Category Archives: Secondary 1

2016 Sec 1 Week 18 Update

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Exams started for both the children and they’ve been busy with that.

GG has been nominated by her form teacher to apply to be a school counselor and she’s happy at this chance. They need to fill up a form with examples of how they exemplify the values the school holds close to heart and get endorsements from 4 teachers! The teachers then debate among themselves to decide the counselors. But I am happy that she is even trying for the position and her teachers nominated her. 

Other than that, nothing much happend this week with the children. More probably next week onwards as we start our home adventures! Happy weekend everyone

2016 Sec 1 Week 17 Update

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A very ho-hum week as far as school was concerned. The children are busy preparing for their first semester exams which starts from next week,

I am very happy with GG, she has become very mature in the last few months, the failure she had in her PSLE exams was the spur she needed. BB on the other hand, is still as playful as ever! Sigh!!

BB had an e-learning day in school this week and e-learning here was very different from what they had in primary school. Then, they were given everything prior to the e-learnng day and had a few hours to complete all subjects. Usually it won’t take more than an hour, and they have the rest of the day to themselves. Here, on the other hand, BB had definite slots throughout the school day for each of the subject and the curriculum of the e-learning was also not shared in advance. If they missed the slot, they missed the e-learning, which would be graded in the end.

I also, on a whim, googled the best schools in the world for the subjects BB & GG are interested and shared with them. I am using that as their incentive to study, will know in a while if this was successful. It’s also surprising in a good way that Singapore universities figure in the top 10 in both lists…

On to week 18 now, which is the start of exams. Exams also are differently done in secondary school, in bits and pieces over a two week period!

2016 Sec 1 Week 16 Update

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GG had a very exciting, but tiring week with Friday being finally the day of her performance. They’ve been practicing very hard for this for the past 3 months and I am happy that it went off well. We went to see the Gala performance in the evening and though the Choir was tired, this being the second performance of the evening, they did a splendid job! In fact I really enjoyed the evening, with all the songs and the drama and the cast and crew really did a great job!

By the time we came home, it was 11 pm, GG had been in school since 7:30 am! She other 16 hour days in the week when they had intensive rehearsals and a dress rehearsal with her coming back home around 10 pm. This, compounded by the fact, she had to wake up at 5:30 the next day for school really took the toll on her.

The icing on the cake was the Hindi term 1 exam yesterday! When she was back home from the actual performance, she had a mini meltdown about her Hindi exams as she really didn’t have time to prepare for it. But, after the exams, she was quite chill about it as the paper was easier than she expected. BB, on the other hand realises that with every passing year, the syllabus continues to become more difficult, and he slides a bit more further down….I know that during the holidays, I need to sit with him for some intensive work and get his confidence up a bit, so that he is able to atleast pass!

Exams will start next week and they both need to up their studies this week….

 

2016 Sec 1 Week 15 Update

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We’re hurtling our way towards the end of semester exams. For secondary schools, the exams start earlier than they do for primary schools, with both exams starting sometime in the end of this month and ending around mid-May. This is also different compared to primary schools where the exams would be over in 4 days (5 if you take Higher Mother Tongue). Also when there are two exams on a particular day and you don’t have to give one, you can come late or leave earlier, unlike primary schools!

GG had a very busy week as she had concentrated practice sessions for the performance which is next week. On the first day of the long practice session, she came home only around 7:45 pm, which was almost 13 hours after she left home for school! Right from the time she has been a baby, she reacts to tiredness in the same way – she gets angry and cranky. She’s learned to manage her emotions slightly better now, but now and then, they overflow. That’s exactly what happened that day – she called me when she left school, close to 7 pm and said she’s tired and will not have dinner! I immediately knew she was getting cranky and as soon as she came home and showered, she started shouting and fighting with BB! I tried to console her and eventually fed her some food and she broke down. After a few minutes of hugging, she calmed down to eat and finish her homework before bed. The next day, she told me, she dozed off in class! I will be happy with the performance next week so that she can concentrate on her end of semester exams. Though, like I told GG, this is life – there will be several situations in life, especially when you start working and at the beginning of your career, when you may have to manage on minimum sleep and have to do it with grace and fortitude and this is just a rehearsal for those situations.

