Despite the novel Coronavirus outbreak, learning continues to be our priority at NTSIS. It does not prevent our students from learning regardless where they are. Our passionate teachers adopted a variety of online collaborative platforms to engage learning and connect with each child. E-learning is definitely a new experience, yet it is one that brought about fruitful collaborations and strengthened our learning community.
We are reading, writing and trying!
Our PYP Lions Nursery teacher, Ms Goh, is working very closely with parents and their partnership greatly enhanced the students’ learning outcomes. Here, Ms Goh shares her journey in conducting her lessons remotely.
“First of all, a BIG THANK YOU to all parents for your continual support and understanding. The remote teaching and learning is a new experience for me, as well as for the students and parents of Lions Nursery class. As the students are between 3 to 4 years old, and they need lots of hands-on experiences, the assignments that I have to create need to be simple and easy to understand. I have chosen materials, resources and assignments from educational websites based on the children’s needs and abilities. Most videos and assignments were related to the UOI and of new learning. Remote learning is not just for revision of previous knowledge, we continue our lessons , only in a different physical settings. Outlines of assignments videos and images are posted daily on the WeChat group so that parents access the tasks easily. Even with limited resources and materials at home, parents would watch the videos with their children and guide them through each tasks. I encouraged parents to send as much videos and photographs as possible so that I can keep track of students’ development, and also find out about children’s interest to expand the learning scopes. Feedback, comments or reinforcements are usually communicated privately since each child is unique in their learning styles and abilities.
We have our challenges as well. Many students have difficulty focusing on completing their tasks as they are in the home setting. The change in learning environment could be quite confusing to young children. Supervisions definitely required some creativity and efforts from the parents. On top of that, parents had to make use of resources at home to keep the students engaged. Some parents were comfortable to work with their children using the mobile phones. Some enticed their children by playing the learning videos on laptops and TV screens. For handwriting practices, some parents were able to print the assignments while the others wrote on notebooks and papers. Parents modeled creative thinking and resourcefulness.
I am really thankful and grateful to all parents for taking the time to guide your child in learning. Without your continual support and efforts, the remote teaching and learning during this tough period would NOT have been possible. THANK YOU!!”
