Our school curriculum has no lack of subjects and performance driven tasks and work. Our kids have weekly spelling tests, topical reviews, mid-year exams, end-year exams and a myriad of assignments that are given with the aim to drill and impart content knowledge into our children. Of course, we cannot deny the good intentions behind these tasks; however, we must also look at the long-term investment into a child’s learning.

He/she learns the spelling words for the week with the objective to score 10 out of 10 or revises for a test or examination with the goal to attain higher marks than the previous test. And of course, these are also important outcomes to keep in mind. (Because if a child is learning effectively, then it is also only fair that we expect him/her to achieve good scores, right?)

Join our ambassadors, Mark Lee and Suhaimi Yusof and venture out to our museums and other heritage venues as Explore Singapore! returns once again! This year, the annual campaign organised by the National Heritage Board carries the theme “Heritage Hop-About”, and boasts of over 20 activities held at over 15 museums and institutions. And for the first time, 27 monuments will be open to the public through 16 walking tours during Explore Singapore! 2011.

Gathering from the parents and teachers whom I spoke to, it seems that the task of reading comprehension is a challenge for many students. And most are puzzled, and I believe, also frustrated at why the children just seems unable to perform well in this section despite countless practices and gentle (sometimes not-so-gentle) reminders to read the passage carefully, slowly and maybe a few more times.

Well, the first misconception to clear up is that being able to Read does not equate to Comprehension. They are in fact two very separate tasks that require different abilities, yet at times are as one.

For the purpose of helping our child be better in Reading Comprehension (as a task), let’s take a look at the underlying abilities necessary to accomplish this task.
(And, NO. It is more than and beyond just the subject of English)

A recent survey shows that Singaporeans are generally happy, scoring a 6.6 on a scale of 1 to 10. And according to Dan Buettner, best-selling author of The Blue Zones and Thrive - Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, "Singapore is the happiest place in Asia".

However, Singaporeans have rated their personal savings, or the lack of it, as the area in which they are most unhappy with, according to a research study titled The Happiness Report recently released last month.

The study, which was conducted by Grey Group, also revealed the top 5 things that Singaporeans were happiest about, with 78% citing Singapore as the best place to live in the world, followed by close family ties, spirituality, social support networks, and personal time being the fifth on the happiness index. Interestingly, the study also discovered that men were happier than women at the workplace.

Can happiness be bought with a price tag? Some would say "yes", judging from the long queue of thousands of people, some of whom stayed overnight, outside the new H&M flagship store when it was launched here.

I am not ashamed to admit that I am a Potato Parent. I am not pleased to admit it... but I am not ashamed. See... I didn't get to choose how I was educated. Unlike many in Singapore, I was never given the opportunity to learn Chinese. I spent the better part of my childhood outside of Singapore. So, I learnt French instead.

My children have to learn Chinese. I am fully supportive of this. If the government decided to move away from bilingual education and people had the choice to take or not to take Chinese, I would still opt for my kids to take Chinese.

But Potato Children like mine find it really difficult to excel in the Chinese language because they do not evolve in a Chinese reading milieu. In the past 10 months, I have experimented with some Potato Methods for Learning Chinese and my son has made progress. In this post I would like to share some things I discovered about the process of learning Chinese - and why Potato Children like mine find the language almost impossible to master... and what parents can do to make the impossible possible.

Is your child entering Primary 1 next year? Are you starting to feel stressed, anxious or worried about how your child will settle into the school environment? Will he/she make friends? Will he/she be able to learn well and enjoy a great start to their learning journey?

Entering Primary 1 can be a very exciting time for a child and the parents but it is also a time of great adjustment and transition. And a well-prepared child will look forward to school and settle in much more smoothly.

How then can parents make sure their child is well-prepared and ready to learn?

As an independent platform for commercial education services in Singapore, we have seen many discussions on various service providers.  The happy customers sing praises, the unhappy ones rage and swear, while the skeptics would raise an eyebrow now and then as they critically assess the comments and tear them down as biased or irrelevant.  Yes, critical reviews are fun to write and read.

Occasionally, we do come across some educators who stand out of the crowd, and yet remain hidden, because it is not in the nature of these truly good educators to actively promote themselves.  Education is about changing people's lives, to find ways to empower and encourage students to challenge their limits.  Each step taken by their students, no matter how small, is significant progress in the eyes of these passionate educators.