Oh, I have to mention this. Someone from BB’s school parent support group recommended this free app which is great. The app is called OurPact and it is free in the App Store. I guess it should be free for Android also. What it basically does is that it gives the parent (or adult) control over their child’s phone. We downloaded the app and sat together to decide on what I called ‘Phone Ban’ times. So once I schedule the times, their phone gets locked up. They can’t access apps except phone, text and music. So they are contactable at that point, but can’t use the phone to play games, watch videos and generally waste their time. We’ve used it for the better part of a week now and I love it. It also allows me to block access if they already have it remotely if I feel they are misusing phone usage privileges. It’s been such a relief, especially when I am at work and I know they are playing with their phones instead of doing something constructive.

Next week is their Hindi end of semester exam. GG’s performance is a day before that and she will be home only around 10:30 – 11 pm! Hopefully she doesn’t break down at the end of the day and this affects her exam performance!

2016 Sec 1 Week 14 Update

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Another week and another month has gone by! We’re looking at the first Semesteral or mid-year exams coming on very soon. The first exam is predictably Hindi which is two weeks from now and then towards the end of the month both GG & BB start their school exams.

GG’s week was more stressed out than BB’s. She had practice twice during school and once more on Saturday. Actually they’ve been having practice quite often on Saturdays, but because of her Hindi classes, her school is asking her to come only twice – the two Saturdays before the event. She comes home so tired when she has practice though and then getting up in the morning is a chore for her, but she has been a trooper. I also realise she’s matured faster than BB who still seems a bit silly to me, especially when I compare them (which I try not to do, but sometimes, it does pop in my mind!)
While GG did not too badly for her first series of class tests, she does need to do much better for this mid-year exam if she wants to top her class. I seriously think that topping her class and getting the school award will do wonders for her self-confidence. She suffers from a case of serious exam stress and this was the big reason she didn’t do well at the PSLE exams last year. We didn’t realise how bad this stress was until it was too late and now I need to get rid of it before she sits for her O levels. So an injection of self-confidence will help her a lot.

Her school concert is a day before the Hindi mid-year exams and so she needs to manage time to work on that too. She’ll be back home after the concert close to 11 and then the reporting time for the exam the next day is 7:30 am! The centre is a bit of a drive (approximately 30 mins) from our home, I don’t know how she is going to manage this as she is like me in the sense she needs her sleep or turns grumpy and cranky!

BB on the other hand was super cocky during his term 1 exams and this showed in his results! He actually failed in English Literature and didn’t achieve targets for any subject. In his case, though he does not study in a top school, I have noticed his peers and classmates, all get good scores. Again, if wants to win school and class awards, he really needs to buck up this term and needs to go up a full band for each subject. Hindi is of course going to be the weakest link, and I think I need to step up and especially from next month when I will be at home, which will co-incidentally be during their holidays, I plan to work out an intensive time-table for both of them.

Friday I got a very hesitant message from BB telling me he wanted to tell me something. My mom antenna went up and I immediately called home to speak to him. He told me his Form teacher wanted to speak to me. From the way he spoke, I knew something was wrong and asked him the reason. So the reason he told me was that during CCA on Wednesday, he accidently hurt his classmate with his penknife. They were using that to make balsam wood planes. So I spoke to his teacher and the story was slightly different. According to the teacher, the other boy wanted to see BB’s penknife and BB shouted ‘No’ while pulling it away from him and in the process, the sharp tip hurt the boy. It was apparently a deep cut and required stitches. I was quite upset to hear this. The teacher asked both boys to write an incident report and since their versions differed, he spoke to me. Now the impression I got was the teacher believed the other boy and the reason was he said, “The other boy is a top student and also a student councilor”. I don’t agree with this reason because I firmly believe that just because you are a top student and a school leader does not mean you don’t lie or twist the truth. I am not disbelieving the boy and know BB shoulders more of the blame, but I didn’t like the way the teacher used these words. This kind of reinforces my belief that in this society we live in, it’s just academic excellence which matters and nothing else! Which is very sad as you need all kinds of people in a society and just academic excellence is not a blueprint for a child’s success in life!

Anyway, BB has been asked to do another reflection and the teacher did say this incident will not be escalated and the other boy’s parents also are not pursuing it further, which is a huge relief!

So that was pretty much the children’s week.