My First Post

I had this idea of starting a blog documenting my learning process two years ago. I just could not bring myself to start because I am so worried that I do not have the determination and time to write it down. Finally, I decided to give it a try after the encouragement from my sister and promise myself to make this blog successful so that I am able to see how I grow over the years and most importantly I can use the blog to revise what I have learnt.

To start it off, I attended Edu Tech 2010. At the sharing on FS @ SG, I have a few take aways.

I have learnt to differentiate between performance goals and learning goals.

Performance goals are the number of A* and A we achieve and learning goals will refer the skills at mastery level acquired by the pupils. We are very good at achieving performance goals. We need to set more learning goals in preparing our pupils for the 21st century skills such as collaboration, critical thinking skills.

For schools to be ready to teach these skills, they must have a common understanding of the purpose of National Exams and alternative assessments.

Compared to other schools, future schools implement programmes school wide.  School leaders play a very important role in running a school well. Another key factor is to spend more time communicating with the staff the rationale of any new programmes.

I would like to find out more on Thinking Hats, Open Debate and Socratic questioning. These are some strategies used by the school to model thinking skills.

A new unit, Edu Lab, is set up. It is for teachers to come out with new ideas and collaborate with ETD. Research is always done on its own. Now, they are going to  use research findings and implement it in classroom. A great idea!

That's all for today.