Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back to school and I wish you a great start to the term. 

This week, we celebrate leadership as we mark Youth Day. In particular, I want to focus on the leadership role we play as teachers. Teachers are also leaders because we play the same roles as organisational leaders:

1. Inspire and motivate: Encourage students to learn and grow.

2. Set goals and expectations: Establish clear objectives and standards for their students.

3. Guide and support: Provide guidance, feedback, and support to help students achieve their goals.

4. Facilitate learning: Create an environment that fosters learning, exploration, and discovery.

5. Role-model behavior: Demonstrate positive values, attitudes, and behaviors for their students.

6. Build relationships: Develop strong relationships with students, colleagues, and parents.

7. Make decisions: Make informed decisions about instruction, assessment, and classroom management.

8. Communicate effectively: Communicate clearly and effectively with students, parents, and colleagues.

9. Lead by example: Show enthusiasm, passion, and dedication to teaching and learning.

10. Empower students: Encourage students to take ownership of their learning and develop their own leadership skills.

As you can see, teachers are very much leaders, and play a vital role in shaping young minds, fostering academic achievement, and preparing students for success in life.

Have a great start to the term and happy leading your students!

Credere et Servire!  

Keep Believing and Serving,

Timothy Goh

By:   VPs

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Dear everyone,

Below are our Term 3 weekly thematic focus:

1. We can, together as one, amplify the student experiences in a common mission and spirit.

2. This will also help our boys anticipate ands make coherent sense of the varied programmes and events they experience. 

3. This is also shared in our Welcome Back to School PG, so the parents are in tandem with us to reinforce the boys' continued experiences at home.

Term 3 is particularly meaningful in these aspects:

• • Youth vitality, our Lasallian mission ‘Men for Others’ & the Olympics

  • Singapore’s Nationhood & Nation-Building

  • Character, values and social-emotional development of each child

  • Further academic development and consolidation 

  • Our children's appreciation of their teachers

Term 3 Week 1:

• Men For Others Aseembly

• Student Leadership Week & Investiture

• 'Harmony' Art Exhibition @ ION

• P5: National Education Show @ Padang (NDP Preview for P5 Students)

• Youth Day

Term 3 Week 2:

• • Youth Day School Holiday

  • Class Photo Taking

Term 3 Week 3:

• • P4: SS Learning Journey (curriculum hours)

Term 3 Week 4:

• • Racial Harmony Commemoration Week & Assembly

  • Racial Harmony Day (National Commemoration 21 July, Sunday)

Term 3 Week 5:

• • Read for Books

  • Olympics Opening

  • P6: Prelim Oral Exams English Language & Mother Tongue (24-25 July, PM)

Term 3 Week 6:

• • Olympics Week Sharing

Term 3 Week 7:

• • NDP Mascot 'August' Visits SSS (Recess@Canteen)

  • National Day Celebrations (Half-Day)

  • National Day Public Holiday

Term 3 Weeks 8 & 9:

• • Aug 13 – 14

    • P6: PSLE Oral Examinations

    • P1 - P5: No School Days

  • Aug 15

    • P6: Prelim Exams Listening Comprehension

    • P3: GEP Screening Exercise (curriculum hours)

  • Aug 16 - 22
    P6: Prelim Exams Written Papers

Term 3 Week 10:

• • Celebrating Our Stephenians

  • Majulah Run! @ OCBC Square, SG Sports Hub (Details to be shared nearer to the date)

  • Teachers' Day Celebrations (Half-Day)

  • Teachers' Day School Holiday

Together, we make a better Stephenian, Lasallian & Singaporean experience for our boys!

Thank you and many cheers again!

Edwin

By:   VP

Dear everyone,

Thank you for being a wonderful 'class' at our earlier session on the Neuroscience of Learning.

Hope everyone has gleaned much from the sharing on the slides and content presented by MTT / Educational Support Mdm Koh Seok Hwee earlier at the E7 SDT Cluster Engagement & Sharing.

Here are some of the key concepts and points from the sharing.

1. RAD of Education: 

   • Reticular Activating System (RAS) attention filter

   • Amygdala's affective filter

   • Dopamine emotional filter

2. Directing the RAS to look out for specific things you deem important:

   • Set Clear Goals: 

     • • Defining what you want to achieve or what you’re looking for helps the RAS recognize those things as important.

