Thursday 28 May 2015

Easy Bulletin Board Ideas For Your Primary Classroom

Bulletin boards in primary classrooms can become quite a chore when they have to be changed monthly, or even weekly. Always changing the student work, borders, and background - not to mention punching a new title out of construction paper. There must be an easier way!
Here are a couple of ideas I have come up with in my classroom, and (so far) my classroom visitors are none the wiser:

1. On the first bulletin board in my room, I put up a simple border that is bright yellow, with hard hats on it. I did punch out letters on the Ellison machine that bear the title "Minds Hard At Work." The last items I placed on the board are plain laminated grid papers. I have 3 groups of four: one for each quarter for three subject areas. On these graphs, I graph weekly chart class averages for such things as comprehension tests, spelling tests, independent reading points for the class, etc with permanent colored markers. The markers will come off with nail polish remover at the end of the year, and you are set once again. I do not put a butcher paper or fabric background under anything. The brown cork looks just a nice and makes clean up at the end of the year even easier!

2. The second bulletin board I have in my classroom has a simple star boarder, cork backing, and a simple homemade sign that says "Weber's Wonders." From there, I have three rows of border horizontally working across the board, with push pins evenly distributed on the three rows to correlate with the number of students in my classroom. I print a small return address label with each child's name on it from my computer, and place one above each push pin. Our students have charm necklaces, which they may earn charms for throughout the year for various awards. I allow the students to wear their necklaces only on Spirit Day every Friday. This way, my bulletin board always looks full throughout the week, and the students always have a charm necklace to show off on Friday, so it does not become lost. We all win!

3. The last classroom tidbit I have regarding changing out student work, means committing one wall in your classroom. You need to purchase 11" x 13" black matte frames and colorful foam alphabet and party stickers. The first week of school, as a time-filler activity (or during open house), have the students stick their first names on the matte, and then decorate as they like. The colors really stand out on the black mattes! From there, staple the mattes onto the wall, and from that point forward, have the students pick work they would like to place in their "frame" throughout the year. You never have to think about it, other than to sticky tack up the work they have chosen, and the students will love showcasing their masterpieces!

Seeking for trusted primary school maths enrichment school? Drop by eimaths.com on the link.

A marketing article by Dougles Chan - Search Engine Guru - The best SEO company in Singapore and globally. Contact Dougles Chan @ +(65) 9388 0851 or email to dc@dougleschan.com for more information on how to make your website to be the top in Google.

Wednesday 20 May 2015

Home Schooling the Primary Student

While home schooling of the primary student is simply a continuation of the schooling we have already been performing on our preschoolers, it takes off, on a touch different note!

While the preschooler was able to spend only a short time at studies, the primary student needs a more disciplined schedule. At this age, they are still thinking of the outdoors and playing.

While it is necessary to teach these young ones, one of the benefits of home schooling is that we are able to be more permissible in our scheduling. The hours they would spend at school learning their lessons, are cut in half or better, when you home school.

Done properly, your primary student will love school. You are the one who will dictate their response to learning. You are the one who is responsible for bringing out the character your child will develop into. This of course, is one reason we want to home school in the first place, to encourage this child to be all they can be!

Finding creative ways for teaching, will be a challenge later on in schooling levels, for now, it is pretty easy. Go for walks, look for insects, find ant hills, pick up leaves and learn what the parts of that leaf are called, talk about why we have traffic lights and how we need to respect the rights of others, how we need to preserve our natural resources for those who will travel this land after we have left.

Teach them about our freedoms and how through the sacrifices of others, we have kept this Country free so far. Let them understand that only through such freedoms, are we able to home school them as we see fit. Teach them about love, how it will overcome a multitude of sins.

Start preparing them for the ensuing years of education ahead!

Seeking for trusted primary school maths enrichment Centre? Visit eimaths.com today.

A PR article by Dougles Chan - Search Engine Guru - The best SEO company in Singapore and globally. Contact Dougles Chan @ +(65) 9388 0851 or email to dc@dougleschan.com for more information on how to make your website to be the top in Google.

1st Grade Worksheets Proving To Become Indispensable Assets

1st grade worksheets are used for helping kids learning in the first grade in primary schools. These worksheets are offered by many charitable & commercial organizations through their internet portals. The worksheets provide study materials to kids in a funky & innovative way, to magnetize them towards learning. These worksheets are provided for all subjects present in a 1st grade school curriculum covering English, math, science & many others.

 Worksheets are also provided for developing & nurturing the thinking skills of a student too in the form of crossword puzzle & thinking skill worksheets. Moreover, many 1st grade worksheet providers as well provide time counting & calendar worksheets as well to test the IQ of the kids.

