In this issue, we take a break from the “Helping your child excel in the 21st century” series to bring to you some practical tips to develop a positive learning environment for your child and inject joy into his/her learning. Parents may find these tips useful while planning activities for the upcoming school holidays or preparing for the new school term.
Before we discuss the guiding principles for crafting a positive learning environment, it is important to understand the power of words. What you say to your child and how you say it is critical in creating a positive learning environment for him/her and allow your child to maximise their learning potential. For this week’s entry, we will be focusing on the use of communication to create a positive learning environment.
Take a moment to reflect on the times when you were a student – how did your parents and teachers talk to you? What kind of words did they use and what were their tones? Did that make you feel motivated or insecure, and even angry? As parents, it is critical to understand that your words would shape your child’s learning. According to research by renowned developmental psychologist, Vygotsky, words can affect your child’s learning in the following ways:
a) Affecting a child’s sense of identity: imagine how a child would feel if he really likes singing and a parent, instead of offering praises and encourage, asks the child why he is so noisy and wasting his time on singing and not on his maths homework
b) Helping a child understand how he/she is doing: naming a specific attribute could actually help your child develop his/her interests or talents. For instance, if he/she drew a very nice picture, you may want to encourage him/her by specifically naming an attribute that really attracted you – for instance, you can praise him/her on the vivid colour combinations
c) Influencing parents’ relationship with a child: To a child who has just quarreled with his cousin, one can say “stop quarrelling with your cousin or I will punish you” or one can ask “I saw you quarrelling with your cousin. Can you let me know what had happened?” The latter would build a trusting parent-child relationship versus the former, which is one based on threats.
Five Guiding Principles for Positive Communications
How then can you ensure that your words support your child’s learning and create a positive environment? There are several guiding principles that can help you:
a) Using a kind, straightforward tone and be direct: It is important to say what one mean, but in a kind tone. Avoid sarcasm or indirect comparison to win compliance. Sarcastic language like, “ which part of sitting down and keeping quiet don’t you understand” will embarrass a child and create mistrust and resentment. Instead, you can be firm and just tell the child to sit down so that everyone in the family can enjoy the show together.
b) Focusing on actions: Focusing on action will point towards desired behaviours rather than attitude or character. This is especially important for young children, who tend to be concrete thinkers and may not be able to understand abstractions. An example of an abstraction you may want to avoid is to tell your child to be respectful. Instead, ask him/her to treat others with kindness by helping their friends when they fall down or carrying shopping bags for their grandparents.
c) Keeping it brief: Young children find it hard to follow long sentences. More often than not, before you finish your long sentences, your child will be thinking about other things and have lost focus. Thus, it is important to speak in shorter sentences to allow your child to absorb and understand what you are saying and expecting.
d) Using silence: Using silence after asking your child questions could actually help him/her craft a more thoughtful response. While a 3 second pause may seem very long, it allows an open space for your child to think, rehearse what to say, and can solicit a higher quality response. This also teaches your child that a true listener will attempt to understand the other party’s questions, before formulating a better response.
e) Expressing confidence in your child: If a parent is able to demonstrate faith and confidence in the child, he/she will be more likely to live up to the parent’s expectations. Spare no effort to notice and comment on positive behaviour in a calm tone. Be specific in your observations, such that it will provide hard evidence on why your child should believe in himself/herself.
Look out for our next entry in a fortnight’s time, where we will be sharing with parents, ten tips for encouraging joyful learning in their children.
By Ms Angeline Tong and Ms Brenda Yeow
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Thursday, October 9, 2008
How to help your child excel in 21st century? Part II
How to Help Your Child Excel in the 21st Century – Part II
Educating your child beyond core curriculum – Mastery of 21st Century Themes
In part 2 of our series, we will discuss how parents can help your child develop important life skills as you help complement the core academic foundations, that is well tackled by our current education system. While the Ministry of Education in Singapore has long realized the importance of “Life Skills” and has been actively redesigning the curriculum to incorporate the inculcation of such skills into our children’s education, parents can play a much bigger role in developing these skills outside of mastery of core subjects.
As we have discussed during our previous post, there is an urgent need to weave multi-disciplinary themes in the 21st century into your child’s learning. These include a broader global awareness (critical in an increasingly global and connected world), financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy and civic mindedness. Today, we will share some practical tips on how parents can help develop your child into a confident person and make him/her a self-directed learner, a concerned citizen and an active contributor.