   • Visualize: 

     • • Regularly visualising what you want can prime your RAS to be on the lookout for information related to your goals.

   • Affirmations: 

     • • Repeating positive affirmations about what you hope to find or achieve can reinforce to your RAS what to focus on.

   • Environmental Cues: 

     • • Surround yourself with visual reminders of your goals, which can consistently signal your RAS to pay attention to them.

   • Regular Review:

     • • Frequently remind yourself of your targets by reviewing them. This helps keep them at the forefront of your consciousness.

3. Harness the Amygdala, the affective filter, to relax-calm-invite the brain to want to learn:

   • Improve Memory

     • • Thinking Reflective Brain

   • Reduce Boredom

     • • for 4 stduent types - overachiever, underachiever, perfectionist, rebel

       • Reactive Brain (Fight Flight Freeze)

   • Enable management and harnessing of Stress

   • Create a Positive Classroom Culture

     • • involve students

       • respect dignity of each student

       • invite their choices and voices

   • Attract and Maintain Student Attention 

     • • real-life egs

       • varied ways of presentation

       • surprises

       • discrepant/novel/irregular egs

       • build anticipation

       • connect to student's lives and aspirations

       • invite prediction

   • Ensure Positive Emotions in the Class

     • • humor or light-hearted moments

       • acknowledge & celebrate achievemnets or contributions

       • adjust according to engagement, student voice, opinions & questions

       • empathise & undestand student struggles / challenges, 

       • whole-class engagement strategies for every student to participate

4. Harness Dopamine, the emotional filter, to create the pleasurable learning experience:

   • Novelty and Curiosity: 

     • • enhance motivation and attention.

   • Achievement and Success:  

     • • reinforces the behavior and encourages continued learning efforts.

   • Positive Feedback and Reinforcement: 

     • • strengthens the neural pathways of the behaviour, making it more likely to be repeated in the future.

   • Interest and Engagement: 

     • • stimulate dopamine release, promoting deeper learning and memory formation.

   • Challenges and Problem-Solving: 

     • • lead to sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, triggering dopamine release.

5. Opportune Time for Learning: 

   • Prime Time 1 

     • • focus on the important learning and curiosity in this prime first 5 mins

       • don't spend this precious time on distractors / then mundane if these could be done later/individually, e.g. scolding, time-fillers tasks

   • Down time & to un-flatten this Down Time 

     • • with intermittent up-priming as attention ebbs over time

       • increase the number of attention sub-spikes here

   • Prime Time 2

     • • focus on consolidating sense-making, especially for boys, this last 5 mins

       • faciliate commitment to longer term memory and application

6. Link to Boys Centric Education & Mindfulness @ SSS

   • Anchoring on our Lasallian & all-boys school context

   • Tailoring to boys' psyche and behavioural patterns

   • Harnessing the strengths of boys

     • • competitive spirit

       • momentum of the collective herd

   • The potential of exercising/applying Mindfulness

     • • As a daily start-right routine

       • As re-anchoring and emotional-readying moments in class

       • As learning-readying primers

       • To have the brain in the most ready state for learning

7. In Summary, for optimal learning:

   • a. Remove perceived threats in class. 

     • • social emotional environmental physical threats/discomfort

   • b. Use novelty to arouse students’ curiosity

     • • liberate from the comfort of control and the familiar

       • balance novelty with predictability

   • c. Direct students’ brain to look for relevant information

     • • prompting more sustained curiosity

       • priming the brain before lesson proper with the 3 questions 

         • • what do I know beforehand

           • how can I then apply

           • what questions do I have

   • d. Harness the physical and social environment

     • • stimuli that are personally relevant or significant to learner's goals, needs or interest

       • e.g. vision board, goal setting sheet, visual posters, affirmation notes, environmental cues etc

   • e. Create positive climate and tone (goals, affirmation, regular review)

   • f. Reduce stress felt by students

   • g. Make learning a pleasurable experience

   • h. Plan lesson based on primacy – recency effect

Let's explore and deepen, with greater intentionality, the design and delivery of our boys' lessons and learning experiences!

Thank you and many cheers!

Edwin