Important Notices September 22nd is Teachers’ Day and the Academy will be closed.

Exit Point for our current IPC theme is Friday 16th.

Entry Point for the next IPC unit is Monday September 19th. R1 & R2 will be learning “ My World” and Year 1 will be learning “Living To-gether”. We will be having a big school picnic featuring food from our students home countries. Please look for a letter to follow with all the details.

“ … educational research shows that when parents are involved in their child’s school, and parents and teachers work together collaboratively, children achieve higher levels.”

BIWEEKLY

NEWSLETTER August 29 — September 09 , 2011

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At Learn Different we believe parents are a valuable asset in their child’s edu-cation and we are very fortunate to have parents such as you who are com-mitted to their child’s well-being both academically and social-emotionally. Last year, we were approached by a few parents about forming a Parents’ League to build a stronger Learn Different community. By formalizing a Par-ents’ League we hope to provide more opportunities for parents to connect with each other as well as and to be able to share resources, improve commu-nication and support teacher initiatives. As an added benefit, educational re-search shows that when parents are involved in their child’s school, and par-ents and teachers work together collaboratively, children achieve higher lev-els.!

We also hope that a stronger, collective parent voice will ring out louder in the greater Singaporean community to reinforce the need for such a learning model locally and will garner more support at different governmental levels.

Here are some ways Parents’ League volunteers could help out this year: or-ganizing a grand opening for Learn Different Academy now that we are regis-tered with the Council of Private Education, planning a fun whole-school outing or local service opportunity, arranging workshops for parents, and hosting an end-of-year celebration.

We sincerely thank the parents who have given their time and energy in the past. Your willingness to help out whether it be chaperoning a field trip, bring-ing food in for a celebration or sharing a talent is always greatly appreciated.

If you would like be involved in forming a Parents’ League for Learn Different Academy, please contact me at jchadam@learndifferent.com.sg. Thank you for your continued support. Jennifer Chadam, Head of Communication and Development.

Learn Different Academy Parents’ League

In class the kids are working diligently learning new things in Literacy and Maths. We have progressed in building sentences and have moved on to new sound groups (/oo/ and /ee/). Also we have been learning about nouns

These last two weeks have flown by, and we have been busy with lots of exciting activ-ities. We had the pleasure of having Ms. Rebecca Masciola come in to help our class, and the rest of the school to make a school quilt. Each student designed their own patch for the quilt with scenes of animals and people in our world. In addi-tion to this, the kids have also been screen printing to make their own t-shirts! We are ex-cited to see what everyone has created when we wear them for our ‘Go Green’ fashion show in a few weeks!

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Wow! I can’t believe that it has already been more than a month since you dropped off your child for the first time! So much learning and exploring have taken place since then. Science, Technology and Arts were our main subject areas for the past two weeks. We have con-ducted an experiment on the absorbency properties characteristic of different kinds of fabric and have learned a new word to add to our word bank – Hypothesis: a smart guess. We watched a vid-eo of tailors and seam-stresses making kids’ clothes in a factory in Co-lombia. We were so amazed with how much fabric they have! Rolls and rolls of colourful fabric

were piled up and stored in a clean room. The work-ers demonstrated proper use of the industrial sew-ing machines and dis-played their talent in em-broidery. Art class was a lot of fun as we creatively printed our shirts, made a collage of our favourite things using various kinds of cloth and designed patches for the quilt with the wonderful, Ms. Re-becca. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us. It was a lot of fun!

