There and Back Again

In my previous post about spelling woes , I talked about the three components of successful spelling - knowledge of phonemes & phonics, knowledge of spelling rules and memorisation & practice. This is a follow-up post in which I am going to introduce strategies for helping children spell. These set of strategies is actually based on Webb's Depth of Knowledge . The basic premise is that different activities are of different cognitive complexity. And the higher the cognitive complexity, the more likely the knowledge gets retained in long-term memory. It's actually very logical when you think about it. Who is going to understand or memorise a piece of information or concept better - one who has just read and understood it or one who has understood it and is able to rephrase and teach it to another person? Obviously the latter, who clearly has performed a task that is cognitively more complex. Enough of theory, let me give you practical advice! These activities are ...

The last weekend was spent at F1 with my son. My wife had refused to come with us, so it was just the two of us. It was my son’s first live F1. Actually it was mine too. I never really fancied watching F1 live – firstly, I watched the Macau Grand Prix before and motorsports was never my thing and secondly, I always thought that F1 wasn’t that exciting.  It only turned exciting when there was a crash.  Nevertheless, my son was quite enthusiastic, so I brought the tickets. Of course one of the objectives of bringing my son there was because of entertainment. He had always been fascinated with cars since young, despite the fact that his dad was not a car fanatic. So he was excited whenever he saw sporty cars on the road (he must be extremely disappointed that my car came original without any changes at all and looked like a typical sedan car). But back in my mind, I wanted to expose him to different experiences – travelling, exhibitions etc. From my own experience as a teache...

I do not want to keep this blog limited to English, but to talk about my experience with educating my son in the various subjects he takes in school. One of the subjects he takes is of course, Chinese Language, being a Singaporean of Chinese origin. Because we seldom spoke to him in Mandarin when he was young, his Chinese Language is not very strong. Not to mention, he was a late speaker and we boosted his speaking with quite a bit of Speech Therapy, which is English based. As a result, he spoke Mandarin with a western accent. We send him to Berries for enrichment and it helped him quite a bit. His childcare probably did as well. Besieged by all sides However, there was something about his childcare's Chinese Language programme that I thought did not make sense. One of the things that did not make sense to me was the choice of idioms. The idioms the school chose to teach was very historical in nature - in other words, they were formed because of some historical event in Anc...

Some parents dislike their children using a smartphone or a tablet. They think that their children are spoiling their eyes, or wasting their time inside the house rather than going doing outdoor play. While their concerns are valid, I do believe that technology can play a part in our children's education. Technology, in moderation, and especially guided by an adult can be very useful in helping our children learn. Voice Changer There are two apps I found quite useful in helping my son spell. One of them is called Voice Changer.  What you can do with it is to ask your child to spell the word and record it using the app. Once it has been saved, your child can press the icons to modify his voice. Your child can make himself sound like a mouse, a ghost, with helium and so on. It is definitely lots of fun to experiment with all the different voices! The constant listening to the audio recording of the word being spelt in a fun way really helps him to remember the word. You can use...

In the middle of this year, my son's childcare started to give him spelling. To be honest, I have never given any spelling test to my students. Apparently, secondary school students do not need any spelling help. My own experience of spelling is... Well, it has been such a long time, I cannot remember it anymore. I suspect, though, that it involved canning when I did not achieve a satisfactory grade. Needless to say, I was not every sure how to teach my son spelling. I poured through pages and pages of research. To my surprise, spelling was not as simple as I thought it was. I always thought that I could spell because of my frequent usage of English (the less frequent I used a word, the harder it was for me to spell it). However, it was also apparent that I subconsciously used phonics when spelling less familiar words. I also recalled some basic spelling rules that had been buried deep inside my brain while doing my reading. In other words, spelling is not only the matter of me...

The idea behind this blog festered at the back of my head for quite some time. It began when I started to think of teaching my son, Lucas. Now, I am an experienced secondary school teacher. Ask me how to write an argumentative essay or understand a difficult comprehension passage and I can give you some tips. But teach a 5 year old the basics of phonics, letter recognition, spelling etc... Truly, I can tell you that I was lost. As I did research on teaching my son, I came across many educational resources. I really learnt a lot. The research told me that childcare and primary school teachers needed to put in lots of efforts. Maybe, even a bit more effort than a secondary teacher. Secondary school teachers polish gems to make them shine. But childcare and primary school teachers create the gems. Anyway, I will be writing about my journey in learning how to teach really young kids. I enjoy researching and applying this knowledge. I hope you can all join me in this journey.