My Favourite Animal

The new MOE syllabus of teaching lesser and learning more, coupled with fewer examinations for primary one and two, is put into practice in most schools this year. Instead of focusing on 2 main examinations to determine the academic placement of our children, the new syllabus will use bite-sized and year-round assessments focusing on the understanding and reflection of the students. 

Hence, instead of the usual mid-year exams this year, Big Bee has to go through about 2-3 evaluations per subject this term which would be counted towards the final grade at the end of the year. The assessments are rather interesting, comprising of the usual academic topical tests and non-academic components like a journal reflection on "My Friends" for English, and show-and-tell activities for English and Chinese. 

I welcome the show-and-tell activities a lot, as it reinforces an emphasis on speech and drama, spotlighting on fostering strong communication skills, as well as nurturing articulate and confident students. Students are assessed on clarity of speech, strong eye contact and posture, volume of presentation and grammar/sentence structure, with bonus points for compelling interest factors in their topics. 

The topic given to Big Bee's school for show-and-tell is a nice and easy "My Favourite Animal". Parents were advised by the teacher last week to help the children craft out a script for the show-and-tell. Hubby and I gave Big Bee some guidelines on what to say, and let her create her own script using research done by herself, so that she truly feels for what she will be presenting. 

Here's her script penned by herself, and I thought she articulated it beautifully when we rehearsed tonight: 

"Hello everyone! My favourite animal is the horse. I like horses because they can gallop very fast. I also like to stroke their fur a lot. I love horses so much that I learned horseriding for 2 years. My favourite part of horseriding is to canter and feel the wind on my face. My favourite breed of horse is a Palomino. It is a very friendly and lovable breed. Let me tell you more about horses. A female horse is called a mare and a male horse is called a gender. The young of a horse is called a foal. Horses give birth during spring. Do you know that the longest horse tail is 22 feet long, which is the height of 6 Ms S (her form teacher's name!)?"

I thought her research done on the little idiosyncratic bits of trivia really shows off her personality - pointing us to facts that interest her. It is amazing how children unearth the most amazing facts when left to their own devices! 

Wish her luck. Her show-and-tell assessment is tomorrow :)