Though the students always remain in an education friendly environment at schools, time taken by individuals for becoming skilled at new concepts & things vary from one student to another. The only way out to learn things in a quick time duration is thorough practicing of newly learnt concepts.

Thus, parents of such Children reach out to various worksheet providers who provide conversational & innovative study materials, which would interest these kids to practice the lessons taught in schools.

The addition, subtraction & number counting worksheets are meant for improving & developing the IQ skills of the kids, while English comprehension & grammar worksheets are provided to skill students at constructing error free sentences.

The 1st grade worksheets can also used by parents to bridge between kindergarten lessons & 2nd grade program. It happens on many occasions that children forget or feel unable to recollect the lessons learnt at the previous grade. In such situations, 1st grade worksheets become indispensable documents for parents as well as students.

A number of commercial & charitable organizations provide a hard copy of such a worksheet at a very nominal price or even free of cost.

Searching for reliable primary school maths enrichment Centre? Visit eimaths.com today.

A PR article by Dougles Chan - Search Engine Guru - The best SEO company in Singapore and globally. Contact Dougles Chan @ +(65) 9388 0851 or email to dc@dougleschan.com for more information on how to make your website to be the top in Google.

Wednesday 13 May 2015

Getting A Singapore Private Tutor - How Do I Go About Doing It?

Your child's grades are falling. He hasn't been passing his maths. She's not stupid, she just needs some help. I'm too busy with my work. I do not know her subject well enough.

You need a tutor for your child. In Singapore, many students are tutors. Some school teachers are doing tuition as a part time too. Some ex school teachers are also doing tuition, whether as a full time or a part time job.

The question is, with so many criteria, how are you going to find a tutor for him/her?
It is actually very simple. If you search for the term "tutor" in google, limiting it to Singapore's websites only, you get up to 61,900 results. A search for "tuition agency" with the same limitations yield up to 18,300 results.

What you can do is this: You can pick any 5 tuition agencies in the listing and visit their websites. Most websites allow you to put in your request for a private tutor via their website. Else, you can get their contact numbers off their website and call them for enquiries.
You will have to prepare the following information:
  1. Your personal details, for example, your contact number, so that the tuition coordinators can call you back or send you an sms.
  2. The subject you want your child to be tutored in
  3. The days you want your kid to have his tuition. For example, Monday or Tuesday. Do include the time too. Check your schedule and your kid's schedule to find out the time and day that he / she will be available. Do keep in mind that you should choose a day where he/she will be fresh. There is no point going for tuition when he/she is too tired to absorb.
  4. Your budget. Rates differ for different kinds of tutors. The standard rate for normal A level tutors tutoring secondary school level is 20 dollars per hour. Tuition websites will normally put up a guide to the rates you can expect
  5. Preferred gender of tutor. Most parents prefer female tutors. You may be surprised, but male tutors can do the job equally well, if not better.
  6. Some tuition agencies allow you to check their database of tutors and submit your preference to them. Do take a look at their database!
  7. Educational Level of Tutor. Some parents feel that a school teacher can teach better. Others feel that an undergraduate can do the job. It really depends on how much you are willing to pay. You pay more for a higher standard tutor. That is the way the market works.
Once you submit your requests to the 5 tuition agencies, you may sit back and relax. Most agencies should get back to you within the day or by the next day to confirm your request and get more information. They will then recommend tutors to you via your phone. Take your time to pick the best tutor there is.

Alternatively, you can go down to tuition agencies near your home to enquire if they can recommend any private tutors to you. It is very easy to get a tutor in Singapore. Tutors who are recommended to you will pay half of their 1st month fees to the tuition agency as commission, so there is no cost incurred by you as the parent. The only cost will probably be your phone bills.

A Singapore maths PR article by Scotts Digital, a top marketing firms in Singapore

Friday 8 May 2015

Singapore Math - Why Is It Recommended By Most People?

Singapore Math is a highly effective and efficient method of teaching and learning mathematics. It is highly recommended by the people as it has been planned according to the national curriculum standards of math. Based on particular textbooks and syllabus authorized by the Ministry of Education of Singapore, it supports and emphasizes on developing skills in problem solving and in model drawing. The main aim of Singapore Math is to encourage children to focus on in-depth understanding to math problems in order to solve them effectively and efficiently. The Singapore math is succeeded by well-articulated series of programs covering a wide scope.

Singapore Math has been steadily gaining popularity since 2003. Recently revised, the Singapore math includes two comprehensive series which are used by more than 80% students of Singapore. The series comprises of separate math syllabus for the kindergarten children, primary school children or grade one to grade six, and the new fundamental math is being used by the students of secondary or high schools. The Singapore math is usually rated one grade above the American math courses. Moreover, it highly recommends the placements tests.