Global/cultural awareness
One of the key themes in the 21st century is globalisation. As the economy become more global and employment become more mobile geographically, the workplace will likely become more multi-cultural than it is today. It is important to instill a strong global awareness and cultural sensitivity to help your child integrate well into their workplace and contribute effectively, both as a team leader and a team player. How then can you help your child develop such skills? Here are some practical tips that can be both fun and educating for your child:
a) Newspapers: One good and economic way of inculcating global awareness would be through newspapers. By inculcating a strong reading habit, your child will be able to pick up not only general knowledge, but also becoming more aware of the happenings around Singapore and the world. For younger children, you can let your young child look at the colourful pictures in the papers and let them describe the picture. Read the captions aloud with him/her to familiarise him/her with newspaper reading. For older children, you can ask them to go on a scavenger hunt and look for certain news items or sections for specific coverage (example a newspaper report on Thailand), do further research on the web or in the library and then share the findings with the whole family.
b) Museum visits: Heritage and Cultural Museums often come with unparallel richness around unique cultures and heritage. Bringing your child early on to a museum could expose him/her to different cultures at a young age and develop his/her natural curiosity in other cultures. You may want to find an interesting fact about a certain culture and artifact before hand and challenge your child to find it during your visit. For instance in the Singapore Asian Civilisations Museum at Empress Place, you might want to challenge your child to find out which culture actually sold their members to other tribes in exchange for gold to make jewellery (Hint: The answer is in the Mary and Philbert Chin Gallery). You can then discuss with him/her the differences between our culture and the particular culture as well as how the culture has evolved over time.
c) Research prior to and after family trips: Another good way of developing a global or cultural awareness is to leverage your family trips to other countries. By asking your child to conduct specific research around the places of interests using the internet or libraries, you will allow him/her more involvement in the trip. (For older children, encourage them to plan specific portions of the trip). Your child can also look at the places of interests that you are visiting and investigate why they are popular as well as the significance of the particular monument to the local. Before the trip, allow him/her to do a presentation to the family to share his/her findings with their “travel mates”. After the trip, you can ask your child to develop a scrap book combining photos taken from the sights, his/her research and his/her thoughts about the places you visited.
d) Research projects during school holidays: If you are not going for an overseas trip, you can still get your child to do simple research on different countries during the school holidays. For instance, you can challenge your child to map out the various voyages of Magellan and research on the different countries along the way. Ask him/her to design a quiz based on the information and plan a family night where your child could be the host of your unique history/geography game show. Other interesting family projects may include planning for a “China Day” or “France Day”. All activities for the day will surround the country that the family has chosen; i.e: food, costume, language, music, places of interest, crafts, etc.
Economic, financial and business literacy
Economic, financial and business literacy is another of the core multi-disciplinary themes in educating a 21st Century professional. While it may seem complex at the onset, it offers significant opportunity for your child to learn about Mathematics, English and even History.
a) Budgeting on grocery trips: By involving your child during your trips to the supermarket, you can help your child develop both numeric skills and basic financial sense. This will be most relevant for younger children. First, let your child know how much you will want to spend during this shopping trip and go through with him/her your shopping list. When you are at the supermarket, let your child calculate the amount of money left after picking up each item. You can encourage him/her to warn you when you are over-budget. When checking out, allow your child to make payment and accept change back from the cashier.
b) Budgeting during oveseas vacations: Another way to instill responsibility and money sense into your child is to encourage him/her to budget for what he/she wants to spend on a family trip. For instance, if he/she wants to budget $50 for the trip to buy things, ask them to set aside a small sum of his/her pocket money every month. Nearer the trip you can encourage your child to calculate the exchange rate and how much in local currency one can exchange into. During the trip, let him/her calculate the amount of money left in his/her kitty after each time he/she bought something.
c) Setting up a flea market store during school holidays or weekends: Another interesting (but not certainly conventional) way of teaching business sense to your child would be to set up a store at a flea market. You can discuss with your child the concept of a flea market store and allow your child to provide ideas around what your store should be selling. Jointly procure or scavenge whatever products you might want to sell and rent a store at the flea market at Far East Square for a weekend. Encourage him/her to be actively involved in the selling and help him/her with the accounts at the end of the day. You can discuss and review how well you have done and what worked well and areas of improvement. Remember, it is the process that counts and making money from the store is only icing on top of the cake.
d) Picking stocks and comparing returns: Another low cost idea that can help your child develop better financial sense is starting a stock picking game at home. Organise a competition at home that tallies the monthly results of each of your picks. You and your spouse can encourage your child to flip through the papers and pick some companies from the share price page in the Money section together with him/her. At the end of the year, compare the results and you may choose to give a gift to the winner. (For older children, you may want to allow them to switch their holdings every month).
e) Research projects during school holidays: Similar to the research project on different countries, you may also want to plan a project for your child surrounding the finance and economic areas. For instance, you can ask your child about how he/she might resolve the developmental challenges that Singapore was facing in the 1960s. For this project, you can leverage resources in the National Museum of Singapore - bring your child to the museum to understand the challenges and problems in Singapore. Ask him/her to conduct research in the gallery and on the web and role-play as a World Bank economist advising Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh Keng Swee during the early days of Singapore.
