Important Notices Monday 4 June, school is closed in-lieu of Vesak Day. Thursday 7 June is our field trip to BazGym and YOG Gallery. Payment and per-

mission slip to be returned by Tuesday 5 June. Friday 8 June is our PTC (Parent-Teacher Conference). Thank you for your replies,

please look out for confirmation slips. Students need NOT attend the PTC. Friday 15 June is our last day of school. School will end at half day or 12:30p.m.

Please look out for final week activities letter sometime next week. Last Pottery session is June 12th.

Have a good summer break and see you again on Monday 6 August!

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER May 21st — June 1st, 2012

1 0 W i n s t e d t R o a d , B l o c k C # 0 1 - 1 6 , S in g a p o r e 2 2 7 9 7 7 T e l : + 6 5 6 8 3 6 1 1 2 8 F a x : + 6 5 6 2 3 5 6 7 9 7 w w w . l e a r n d i f f e r e n t . c o m .s g

Tuesday night we welcomed Dr. Roby Marcou, a highly sought after Behavioural and Develop-mental Paediatrician, to give a presentation on ‘Anxiety in Children: Parenting for Strength’. We thought it was an appropriate topic for this particular time of year as the school year is ending, families may be relocating, children may be changing schools, and, in general, sum-mer travel plans are being made. I think we can all agree that these are guaranteed sources of stress and anxiety. Dr. Marcou explained the difference between stress and anxiety, and out-lined when anxiety becomes a problem for children. She gave specific signs and symptoms of anxiety disorders, especially in children who have learning challenges. An important point she made relating to education is that no one learns when they are truly anxious. So how do we help an anxious child? She believes to reduce anxiety we must first change the thinking. Often we react to the be-haviour of an anxious child. For instance, if a child tantrums, we put them in a timeout. But she cautions parents and teachers to try to understand the thinking that caused the behaving. She explained that anxiety starts with a thought and that thinking causes a feeling which, in turn, causes behaving in a certain way. This anxiety-induced behaviour can be exhibited in many different ways such as inattention, explosiveness, repetitive behaviours, sleep issues, avoidance, blame and shame, somatic complaints, and anger to name only a few. She advises, to reduce anxiety in a child we have to change “the thought and the belief to a less extreme form”. By doing this, the feeling associated with the original thought will be also changed to a less extreme form. Dr. Marcou offered more specific strategies to help your child such as using relaxation tech-niques and she spoke about the role of cortisol in anxiety cycles. In addition, she included some of the neuroscience behind brain development and why at certain ages of childhood anxiety is more difficult to manage. Lastly, she touched on some classic mistakes parents make: giving excessive reassurance, being too directive and being impatient. Instead she sug-gests rewarding bravery, communicating empathy, using ‘planned’ ignoring strategies and modelling brave behaviour. A very important point she made was that a parent of an anxious child must first address their own anxiety issues before they can help their child. Finally, Dr Marcou left us with some 2-minute relaxation exercises that work best for child and adult along with a recommended list of books parents can refer to. If this is a topic you would like to learn more about, Dr.Marcou has a private clinic at Novena Medical Center and can be reached at +65 6397 6637 or by visiting her website at www.drrobymarcou.com.sg.

‘Anxiety in Children: Parenting for Strength’ Talk Summary

“ … no one learns when they are truly

anxious”

- Dr. Roby Marcou

Page 2

It has been a busy, col-ourful, refreshing and yummy two weeks! We have been celebrating friendship for the past few weeks. Tom, Tvish and Ryan’s Day was cele-brated with an exciting water play activity. It was a wonderful way of being together, getting to know our friends more and cooling down in this summer heat! Luca, Marissa & Nicole’s Day was a delicious one! The students mixed, mould-ed and baked healthy chocolate and cranberry cookies. It was a scrump-tious treat for all! We ended the Olympics unit with our very own, adrenaline-pumping LDA Olympics. The students

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

cheered for the victory of their teams! All the teams- Green, Blue, Yel-low and Red – practiced excellence, friendship and respect as they ran, jumped and skipped on the spacious track and field. We had our Closing Ceremony back in the school and it was a blast! Each student was award-ed their own gold medal for their terrific effort and teamwork.

