Snippets of hope

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RESL Reflections by Sim Hong Jhun

Thursday, July 21, 2011 @ 8:15 PM

Since school reopened, I have only went for one session. However, I could only sit at the back or side and take pictures/videos as I felt sick... Unfortunately I lost my phone with the pics/vids inside so I can't post them here D:

Even though I wasn't teaching, I could still chat with the students, especially Ridgeley who talked with me about a certain Japanese anime. At the end of the lesson, we carried out a quick poll and found that 6 out of the 8 students were either too busy or not interested in staying back twice a week for our sessions, so we decided to have our sessions alternate between every Thursday and Friday.

Towards 5pm, the students were completing their crossword worksheets which were unexpectedly too difficult for them. At 5 exactly, all of the students wanted to go home, probably because they were exhausted by the worksheets. However the two the remained and tried very hard to finish up their work were Chang Hua and Ridgeley, the same two students who expressed interest in coming twice a week for our sessions, and also the group who won the 'competition' two weeks in a row. We were definitely pleased with their response, as it showed that we had successfully interested them during our lessons and interactions with them. Sadly, we could not possibly conduct lessons for only the two of them.

In closure, I feel that the sessions so far have been satisfactory for myself and for our charges.

Trip down to APSN - Vignes by viggy

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 @ 11:28 PM

I realise now that in an RES-L project, the real service is not done by us, but those that we wish to survive. When I first when down to conduct the lesson, I believed that perhaps service was not all that cut out to be. I certainly did not have a great opinion of service due to the failures I had met in my past attempts at CIP. However, as I approached the students with their quizzical smiles, I understood that students with special needs are no different from students without special needs. They are interested in the same games, and oriented in carrying out the same tasks that we are. Perhaps, they lack expertise in certain fields, but they make up for this with their upbeat attidue and optimism. The lesson was interesting to teach though I must say, it was challenging to keep their attention through out the topic.

It was necessary to occasionally remind them to turn their attention to the board and to pay attention to the questions being asked. The rewards system was extremely effective as they paid attention whenever prizes were mentioned and actively participated in answering our questions. Each student has a different attitude towards learning, some better than others. But regardless of their attitude, I was inspired by the optimism they showed in accepting their wrongs and the willingness to learn that I find lacking in many people. Although we were as old as them, they were willing to learn from us, and in fact exhibited signs of excitement, signifying a positive outlook towards learning. I understood from this experience that I am indeed gifted by the grace of God to have no support needs. I look forward to teaching them soon enough.

Updates by --Freeze

@ 10:03 PM

Since the school holidays ended, I have been able to go down to APSN Tanglin on a regular basis, fulfilling 4 sessions with the students thus far. Personally, I now enjoy interacting with them much more than during the pre-June holiday sessions. During the pre-June holiday sessions, we were there just as teachers and wanted to made sure our lessons were good. However, now I have gotten to know our students much better through both the lessons as well as having conversations with them about our daily life and hobbies, allowing our relationship to develop into a friendship, instead of remaining as a teacher-student relationship. This, I feel has been the main takeaway for me thus far.

Another area our group is working on currently is our RE report. Progress has not been smooth thus far, mainly due to the fact that deadlines have constantly not been met by the group, which stems from our group members not being able to meet the deadlines. It is understandable that all of us are busy but I feel that if one unable to finish his part, it should be his responsibility to inform the group such that the group leader can delegate the work accordingly. As the group leader, I also acknowledge that I have not been proactive enough in ensuring good communications between the group members and this is an area of improvement which I will be working on.

Anyway, looking forward, I hope that the service learning sessions can continue to go smoothly and that our group communication can be improved.

Clarence

Reflections 4: Daniel by Zooeae

@ 9:01 PM

Reflections 4: July 19, 2011

Our RESL sessions have been going on regularly for quite awhile now, and on a personal basis I have fulfilled 5 sessions so far. Throughout I have gotten a chance to design a lesson plan, for the book on the United Nations. Though it was a challenge to put big concepts such as cooperation between countries, world peace and equality in simple terms, when the lesson was successful it felt really rewarding.