Civic-mindedness
To develop your child into a well-rounded 21st century citizen, it is also critical to inculcate in him/her the importance of civil-mindedness. It will be a very enriching process for your child to participate, together with you, in volunteer work to help the more unfortunate during the school holidays. Discuss with your child what causes he/she would like to support and work closely with him/her during the process. At the end of the volunteer project, be sure to encourage him/her to develop a journal to document what he/she has learnt and his/her feelings from contributing to the cause.
Conclusion
There are many opportunities for you, as a concerned and enlightened parent, to help your child develop key skills outside of the core curriculum. It is also a process where you can help develop your child’s sense of responsibility, teamwork, and a broader understanding of the world. While this will require significant work for parents as well, there are many fun ways to involve the entire family and make it an enjoyable, mutual learning process. Key things to remember - your guidance will be critical in maintaining their interests and be encouraging and generous with your praise. This will help build his/her confidence and eventually training them to be curious, self-directed learners who can navigate the complex challenges and dilemmas facing 21st Century Professionals. In our next posting, we will share some tips on how to help your child develop another set of critical life skills - strong learning, thinking and communicating skills.
By Ms. Angeline Tong and Ms. Brenda Yeow
Educating your child beyond core curriculum – Mastery of 21st Century Themes
In part 2 of our series, we will discuss how parents can help your child develop important life skills as you help complement the core academic foundations, that is well tackled by our current education system. While the Ministry of Education in Singapore has long realized the importance of “Life Skills” and has been actively redesigning the curriculum to incorporate the inculcation of such skills into our children’s education, parents can play a much bigger role in developing these skills outside of mastery of core subjects.
As we have discussed during our previous post, there is an urgent need to weave multi-disciplinary themes in the 21st century into your child’s learning. These include a broader global awareness (critical in an increasingly global and connected world), financial, economic, business and entrepreneurial literacy and civic mindedness. Today, we will share some practical tips on how parents can help develop your child into a confident person and make him/her a self-directed learner, a concerned citizen and an active contributor.
Global/cultural awareness
One of the key themes in the 21st century is globalisation. As the economy become more global and employment become more mobile geographically, the workplace will likely become more multi-cultural than it is today. It is important to instill a strong global awareness and cultural sensitivity to help your child integrate well into their workplace and contribute effectively, both as a team leader and a team player. How then can you help your child develop such skills? Here are some practical tips that can be both fun and educating for your child:
a) Newspapers: One good and economic way of inculcating global awareness would be through newspapers. By inculcating a strong reading habit, your child will be able to pick up not only general knowledge, but also becoming more aware of the happenings around Singapore and the world. For younger children, you can let your young child look at the colourful pictures in the papers and let them describe the picture. Read the captions aloud with him/her to familiarise him/her with newspaper reading. For older children, you can ask them to go on a scavenger hunt and look for certain news items or sections for specific coverage (example a newspaper report on Thailand), do further research on the web or in the library and then share the findings with the whole family.
b) Museum visits: Heritage and Cultural Museums often come with unparallel richness around unique cultures and heritage. Bringing your child early on to a museum could expose him/her to different cultures at a young age and develop his/her natural curiosity in other cultures. You may want to find an interesting fact about a certain culture and artifact before hand and challenge your child to find it during your visit. For instance in the Singapore Asian Civilisations Museum at Empress Place, you might want to challenge your child to find out which culture actually sold their members to other tribes in exchange for gold to make jewellery (Hint: The answer is in the Mary and Philbert Chin Gallery). You can then discuss with him/her the differences between our culture and the particular culture as well as how the culture has evolved over time.
c) Research prior to and after family trips: Another good way of developing a global or cultural awareness is to leverage your family trips to other countries. By asking your child to conduct specific research around the places of interests using the internet or libraries, you will allow him/her more involvement in the trip. (For older children, encourage them to plan specific portions of the trip). Your child can also look at the places of interests that you are visiting and investigate why they are popular as well as the significance of the particular monument to the local. Before the trip, allow him/her to do a presentation to the family to share his/her findings with their “travel mates”. After the trip, you can ask your child to develop a scrap book combining photos taken from the sights, his/her research and his/her thoughts about the places you visited.