In Literacy, we continued writing our creative sto-ries using guidelines for

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS

cheerful Year One family,

and we bid farewell and

wished the best of luck to

Ms. Jennifer as she and

her family will be relo-

cating to California this

summer.

was one of types of po-ems which they studied. The children made their very own limerick poem. Don’t forget to look at our board outside our class to see some exam-ples! They did such a great job that they had a chance to showcase their work for last week’s as-sembly. Each student read their poem to eve-ryone and they were in-deed proud of their work as were their teachers!

the different elements of story writing and with the aid of a handy-dandy dic-tionary and thesaurus.

In Maths, the students were challenged with basic division problems. They also learned about telling the time using ana-logue and digital clocks. Lastly, we welcomed

Ryan Van Breda into our

The Exit Point for the Olympics unit was a field trip to the Toa Payoh Sta-dium where the students had the opportunity to experience how it feels to compete as an athlete. It was a great way to end the unit and everyone re-ceived a medal for their participation in a special assembly yesterday! In Literacy this week, the children were introduced to poetry and different types of poems. Limerick

The children also creat-ed a story about being on board a Pirate Ship. The first paragraph was written for them and they had to think about the next paragraph of the story using helping words and pictures on the internet. Reception 2 has some very creative writers. In Maths this week, we continued working with coins and completing our worksheets. We will

be embarking on notes next week.

Enjoy your weekend!

Page 3

RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY ’S CLASS

out to the nearby shop and practiced our maths skills in a real scenario.

The children chose the things they wanted to buy, found the price and made sure that they had enough money. Some of them even counted how much they would get for a change while queuing. They did such an impres-sive job that the shop cash-gave them two thumbs up and a smiley face!

The past two weeks, we have been talking about different Olympians. Thanks to the parents for helping with the re-search. Our Reception 1 students have also been practicing how to ski and observed which body parts work the most dur-ing certain sports. To end our “Olympics” theme, we held our own Learn Different Olympics at Toa Payoh Stadium on Thursday. The events included an obstacle course, 100m sprints,

ning a relay too. It is clear that teamwork is needed to have a successful race. The children also learnt other events, especially the ones that were held in the Learn Different Olympics on Thurs-day. They did their best and showed excellent sports-manship. They supported each other and strived to be the best for their team.

The past two weeks have been the busiest weeks for everyone. We started with some research to find out a few basic facts about the human heart. From our re-search, we learnt about how the human heart works. We listened to the heartbeat and watched a short clip about how oxygenated blood and non-oxygenated blood circulate inside our body. We also learn about the Olympic running Relay Race and its rules. The chil-dren now know that the stick used is called a baton and, during the race, a run-ner must not drop the baton when passing it onto the next runner or he/she will be disqualified. After watch-ing how a Relay Race is run, our class practiced the run-

hurdles, shot put, long jump and 400m relays. The students did their best and showed every-body how athletic they can be. Everyone was a winner and they all re-ceived an inscribed med-al to show their partici-pation! In Literacy, the class finished all their c-v-c sets and writing sen-tences in their ditty books, we are now prac-ticing all our spelling words and trying to make sentences with them. While in Maths,

we are making our own addition table of 20 this will serve as an aid when you do more complex addition problems soon.

During literacy time, the children revisited the con-cept of long sounds of letter /a/ and /i/ and creat-ed a poster of short and long vowel sounds. They came up with many words for the poster and make their own rhymes out of the words pasted on the poster. The children also learnt to rearrange jumbled words to make a meaningful sen-tence. They did an out-standing job at this too. Two thumbs up! In Maths, the children worked on vertical subtraction. Now they know that they must subtract from “the ones” then “the tens”. They applied that skill to solve subtraction prob-lems using paper money and coins. The excitement continued when we all went

We had a lot of fun with this Olympic unit. We learned a lot and were able to showcase our love of sports and exer-cise. It was a great way to end the year!

Every child deserves the right to be taught in the way he or she learns best!