SIS school life

JJsMama

The answer is NO.  Singlish is Singapore's colloquial English formed by a hot pot mix of local dialects, eg. Hokkien, Malay, Tamil, Teochew,  and used mostly in social occasions.    It is frowned upon in the academic environment.   Teachers in SIS do not speak Singlish.   From my four years experience at the school, I've never heard an ounce of Singlish from anyone.   As for Singapore accent, yes, many teachers do have an accent.   And it does filter down to the kids somewhat.   However, none of the kids I met have a prominent Singaporean accent, nothing close to what you'd hear in Singapore or their TV programmes.  At most, perhaps intonation here and there.  Definitely no 'lah' and 'loh's.   I used to have the same concern as Ann particulary before my son joined SIS, but after years of "eaves-dropping" on the kids, this no longer poses an issue to me.

JJsMama

原帖由 Callas 於 10-9-19 21:43 發表

about maths teaching in your school, I heard ...

Perhaps I could help to elaborate on the Math front (ok, but up to P3 level only).

SIS uses modeling to teach kids maths.   This method helps children to visualise mathematical concepts and understand their logic.   For example, children are not asked to recite the multiplication table.  Instead, teachers use modeling to help the children understand the principle and how to work out the numbers.   So even though kids only learnt up to the muliplication of 5 in P2, they can easily figure out the product of bigger numbers.     I agree with Compsog that most children don't find Math hard.  The average score in the exam are in the high 80s and that reflects that they can quite competently handle the standard that is set out by the school.

JJsMama

原帖由 Callas 於 10-9-23 21:00 發表


Hi JJsMama,  

Thanks a lot for your elaborating on the math teaching format, it seems very special.......
May i ask if parent can follow easily? Do student of upper grades generally need any extra  ...

Perhaps I could share with you my experience.   I unwittingly jumped into the bandwagon of Kumon when my son was in PY1 and he spent almost one year religiously churning out pages and pages of drills everyday.  Result?  He ended up hated Math, I mean HATED, and despite progressing well according to Kumon's target, he really didn't learn much.   After studying SIS' Math syllabus, I decided tuition was not neccesary.   However, the 'after-shock' of Kumon lasted a good 2 years.    Thank goodness my son got over that and doesn't resent Math anymore, in fact, he quite enjoys it.    I think, as parents, many of us get too anxious to put our children into private tuition or tutorial classes too early too soon.    We either want them to get ahead, or worry they may fall behind.   But in the process, we could be causing them to undermine their own ability to learn by themselves.

Going back to your question, there will always be people taking tuition, at all levels.   Personally, I will not let my son take tuition unless it is a dire situation.  Children learn at different paces, the key is to be patient and not to compare with the Chans and the Wongs.   I believe it is more productive to help my kid identify his area of weakness and work on them together than to have a consistent reliance on outside help.   Anyway after a long day at school, it's better for the sanity of the children to have some time to themselves and do the things they enjoy.