RECEPTION TWO , MS. ASHLEY ’S CLASS

YEAR ONE , MS. KATRINA’S CLASS

and how to identify them in sentences. The children have done brilliantly, picking up the concept so quickly! In Math we are working on Number Bonds and have started addi-tion. For inquiry, we have been traveling the world learning about the 7 continents, differ-ent types of weather around the world, and what types of clothes are worn to keep peo-ple warm and cool. The chil-dren picked their own coun-tries to research and made a report about the weather, clothing and sometimes ani-mals in those countries. Con-tinuing with our ‘Dressing Up’

The values of patience, turn-taking and honesty were intertwined with developing reading comprehension skills in Literacy class as we read the story, The Second Princess. Maths was chal-lenging as we tried to solve word problems involving addition. But of course, as with all challenges that we have gone through, we were able to overcome this

theme, the boys have also written about their favourite outfits and designed their own futuristic clothing. We also made African Kente Cloths, weaving paper togeth-er on a loom and then making patterns on our paper weav-ing with stamps. Its been a very eventful two weeks, and the boys have accomplished so much! As we finish up our ‘Dressing Up’ theme, we look forward to seeing what else the chil-dren can come up with! This is a promising start to another great year!

hurdle with focus and deter-mination. Everybody is ‘psyched’ as we will be de-signing and making our own runway-worthy, eco clothing made of recyclable materi-als, mainly newspapers, next week. This clothing will be used during the Fashion Ex-ploration’s grand finale on the 16th of September.

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RECEPTION TWO , MS. KARINA’S CLASS

RECEPTION ONE , MS. GETTY’S CLASS

clothing according to what kind of weather they are ap-propriate for. We even had our own fashion parade in the classroom! We were super adventurous with our crea-tions as we mixed and matched fabrics and flaunted our own style. We also learned more about our friends’ home country as we sorted out pictures of their national costume and identi-fied the type of fabric used. In Literacy, we had fun review-ing some of the letter sounds by singing a rhyme for each letter. Our students have some very healthy lungs! We also tried blending and helping each other to sound out the

The children have been work-ing hard and at the same time enjoying what nature has given us. This week is dedi-cated to Andy Goldsworthy – a British artist who collabo-rates with nature to make his creations.

The children had a nature walk around the school to collect natural materials on the ground so that they would not disturb the nature. Learning from the artistic style of his land art, the chil-dren then tried to create

The world of Science has al-ways fascinated children be-cause of their innate love of nature and animals. This time in Science we focused on learning more about clothing and fabrics. We travelled the globe in the classroom looking at different types of materials for making fabric (cotton, silk, wool etc.) and how each of these materials are made into fabrics. “Over and under, over and under…” these are the words that the class muttered repeatedly when we under-went weaving and making our own “scarf”. Each student designed their own clothing based on the patterns of their chosen fabric and they were able to categorize each type of

Another two weeks have quickly come and gone. These last two weeks in particular we have really felt time flying by because we explored the ‘time machine’ concept. The children were fascinated by how the machine works and what it could do to our lives if it existed. After looking at different kinds of time ma-chines shown in Sci-Fi movies, the children then designed their own time machine, then compared how people dressed in the past with how we dress now.

words on the whiteboard. Our class is also starting to learn about the beginning and end-ing sound of specific words and to write down some exam-ples accompanied with their own drawings. Each of the students also had a chance to be a storyteller for the day, in which they read a story from the book they borrowed from the library, in front of the while class. During Maths, we went deeper into patterns, and we even decorated some of the cards we made for Teacher’s Day with our own patterns. Incor-porating our theme into learn-ing Maths, each of us fash-ioned our own necklaces and

their own art pieces using the materials from nature.

In Maths, the older children learnt to solve subtraction problems using 2 methods: by counting on from the smaller number then stopping at the bigger number and by counting backward from the bigger number then stopping at the smaller number. They used biscuits and Doritos to create their own subtraction stories! The younger children learnt about addition using “counting-on” technique and

have begun to learn to solve Maths story sums. Terrific job, children!

In Literacy, the older children learnt about action verbs. They played verb games by acting out a verb and let the rest guess what verb it was. They also created “verb col-lage” by cutting pictures from magazines that tell about action verbs. The younger children learnt about the sound /-ar/ and their favourite word is c-ar: car!

bracelets that we made using beads and yarn. We counted the beads by two’s and by five’s, threading the yarn through the beads and made fabulous patterns in our ac-cessories.

A round of applause for all of our students for doing a fine job and giving their best efforts in all our activities.

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