d) Research projects during school holidays: If you are not going for an overseas trip, you can still get your child to do simple research on different countries during the school holidays. For instance, you can challenge your child to map out the various voyages of Magellan and research on the different countries along the way. Ask him/her to design a quiz based on the information and plan a family night where your child could be the host of your unique history/geography game show. Other interesting family projects may include planning for a “China Day” or “France Day”. All activities for the day will surround the country that the family has chosen; i.e: food, costume, language, music, places of interest, crafts, etc.
Economic, financial and business literacy
Economic, financial and business literacy is another of the core multi-disciplinary themes in educating a 21st Century professional. While it may seem complex at the onset, it offers significant opportunity for your child to learn about Mathematics, English and even History.
a) Budgeting on grocery trips: By involving your child during your trips to the supermarket, you can help your child develop both numeric skills and basic financial sense. This will be most relevant for younger children. First, let your child know how much you will want to spend during this shopping trip and go through with him/her your shopping list. When you are at the supermarket, let your child calculate the amount of money left after picking up each item. You can encourage him/her to warn you when you are over-budget. When checking out, allow your child to make payment and accept change back from the cashier.
b) Budgeting during oveseas vacations: Another way to instill responsibility and money sense into your child is to encourage him/her to budget for what he/she wants to spend on a family trip. For instance, if he/she wants to budget $50 for the trip to buy things, ask them to set aside a small sum of his/her pocket money every month. Nearer the trip you can encourage your child to calculate the exchange rate and how much in local currency one can exchange into. During the trip, let him/her calculate the amount of money left in his/her kitty after each time he/she bought something.
c) Setting up a flea market store during school holidays or weekends: Another interesting (but not certainly conventional) way of teaching business sense to your child would be to set up a store at a flea market. You can discuss with your child the concept of a flea market store and allow your child to provide ideas around what your store should be selling. Jointly procure or scavenge whatever products you might want to sell and rent a store at the flea market at Far East Square for a weekend. Encourage him/her to be actively involved in the selling and help him/her with the accounts at the end of the day. You can discuss and review how well you have done and what worked well and areas of improvement. Remember, it is the process that counts and making money from the store is only icing on top of the cake.
d) Picking stocks and comparing returns: Another low cost idea that can help your child develop better financial sense is starting a stock picking game at home. Organise a competition at home that tallies the monthly results of each of your picks. You and your spouse can encourage your child to flip through the papers and pick some companies from the share price page in the Money section together with him/her. At the end of the year, compare the results and you may choose to give a gift to the winner. (For older children, you may want to allow them to switch their holdings every month).
e) Research projects during school holidays: Similar to the research project on different countries, you may also want to plan a project for your child surrounding the finance and economic areas. For instance, you can ask your child about how he/she might resolve the developmental challenges that Singapore was facing in the 1960s. For this project, you can leverage resources in the National Museum of Singapore - bring your child to the museum to understand the challenges and problems in Singapore. Ask him/her to conduct research in the gallery and on the web and role-play as a World Bank economist advising Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh Keng Swee during the early days of Singapore.
Civic-mindedness
To develop your child into a well-rounded 21st century citizen, it is also critical to inculcate in him/her the importance of civil-mindedness. It will be a very enriching process for your child to participate, together with you, in volunteer work to help the more unfortunate during the school holidays. Discuss with your child what causes he/she would like to support and work closely with him/her during the process. At the end of the volunteer project, be sure to encourage him/her to develop a journal to document what he/she has learnt and his/her feelings from contributing to the cause.
Conclusion
There are many opportunities for you, as a concerned and enlightened parent, to help your child develop key skills outside of the core curriculum. It is also a process where you can help develop your child’s sense of responsibility, teamwork, and a broader understanding of the world. While this will require significant work for parents as well, there are many fun ways to involve the entire family and make it an enjoyable, mutual learning process. Key things to remember - your guidance will be critical in maintaining their interests and be encouraging and generous with your praise. This will help build his/her confidence and eventually training them to be curious, self-directed learners who can navigate the complex challenges and dilemmas facing 21st Century Professionals. In our next posting, we will share some tips on how to help your child develop another set of critical life skills - strong learning, thinking and communicating skills.
By Ms. Angeline Tong and Ms. Brenda Yeow
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