Important Notices Friday, October 7th is Children’s Day and the Academy will be closed. CCA Pottery last session for this block is Tuesday October 4th.

Ms. Fides will be on maternity leave as of Monday, September 23rd.

Withdrawal notice deadline for Term 2 is Friday October 7th.

Ms. Bridge will be joining the Year One class as co-teacher and we wel-come our new co-teacher for Reception 2, Ms. Jaja Md. Aris.

Welcome to our new Year One student Shane Matthew Chen!

“ Every learner can learn and improve. The human brain is designed to respond to environmental input: the more targeted, persistent, and relevant the input, the greater the changes.”

- Eric Jensen

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER September 12th — 23rd , 2011

1 0 W i n s t e d t R o a d , B l o c k C # 0 1 - 1 6 , S in g a p o r e 2 2 7 9 7 7 T e l : + 6 5 6 8 3 6 1 1 2 8 F a x : + 6 5 6 2 3 5 6 7 9 7 w w w . l e a r n d i f f e r e n t . c o m .s g

TAEKWONDO Over the last five weeks the students have been learning their techniques which are part of the form (poomsae) that they will need to pass in the grading we are working towards in January 2012. We have, for the first time, practised the first four steps of the poomsae in sequence. As well as working on the form, the students have had fun playing games which reinforce these techniques. A few students have even demonstrated board breaking using their punching technique. They’re doing great! - Ms. Lynne Grant POTTERY

Pottery CCA has been running for three weeks now and the class has been working on their fine motor skills before starting each project. They have to massage and play with the clay for 7 minutes to get their hands warmed up before starting. We have been practicing molding our clay into different shapes and we’ve used wooden carving tools to give definition and detail to our creations. We have even tried using the potter's wheel to make cylindrical shape ceramics. The students have enjoyed each session making a mess and just playing around with the clay. Many of the students are getting more comfortable using the sculpting tools too. It is a great way of relaxing after a challenging academic day. - Mr. Aries Cruz SOCCER The students continue to work on their agility and ball skills with drills and games intended to encourage teamwork. They often have time to practise goal shooting and they play short games to put their new skills to use. It’s nice to see a sense of teamwork emerging.

- Ms. Tatty Hojali Masros

PILATES

We did not have enough students register for the Pilates CCA this time around but we wanted to offer it again next

session. Here is a brief description outlining the benefits for children:

The benefits of Pilates for adults such as increased flexibility, improved core strength and better posture

are just as valuable for children especially as they tend to lead more sedentary lives these days with the

popularity of screen-based entertainment as well as the increased use of computers for school work. The

straight backs of pre-schoolers sitting cross-legged on the carpet often give way to slouching and

hunched shoulders.

Pilates enables children to learn how to align their bodies and how to use core strength to maintain this;

how to preserve their flexibility and improve their balance and co-ordination. Many of the poses and

postures in Pilates require them to focus on one part of the body, count breaths and move slowly which

can help to improve focus and concentration in other aspects of their lives. These benefits can also lead

to improved self-esteem and confidence. - Annabelle Shaw, Pilates Instructor

CCA Update!

dishes from their native countries and shared them with the school. We had a great time trying new food and playing with our friends! We also had fun learning a few new games from around the world.

Our last two weeks have flown by as we finished one IPC unit and started a new one. For the conclusion of our ‘Dressing up’ unit, the children learned about clothes and how to use recycled materials to make new fashions. Our class made accessories out of plastics, using bottles, bags and old containers. We looked abso-lutely fashionable in our new glasses, ties, watches, hats, belts and more when we pa-raded our stuff at the Friday ‘GO GREEN’ Fashion show! This past Monday we started our new Unit, ‘My World’, with an international picnic! All the children brought in

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Fun, exciting, delicious, colourful, brilliant – these are the perfect ADJEC-TIVES that describe the activities, food, costumes and ideas that we have seen over the past two weeks!

We bid goodbye to our unit of ‘Fashion Explora-tion’ last Friday with a big bang. Again, we had a fab-ulous fashion show. This time, we used costumes

which we designed and created ourselves using newspapers! This activity unleashed the inner styl-ists and fashion models within our students.

