Today's Lessons

Idlan was back to school and all evening he was talking about the changes in his classroom. There were 3 new classmates he said and they were all girls.

There were projects being lined up already and he was going through some of the things to be covered this term. Science would have plenty of Chemistry for this few months, and he would be doing some Statistics in Maths. For Design, he would be building speakers and was going through what he learned about circuit boards today! I expected some explosion ...

He was still struggling with Flash animations at the moment and it looked like I would have to learn it as well to help him. I promised to drive him to school at least once a week so that I could take him to see his teachers if he has problem. Since Sri Utama, he had been terrified of teachers, and it would take him some time to change ....

The main thing is he was enjoying school. That was the main thing ...

School Soon

Irfan would have another week of holiday, but Idlan is not so lucky. His class would start from Wednesday and he would have to start his morning routine again ...

He finished his holiday assignments last night and went through his tasks for the coming week. He also cleared up his room - stacking his Nerf guns away from his bed. Next came his school bags as well as starting to go to bed earlier than he had been during the holidays.

Idlan clearing up his roomFiles in the right placesEverything was ready apart from his lack of training for the upcoming games that he signed up for. He will start on Ultimate Frisbee every Friday afternoon from this week ..... Good luck!

Workshop at School

Idlan's school was the type which approach children education holistically and there were plenty of investment into the pupils home environment and getting the parents to be involved with the school activities and mantra. Anita went to a few courses - mainly how to use the Google Suite as well as utilising the school library. Last Monday, I went to a workshop on bilingualism.

The school wanted us to us Bahasa Malaysia - or our mother tongue - as much as possible as the children's command of English would be upgraded in school anyway. Both Idlan and Irfan could converse in English without any issues and the feeling was that the children would be missing out if their mother tongue was left behind.

The workshop explored our concerns and the advantages of speaking in our mother tongue at home environment, how it actually enriches their command of English rather than curtailing them. Something which I find quite interesting on the whole.

So, cue a few awkward conversation on the dinner table in the coming weeks ...

Cookie Reflection

A few days had passed since the UPSR results came out. Idlan didn't want me to go into anything specific but suffice to say that he did fine.

He had settled well at his new school and the UPSR results did not carry much weight for his immediate future plans. We won't be applying to any other schools and most of my friends who had children at a similar age with Idlan must be feeling the pressure now. The results would determine which school they would enrolled for their secondary years.

On reflection, I was glad that Idlan wasn't put through the pressure of tuitions like most of his classmate had to go through. We had tutors coming to our house but they were mainly to help him with his concentration and exam techniques. He did most of the revising himself, but he got bored easily. The tutors came and helped him think out of the box and relate the subjects to real life situation. He enjoyed that.

We also had a BM tutor coming over because frankly his Bahasa Melayu was pretty weak. We always made sure that his weekends were free and he had time for his video games and other things.

Yes, we had a lot of pressure from others for not taking him through extra lessons but I always believe that going to school was not just about passing exams. At the beginning of the year, I gave him the choice of either to sit the UPSR or just go straight into I-GCSE. He decided for the former because most of his friends were taking the exams as well. His school had been putting too much emphasis on exams and I was never comfortable with that notion.

So, the deal was to change school as soon as he was done with the UPSR. Within a few days of completing UPSR, Idlan was gone. He went into Year 8 in another school across town.

When the exam results came out, we were more excited about it than Idlan himself. We always believed that exams are to gauge knowledge, not memory. We were happy that there were plenty of KBAT (higher level thinking questions) rather than the standard ones. Idlan felt that the result should be OK, and it was.

His new school is something completely different to Sri Utama, his previous one. There were more emphasis on character development and extracurricular activities. He was doing experiments rather than reading about them. When he had arts class, everything was provided down to the crayons and papers. He was really enjoying his class - despite having to get on the bus at 6.30 in the morning.

Last Thursday for instance - the day the UPSR results came out - he didn't want to follow us to Sri Utama to pick up his results because he had a class event. The class was having a poetry day with a "slam poet" coming all the way from England.

With his UPSR done, it looked like we would be taking a sabbatical from the National Curriculum. I hope that one day, the emphasis would come back to character-building, leadership and extracurricular activities. We were building a human being, not a machine ...

Irfan's Project

For school this week, Irfan had to make a model of planets. But I thought Anita went overboard this time. She made a model of the entire solar system!

Nice colours though as the plants were made from polystyrene balls. Not scientifically accurate but it looked that Anita enjoyed doing them! Now, let’s hope that Irfan could remember the names of the planets in the right order …..