The Alternative Story

Hi parents,

This is the information regarding a new class that
we are having:

- Newspaper + Storybook Analysis
(NSA for short)

This is more of an enrichment class as compared to our
usual classes which cover creative writing and paper
2 components (compre, vocab etc).

We are starting this class because we realize that while it
is important for children to do well in their examinations and
the work we have for our usual classes help the children
prepare for their examinations, we also feel it is
important for children to also be allowed to explore different
text-types (factual: newspaper reports and narrative: storybooks)
and to develop higher level of thinking and analytical skills
from examining these text-types.

We want the children to be thinkers and to come up with
out of the box creative solutions and we feel there is a need to
have enrichment programmes like these to get children to start
thinking and reflecting at a young age so that they do not just end
up knowing facts but they will know how to apply them and to
problem solve in a real world.

Children still need to have the rigor of knowing grammar rules,
of learning how to develop writing techniques etc and these will be
covered in our normal classes. However to develop the students
on their creativity and thinking skills, we have come up with
this enrichment programme.

This enrichment programme may not result in immediate good
grades but it will help the children in the long term to develop
them in their creativity and thinking ability.

What skills will be developed? (newspaper analysis)

Example of an article: Need to change the way Mother
Tongue is taught

- Extracting skills
In order to reflect effectively on a article, we will give them
background information and research and from there, they will
need to come up with reasons why there is a need for change in
MTL teaching. They will need to extract the relevant information
and by doing so, they will develop the skill of differentiating 'points'
and 'examples'. From a chunk of information, they will need to
extract the points.

Example of a short article:
We need to start now, because their recommendations will
take many years to implement. We have to take into account the
changing language environment and the wider spread of
language backgrounds and abilities among future cohorts of students.
- Dr Ng Eng Hen, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence

From this short chunk of information, the student will be taught to
extract out the point, i.e there is a wider range of abilities among
the future students hence the way MT is taught needs to be changed.

- Categorizing skill

They will then categorize the information under different headings,
for example: social, economic etc. This will help them to develop the
skill of seeing patterns and links in the information given.

- Analyzing skill (i.e digging deeper)

The students must dig deep into the reasons- they need to peel
the 'onion' of reasons to see if there is other underlying reasons.
They will look at each category of reasons and dig deeper.

For example:

Why is there a wider range of abilities in students who take MT?
Is this really the reason or is it a symptom?
Why were the students of the past more uniformed in their ability?

From here, we will get them to point out various deeper underlying
reasons: children now use the internet much more and the
information on the internet is in English, most children do not read
the information on the internet in Chinese (for eg). Over time,
the children get less and less exposure to Chinese. Thus the ability
to do Chinese well drops. Hence you have a widening range of abilities
in the children.

There is no 'right' or 'wrong' here. We want the children to think and
by doing so, perhaps uncover more underlying possible reasons and
when they do so, they can then go on to the following skill:

- Application skill

Now armed with these underlying reasons, they will look for
ways to apply solutions to them: If more and more children
are using the internet in English, could a possible solution be
for the Chinese teacher to get the children to go on
facebook for a chinese lesson but the whole lesson is in Chinese
so the facebook characters or information is all in Chinese?

We will get them to come up with various solutions to this
real-life problem. They will do this in a mind-map
book.

For storybooks, we will teach the following skills:

- Inferential skills

Extract taken from Reckless by Cornelia Funke

Outside the stars were paled by the glaring lights of the city
and the large apartment was stale with his mother's sorrow. She
did not wake even when Jacob stole into her room, even when he
opened the drawer of her nightstand.

We will teach them how to infer that the reason why the mother
never woke was because of her depression. They can then think
of possible reasons why she is depressed. A death in the family,
perhaps?

- Summary skills

What kind of person do you think Jacob was? After reading
a short extract, we will teach the children how to pick up clues
to sum up a character's family situation or character.

Throughout all this, we will also teach the children how to
find out the meaning of new words they read by looking
at the contextual clues. When we come across good phrases
they can use in their compositions, we will tell them which
scenario they can use the phrase for but we will not teach
creative writing skills or go through compositions in this class.

Details of this programme:
(For now, we will only have 1 class at our AMK branch)

Timing: Monday 3.20 pm - 4.50 pm.

Commencement date: Once we have 4 students of the
same level

Which level is this class suitable for: Very high ability
P3/High ability P4 and P5/P6- we will do an assessment to assess
if your child is able to join the class. Your child should already be
strong in his or her basics especially if he or she is in P3 - P4.
We allow P3 students to go in as we have had very high ability P3
students who are almost the same level as a P5.

Fees: $330 per term (10 weeks)

Promotion:
For this first class we are starting, the students
will get 2 lessons free for the first term so the fees will be
$246 if they sign up before the end of February 2011. For
the first term, the first storybook we use will also be given
free to all the students who sign up before February 2011.

Materials: The newspaper articles will be provided free but
they will need to purchase the storybook(s) that we are using for
that term.

Lesson format: 45 mins of the lesson will be for
Newspaper Summary and 45 mins will be for the storybook
analysis.

You can call us at 67588744 or 90615592 or email us at
thealternativestory@gmail.com to book an assessment or for
further inquiries.

TAS