                    3) do, helps

2) do, help                        4) does, helps

The answer is option 1). It is a real examination question picked out from a Primary 6 SA2 examination paper. This kind of question is not something that you will know how to answer without the guidance of a good English teacher and definitely not something that is taught actively in the textbook or even in class. However, they do, somehow, find their way into the test papers.

 

  1. You will increase their anxiety level. – The only thing that will result from your scolding is their increased stress and anxiety level in dealing with their studies. Stress is defined as “a response that occurs when an individual faces the lack of resources to deal with the situation given”. Screaming at them simply makes them feel inadequate without them feeling like they are receiving the help that they need, this thus results in undue stress, which in turn affects learning.

 

To help your child, start them young. Be reasonable in your expectations of your child’s results. Right from Primary 1, do not scold them for the bad results. I’ve seen so many children who have tried forging signatures, hiding test papers, crying in school because they didn’t want to go home to their parents with their bad scores. Don’t give your children the undue stress that they are already facing on a daily basis. It’s not their fault to have done badly, they don’t know what they were not taught. Even if they were taught, they are not experts of the topic yet and therefore failure is simply one of the paths they had to walk on in their learning journey.

 

When you receive your child’s papers, look into it, analyse it, see what the problems are, be understanding and seek help for him/her. That’s only fair for your child.

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