Each math course consists of two textbooks and two workbooks. The main purpose of the workbooks for the students is to be used as consumable and the textbooks as non-consumable. Mr Hector Chee, an experienced mathematics teacher, came up with the idea of using models to solve math problems. Since then, this method has been efficiently used for teaching math at primary level in Singapore. The method is highly effective for students who are weak in mathematics due to the lack in understanding of the common arithmetic operations and mathematical language. The method is simple and useful in improving the response of children through visual stimuli.

One effective way of developing the understanding skill of the children is by dividing the arithmetic operations into different components. This makes the process of solving and learning math less complicated. The math problems are solved by the students easily and systematically by drawing rectangular boxes or models, which depict the relationship between the mathematical values. These models help them to realize and visualize math problems vividly, and hence improve their ability to comprehend and solve mathematic problems.

A Singapore math educational article by Scotts Digital, a digital branding agency in Singapore

Thursday 7 May 2015

Resources For Primary School Teachers

Learning isn't meant to be boring - it needs to be fun and enjoyable, and something that we ultimately use to get a greater sense of fulfilment out of life. That's why our primary school experience is so important because it sets us up for how we view learning in later years and could heavily influence our attitudes throughout high school. So if you're a primary school teacher, the chances are you'll only be too willing to do what you can to help shape the young minds of your pupils as best as you can.

Thankfully, there are plenty of new technologies geared specifically towards helping you do this. While it's important to continue the usual interactive learning tools you already use that encourage your class to think on their feet and really get involved with the lesson, there are other resources now available that could really boost what your pupils get from your class. One such technology is the interactive whiteboard, a fantastic classroom asset that can bolster your teaching and ensure that your pupils look forward to lessons every day.

Using an interactive whiteboard, you can teach Maths, English, languages and everything else you need to pass onto your class in a fun and informative way. You can set questions on the electronic whiteboard, which is projected onto one wall for all of your class to see, and have pupils answer questions by coming up and inserting the answer themselves. Best of all, interactive whiteboards are easy to use and you can even programme your own lesson plans, systems and games on them without spending too much time working out how to use them.

Interactive whiteboards are just one of the many teacher resources out there that can really increase the interactivity and enjoyment of your lessons, and make a great condition to any primary school classroom.

Searching for trusted primary school maths enrichment school? Visit eimaths.com today.

Wednesday 6 May 2015

How To Teach Fractions to Preschool and Kindergarten Students

Like all areas of math, fraction concepts need to be communicated to young children with developmentally appropriate hands on experiences and plenty of play activities. Concrete objects like pattern blocks and 3D fraction shapes enable kids to make sense of new math concepts or abstract ideas. Children need to have fraction experiences that:
  • incorporate their senses
  • invite them to experiment and make observations
  • let them learn at their own rate, and
  • allow them time to investigate a topic further
It is important that preschool and kindergarten math lessons offer opportunities for young children to develop fraction number sense. Before children are able to perform operations (adding, subtracting...) with fractions, they require lots of time for fraction games and play. This will help them visualize fractions and understand that fraction segments are equal parts of a larger object, skills necessary for more advanced fraction concepts. It is not necessary to teach symbols for fractions (1/2, 1/3...) in preschool or kindergarten.

Young children are working towards the following, skills that are necessary for more advanced fraction concepts in future grades:
  • being able to visualize fractions and
  • understanding that fraction segments are equal parts of a larger object,
Introduce fractions with cooking, stories, and games
Cooking activities introduce children to the language of fractions and help them link fractions to their everyday experiences. As they take part in these activities, children become familiar with fraction terms such as whole, part, half, third, quarters. For example - Cut the muffin in half, fill the cup half full, let's use part of the whole orange, put peanut butter on one half of the bread and jam on the other half of the bread, cut the sandwich in quarters...

Use fraction math manipulatives and toys with puppets to make up simple stories
Here is a sample circle time story using an apple fraction toy, 2 puppets and a basket:
Marty the Moose heard a knock on his door (knock on the chalkboard). He opened the door (squeak) and there was his friend, Sam the squirrel..

Improvise and have the puppets take turns cutting the apples and sharing them out, keeping in mind that the goal is to introduce and help the children be familiar with the idea of equal sized pieces that are a part of a whole object and fraction terms such as halves, quarters, thirds.

Play simple small group fraction games
Depending on your class size you may need to split the class into small groups, having one half working at independent math centers with modeling clay, drawing, blocks or puzzles and the other half playing the fraction game. As children play games and play with fraction toys they will gain fraction number sense.

The more time children have to play with fraction toys and manipulatives, the more their ability to visualize fractions as equal parts of a whole will increase.

Searching for reliable preschool maths enrichment school? Visit eimaths.com on the link.