Through our repeated service sessions with the group, I believe my fellow team members have grown in their bonds with the students, and personally I have learnt to appreciate their company compared to at the start when interactions with them were brief and frigid in nature. Now, in my personal experience, I can see that the students have become more open and receptive to our group as can be seen through the better class engagement, and at the same time we have been also grown closer to them. They will approach us freely to talk about video games or just general school life and we will be on the same ground to converse and enjoy each other’s company. At the same time while lessons have been going on smoothly, I am also very thankful for the new friendships I have made.

Daniel

Reflection 19th July by xiiaomiao

@ 8:50 PM

It has been a long time since I went to APSN Tanglin, if I recall correctly, the last time was before the start of June Holidays. Since there were no holiday sessions, and I was unable to attend the only Thursday session thus far, I feel that I have lost touch with things happening in the RESL journey.

Having not attended any sessions recently, I guess I could only comment on the report and my observations. First of all, I would like to thank the rest of the team for being able to carry on with the sessions without me contributing much. Secondly, I feel that the report writing wasn't as smooth as expected, and also the leader could have taken more responsibility to ensure that we are on time, and the tasks are well delegated. For example, he could have asked someone else to be in-charge of report writing when he doesn't have the time to spare. Overall, the communication within the team is kinda bad.

Looking forward, I was hoping to be able to help out next Thursday (28th Jul). However, the school (for whatever reason I do not seem to understand) has decided to run the full Monday timetable then. As such school ends at 3.30 and Im afraid we have to cancel that session as well. Haiiz.

Nothing much to say. lalala~

by Sim Hong Jhun

Monday, May 9, 2011 @ 9:29 AM

In my opinion, the past few lessons were quite successful because they could more or less understand the lesson, as could be seen from their so-so performance in the worksheets we gave them. We implemented a point system, which spurred them to perform well and participate, as well as allow us to sort of control them when they were getting too noisy. I found out that they had very diverse characters and attitudes towards our lessons. The boys generally thought the lessons were interesting and participated very very actively sometimes too actively. The girls, on the other hand, were soft and slightly afraid, but I think they were more warmed up after the second lesson. Chang Hua and Aloysius particularly surprised the both of us as they had a lot of general knowledge about history and geography.

Through a short oral survey that we conducted with them, they thought that fiction books were more interesting, and they felt our worksheets ranged from the easy to average range. SO we shall make tougher worksheets :P Currently, we are still contemplating what to do for the finale, which will probably on the last Thursday of July, if nothing sudden pops up.

On the second lesson, I tried teaching, but I think they thought Ranald was more interesting. I think I should try to bond with the students more by teaching and talking to them during lessons. Also, I think we should alternate between fiction and non-fiction so as to balnce their learning.

by viggy

Sunday, May 8, 2011 @ 9:47 PM

At this point in time, I am worried about my RE project, particularly my contributions to the group. I have done a fair amount of work by writing out the proposal, coming up with a group name and doing behind-the-scenes research on my topic. However, I have been unable to visit the school for a rather long time, meaning my service hours are below average in the group and definitely need to improve. I am trying to work out a way to make more hours, however, at this point in time, I cannot because I have the exams to worry for. I believe it should be fine, once my group starts making their weekly visits on Fridays as previously agreed.

Currently, I have read some articles on whether IQ is a suitable indicator on whether a student requires special attention or whether they are gifted . It is to be noted that IQ is not reliable as it is merely a test out of which you get a few questions correct and a few wrong. It does not answer the questions what the definition of IQ is and how it can be measured. It merely asserts the fact that doing well in a test, is indicative of intelligence which is flawed reasoning. It has also been written that students have multiple intelligence"s". meaning that there are different categories of intelligence. This concept suggests that it is possible that Autistic kids are not at all special needs, but simply extremely gifted in one intelligence, but severely lacking in another. As for special needs children, the truth may be that they are only unable to learn certain types of things and that they may actually excel in others. This would revolutionize the way special needs students are taught, and the tests being administered to find out whether a student has "special needs"

I read these on http://iq-test.learninginfo.org/iq02.htm