We have also started our in-quiry learning about our fami-lies, with the children bringing in pictures and talking about their family members. This will be a fun new topic to ex-plore for the next few weeks.

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS

Once again, they impressed the audience as they parad-ed on the runway, wearing their very own creations.

The new IPC unit, ‘Living Together’, was warmly wel-comed through the “My World” picnic with fun and games. Different food from various countries tempted the students’ palettes. Sa-mosas, spring rolls, adobo, chapatti, sushi and honeyed

In literacy the students have

been working hard with mas-

tering nouns and learning the

new sound groups ‘oo’ and

‘ar’. In math, they have been

doing a great job picking up

addition and moving to dou-

ble-digit addition! We are

very proud of them.

sandwiches were just some of the healthy food that the students enjoyed during the picnic.

After this festive treat, we played fun games origi-nating from various coun-tries such as the newspaper dance, feather game, Uno and pick-up sticks. It was definitely an activity where-in the students gained more knowledge about the differ-ent food and games that their friends experience in their home countries. We can’t wait to find out more about our dear friends and their families!

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RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS

the children summarized what they learned from the unit. Each week in literacy, we cov-er sets of graphemes (c, k, u, b and f, e, l, h). The children en-joyed sounding out the letters as they practiced writing the letters in the air, on sand, on the whiteboard and using clay to shape the letters. Next, we move on to segmenting and blending the assigned words from the green word wall.

The other literacy group is doing a brilliant job with di-graphs, ch, sh, ck, ng, and nk. They’re able to come up with their own excellent words and funny sentences quite easily.

In maths, the children focused on basic 2D (circle, square,

Tying up the theme with Literacy, the older group explored the world of verbs by talking about what they did during the Entry Point. They also par-ticipated in a miming game to guess the action verbs. They sharpened their read-ing comprehension skills the following week by reading and answering questions about the story they read.

The past two weeks have been full of excitement and enter-tainment! The Exit Point for the unit ‘Dressing Up’ was a very special ‘Go Green’ Fash-ion Show. The students de-signed their own creative cos-tumes made of cartons and cereal boxes. Tom chose to be a handsome pirate, Anouk was an adorable pony, Sam appeared up on stage as a small but fierce lion, Lauren made a beautiful zebra cos-tume, and Adam showed his heroic stunts as a knight! They also wore their printed t-shirts made in art class along with the bracelets & necklaces that they made when they were counting beads by 2s and by 5s. After the Fashion show,

The new IPC unit “My World” is a theme about us. It’s true to say that “ourselves” is a wonderful theme at any age. It is espe-cially exciting for our young explorers because they are at the stage where they begin to feel “grown-up”. Our Entry Point on Monday was a blast. The “My World” picnic was truly an interna-tional picnic as everyone had a chance to try food from different countries. After the picnic, the children went to a different game station set-up in each class-room. The children had so much fun and learnt to cele-brate differences whilst see-ing similarities among their peers. Thank you to all par-ents for the potluck.

triangle, rectangle) and 3D shapes (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder). They enjoyed form-ing the basic shapes using their own bodies. They also had fun as they explored and counted different objects with 2D and 3D shapes in the classroom. This week we are learning number bonds by grouping and counting different colours and shapes as we say, “____ and ____ make ______”.

The younger group learnt about the /-ar/ and the /-air/ sounds. They came up with many words and made wonderful stories using the words with such sounds. What creative work!

In Maths, the older group reviewed the concept of subtraction using the counting-backwards tech-nique and learnt to solve the subtraction story sums independently. The young-

-er group explored the different ways they can use to add numbers. Now they know that keeping the “big number” in their head and and the “small number” on the fingers is one of the techniques to solve addition problems. Two thumbs up for their enthusiasm and hard work. Keep up the terrific work, everyone!

The children’s energy level sparked this week as we be-gan our new theme, ‘My World’ with a school picnic featuring food and games from different countries. Reception 1 class hosted the spinning top game and the pick-up stick challenge. We also finished our ‘Knowledge Harvest’ activity where each child wrote their name & family members' name and made a class collage out of it. Then, we took note of the similarities and differences of each of our families. We are now looking forward to more fun activities as we explore each child's unique world. Terrific job everyone!

Every child deserves the right to be taught in the way he or she learns best!