'Tin Xie'

For the past 2 wks, I've been reviewing our family medical insurance covers and finally am able to sort of finalise them last night when the agent came over(hopefully it's really comprehensive now so I don't have to worry anymore and can concentrate on other matters now).

As for schoool, it's been 3 weeks now since Renee's back to the Kindergarten system and I've noticed recently that she's been bringing chinese work home('chao xie').  However, she had been unable to read some of the words given and hoping to help her learn more, I started using those words as a guideline and gave some of them to her as Tin Xie.

The reason why I'm doing this is because I fear that she may not be able to catch up/cope with the demands of Primary schooling due to her very limited vocabulary in the Chinese language.  However, after about a week or so, although I do see results, I find these grilling very tedious for the both of us.

A recent telephone conversation with a mommy friend made me re-think about this and after sharing my concern with another friend, I decided late last night, that perhaps I should give the school a call and see how I can work with the school to enhance her learning at home.

So, this morning, I phoned up the school and spoke with the Principal, Ms Yeo whom was the one monitoring Renee's progress.  She told me that indeed, lao shi has told her that Renee seems unable to recognise quite abit of words and those words given as her homework are supposedly/in hope to help her remember them better.  I told her what I've been doing for the past week but I find some of the words given are pretty complicated, so I'm not sure if I'm doing it right, to grill her on such words and are those words really what the K2s should be learning/preparing for P1?  She told me that laoshi has earlier, seeked her opinion as to how they should guide Renee and from her observation(she teaches Renee Maths & English personally), Renee has good positive learning attitude but as her Chinese is very weak, it's better that they try and do more work with her now, so that(hopefully) she could catch up with the rest.  Thus, Tin Xie is not of priority at the moment and that is why she's not given it at school .  They would rather that she learns to recognise more words now and those given to her as homework are merely to re-enforce her recognition.  However, by simply copying the words, I find, is not very effective(since she's proven to me that she's still unable to read them after doing it) but not wanting to grill Renee in the wrong way, I asked if she could let me know as to how I can work with the school and further enhance her learning at home.  Ms Yeo told me that she'd discuss this matter with laoshi again.

When we spoke again, she told me that laoshi is actually very pleased with Renee's progress and attitude in learning - she will do her work properly and has shown interest in learning.  On hearing this, I suggested to her that I'd perhaps just try to revise with Renee on the words given, and give her the simpler ones as Tin Xie and also to try & read more with her.  Ms Yeo remarked that this would be a good idea and on their end, they will continue to monitor and will periodically check if she's ready for Tin Xie at school.  As for han yu ping yin, MOE has stipulated that the Kindergartens should not teach HYPY but as many parents have voiced out their concern on this, she's looking into ways to try and see if they could inculcate the basics, during the last term.