National Environment Agency

Recently, we had green audit validation.

Green Audit programme is designed as a simple environmental audit programme for all schools in Singapore. Students work in teams to audit their school and submit results together with a report on their environmental efforts, including plans for improvements. The Council then conducts on-site visits to verify claims and provides suggestions for improvements.

Mr Joe Lim, the project manager, came and educated us quite a lot. Here are some of the learning points on caring of the environment.

• Adjust the air-conditioner to about 26 degree celcius and turn the fan on.It saves more energy as compared to adjusting the air-con at 21 degree celcius only.
• Get from the canteen vendor the fruit peels or the vegetables and throw them to our rotting log habitat. That will speed up the decomposition process.

Process Skills

I have been thinking of setting targets for pupils' process skills in the science workplan. I believe that pen and pencil assessment does not show a complete picture of pupils' learning. So we need to have alternative modes of assessment.

The next question is how to assess the different skills. In my school, we have been using Science practical. The tasks set by the teachers were good. I actually wanted to set targets for individual skills such as observing, classifying, using apparatus etc.

When I sat down and analysed what are the skills being using for a particular task, I noticed that there were a number of skills involved.

For example, pupils were given 4 buttons. They were to observe and classify the buttons in any of the folliwong ways.

So in reality, when we are given a task, we always use integrated skills. So I have to set targets for integrated skills instead of specific skills.