NEWS FROM PRIMARY
Our First Week Back at School – Learning English with Mr Colin

In Primary 2A and 2C, students met Mr Colin, their new English teacher. They learnt the ‘thumbs up, thumbs down, shaking hands’ method of communicating, indicating whether they fully understand, need more explanation, or partly understand. This method allows students to be active in their learning, and it gives immediate feedback to the teacher.

Week One was primarily about getting the students comfortable with online classes, and it also helped teachers assess the needs of the class as a whole and which students might need extra help or motivation. Students wrote simple sentences and were introduced to coordinating conjunctions to create compound sentences. They were reminded to begin with a capital letter and finish with punctuation. They also watched a short video that explained the differences between simple and compound sentences.  

Afterwards, the class had a quick game of identifying the sentence types and writing their compound sentences following prompts. Writing the answers in the chatbox allowed for immediate feedback and peer review. Lots of positive reinforcement encouraged the students to write, and the students were reassured that we would repeat these activities in the following weeks so they would have enough time to absorb the knowledge.

Through continual positive feedback and encouragement, our students will continue to reach greater heights.