started a new craze during physix lesson!? watching of initial D (http://www.initialdthemovie.com/) for the teaching of kinematics! :D I think it sync perfectly to the concepts covered in this topic! :D check out the sound tracks at the side bar :D

301 is beautiful, especially after the new seating arrangement. I like it very very very very very much!!!! shall not reveal the reason why but i think it's doing them loads of good! :) stay-back days have started for my dear form class - you fail 1 subject during your common tests, you have to stay back 1 day per week from 230 to 430 to revise for your EOY exams... A measure with good intentions in mind :) heard some feedback from some people in the class.. realised that the class is not really that happy with me about some matters?! I think there is a big misunderstanding and people has been spreading the wrong rumours about me... haiz... the saddest thing is that the class did not voice it out to clarify with me and continued with the assumptions... oh well, never mind... i shall clarify in due time! :)

302 is lovely :D they are getting more and more motivated in preparation for final year exams. I hope they will continue keep it up! :)

303 is getting more active these days... as in they are opening up more to me i guess... :)

304 continues to be enthusiatic and remains crazy over captain ball... :) I remain as the TALL and UNBLOCKABLE one there :)

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Chris on a mini kart @ the road safety park!




Ekklesia "pumping petrol" @ the road safety park!




Ariel and I taking a ride together with Ekklesia tail-gating behind! :P




Found this pair of beautiful flowers lying on the grass @ Labrador Park!




The flower is actually bigger than my palm! anyone can tell me what flower it is!?




Found out that the flower grew from this seedling!




Here we are having a pinic by the sea side @ Labrador Park!




One of the long jetty, where people can do some fishing! BTW, there are BBQ pits for rental over there as well! Anyone keen for a class BBQ outing @ labrador park!?




Chris resting on my back as he gobble up his biscuit!




There is one something that i don't mind people doing behind my back: smiling away! :D




Ekklesia learning about insects from afar! stay away from me or I will roar! :P




2 is better than 1! sisters power! let's look @ the insects together! :D




A very unique bug that we found on! it's orange in colour and has a glossy look!




And did i mention that it's super dupey small in size!? as compared to our palms!




Bugs and more bugs! Attack!!




Chris is looking @ how the boy is learning to make something with a palm tree leaf. What is it!? look below!




It's a grasshopper made from a single palm tree leaf!! and the best thing is: I have learnt how to do it!! :) Cool, isn't it!?

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Sept Break:

Mon - spent time with my kids and run errands and played captain ball with 304 in school!

Tues - Went to immigration dept and sending my kids for speech and drama!

Wed - Went for the talk @ RP and lunch treat with Mdm Sung and the PBL teachers. Went to the East Coast Road Safety Park withj my kids, together with the rest of the home-schooling kids and parents!

Thurs - Went to Labrador Park with my kids for a dose of fresh air and sea breeze! Went to work as an exhibitor for the 3rd International Conference on Education Technology - Showcasing our school's tablet PC programme!

Fri - Went to immigration dept again for my parents' PR and went to work again as the exhibitor! In the 2 days, I learned about many cool IT applications that really makes learning so much more fun and exciting! Hmm... any chance of implementing them for my school!? Hopefully! :)

Sat - Solomon Learning Centre in the morning and Church meeting in the aftenoon. Maybe i can catch some time to upload some photos in the evening!

Sun - Church meeting in the morning and probably one last outing with my kids before school reopens!? :)

1 week is never enough! hahahhaha! :)

Well, at least I managed to blog about my GREATEST finding this SEPT BREAK: all about LEARNING! Read Below for Details! :)

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Just when I as a teacher, thought that I knew what learning is all about, 2 recent encounters reshaped and refreshed my ideas totally and lifted me up to a higher plane of understanding! They kinda got me all excited about teaching and learning all over again! :)

Encounter 1: Nuturing Habits of a High Achiever with your Child

I went for this talk at JE library, conducted by master coach, Michel Gargne. In case you are wondering, he is a middle aged guy, not a lady although you should pronounce his name as Michelle! He is a French Canadian with more than 40 over years of experience as a coach. In fact, he is a coach of many coaches and there are many Olympic Athletes and World Champions who are training under him. Recently, he motivated an under achiever to become an A* student in 25 days!
I will just share what I gained the most out of the 2 hours talk:

He started off with this simple question: do you brush your teeth everyday?
Of course, our answer would be an obvious YES! Unless you are really lazy!

He asked the next question: Do you brush your teeth perfectly?
I beg your pardon? Why ask such a ridiculous question? Simple: most people are just contented with how they are doing in life. They do not seek to improve any further in what they are doing.

The secret of a high achiever is simple: they have the desire to improve in whatever they are doing everyday and for the rest of their lives! Be it brushing teeth, or doing well for a subject or playing captain’s ball! They just seek to IMPROVE EVERYDAY. There is no end to their relentless pursuit for excellence! They challenge themselves and compete against themselves. They are not keen about winning against others. They are just satisfied with winning themselves and becoming better! Don’t misunderstand this idea of winning: According to Michel, there are many athletes who are willing to die young if they are given a choice to take a drug that they help them to achieve gold and experience that moment of glory! Also, after winning major competitions, many committed suicide as they are not able to adapt back to the normal life of doing simple chores and people not knowing about their achievements. Winning is not the end result that high achiever ultimately look for. It’s the thrill of becoming better that delights them the most! :)

To achieve that, they are 21 habits that a high achiever should have to become an all rounded person! They are generally divided into 5 sections: Mental, Emotional, Physical, Financial and Spiritual.

Just going to share one MENTAL habit with you:

When you are setting a goal, make it a multi-sensory goal! For example, your goal is to do well in your studies. That statement as a goal is not good enough! You need to be more specific and you need to IMAGINE and IMMERSE yourself fully into that goal! What do I mean by that? You need to specify things like, I want to score 6 A1s and 2 B3s for this coming final year exams (don’t set unrealistic goals within a short time but of course, don’t belittle yourself by setting too low a goal!). The subjects that I want to ace are e.g. physics, e.maths, a.maths, chemistry, biology and social studies. Now, you need to imagine yourself taking back the papers with the scores and grades that you wish to see on the papers. You need to feel how wonderful it is to be getting them back and how your friends are happy for you. You need to imagine how proud you are showing your results to your parents. You need to imagine how happy they are with your achievements and you are motivated to do it consistently and even better the next time.

This is what a small church choir did by imagining that they are able to sing for the Olympics one day. They practiced hard and immerse themselves into the goal and sang during each practice as if they are there! In the end, when they applied to sing for the event, they got in! Not only that, they even won the gold award for their wonderful singing! That’s the power of having a multi-sensory goal! We need to imagine and immerse ourselves in the goal each day and work hard to achieve it! :)

Michel started the parent-coach method of helping parents to be coaches to their kids so that they can nurture them as high achievers! Yup, as expected, I am keen to sign up for part 1 of the course on 23-24 Sept 06! :) Not just to help my kids but also to hopefully help all the students that I am teaching!

I recently met this guy from England who is a qualified FA licensed coach for soccer! All the schools he coached became district champions! Told ms Y about it but she rejected my proposal of setting up soccer for our school… :( hope to find alternative ways around it! :) I am planning to learn from the guy and become a qualified coach myself! :)

Encounter 2: Learning through Engagement

This was a talk for teachers, conducted by Republic Polytechnic for schools to learn about their unique approach to learning: through PBL (problem-based learning)! Each day, a class of 25 students will break into teams of 5 to solve one real-life problem a day and that‘s all they will do throughout their 3 years of stay there! A problem a day, keeps the learner amazed! (A tagline that I thought of for them!) They are using this model as they realized how humans learned in the first place: by being there (where it all happened) and doing it yourself! No one learns how to cycle until the person has tried it consecutively with experiences of falls and balance. The teams in each class will research on the net, get a bit of help through some scaffolding activities, discuss, argue, present and defend their solution or findings!

At the end of it, they felt a sense of ownership for the knowledge that they acquired and they develop the confidence to handle the unexpected! And the best part is this: they are given a personal comment about their performance daily and are assessed based on their presentations (they get to choose their 14 best presentations out of 16 per term – the school allows 2 days of “bad days” that students may have! Cool!) and they are given 4 understanding tests (30 mins each) at the end of the term, testing on their understanding of the knowledge they have learned and not on how much they memorized for exams! They get to choose the best 3 test results out of the 4 as well! great, isn't it!? :)

The school believes that students should not be seating for exams that test them on knowledge that they have already known, which they just crammed and commit to memory just for the sake of grades! What they value is the PROCESS of learning, about HOW they managed to get the solution and not the solution itself! And of course, they are always ready to accept more than one answer to a problem as it is in real life, provided that the students are able to logically defend their case!

If my kids eventually are keen on the courses offered by this polytechnic, I will definitely be first to encourage them to go there for this exciting experience of learning, just as how every human learns and how the real working world is functioning everyday! :)

End of my short essay on Learning! That’s about 1200 words! LOL!

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going down is no easy matter! we had to park at Bo's house before hailing a cab down cos the car park was full! when we finally reached there, there was a need for security check before we can go in to enjoy viewing the planes! Cool! 3rd Generation of the S'pore Air Force is great, considering the size of Singapore!

The photos tells it all!


the antique sky hawk! :)


the F-16 fighter plane! :)


the family with the team and their chopper! :D


my camera managed to capture a flying bird and a flying plane at the same time! :P


ariel covered her eyes when the planes flew by... she should be covering her ears! :D


who's taking who? chris and his random shoot with my camera!


the 2 beauties... :P

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Someone actually posted an entry for me for the STOMP Cool Teacher Award... hahhaha! I think i know who that person is! thank you for that interesting testimonial about me! here's what the person said:

Mr Daniel Chow WH from Nan Hua High rocks!

the coolest multi-tasker you'll ever find.
he teaches physics fulltime
so dedicated he prepares his own notes
i/c of a uniformed group [looks good in white : D]
has time to spend with his family
and his own tuition centre [does he even sleep?]
socially active with pupils [social butterfly ah : D]
plays street soccer & netball like a student
rarely find him sitting alone
same interests as us students
MSNs, blogs, watches dumb videos

what's not to love!
NH's dearest papa physix rocks and everyone knows it!


chowdish;
the hotness : D

http://stinkandspill.stomp.com.sg/forums/showthread.php?t=213

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