Report book (III) - parents meet teacher 31 May

While I sat her writing this, I was thinking why I feel excited about attending this PMT, because I had attended many from her childcare before.  First reason could be that this is still a "first", from her Primary school.  Secondly, I really wanted to finally meet Mdm Ong (form teacher/english and Math).

We reached her school and Lynn lead the way to her classroom.  She told me we shall take the shortest route using the stairway right at the end.  When we reached her class, there were about 2-3 sets of student/parents there talking to either Mdm Ong or Chen LaoShi.  We sat at her usual sit, which is the 3rd row, to wait.  The empty seat to her left in the pic below belongs to her partner Remos.

We talked to Chen LaoShi (Chinese teacher) first.  She started off with saying that Lynn's Chinese is ok/not bad or one of the better ones in class (ie not much concern).  Then she went on to another topic which is that recently Lynn show sign of playfulness and will play or chat with her classmate/partner while doing work.  She quickly said that Lynn behaved very well when the year started, that's why they picked her as the class monitor.  I just smiled, almost like pretending to agree.  Cos I'm a bit bewildered.  On one hand I can understand that it is not easy to control a class of 30 and thus teachers will like to have obedient students.  On the other hand, I can't imaging children behaving too "well".  Lynn is still a P1 kid, monitor or no monitor.   Anyway, Lynn as there while we talked (so I'm sure she understood totally) and we talked about it too.  I just told her to concentrate and finish her work before engaging in other activities with her classmates.

I managed to discuss some areas of concern with Chen LaoShi too.  Firstly, I confirmed that she marked Lynn's 朗读能力only as satisfactory and that is true.  She said that Lynn pause very often in her speech.  So although Lynn's Chinese s "ok/not bad", there are really lots of areas for improvement.  She commented that my Mandarin sounds good, and that I should spend a hour a day with her speaking Chinese.

Secondly we discussed the extensive use of 汉语拼音 in the P1 syllabus nowadays.  I have cousins who are in upper secondary now, who are very bad at the language.  They ever commented (when asked to read a short passage) that "there is no 汉语拼音 ，how to read?".  Chen LaoShi explained that the purpose of the extensive use is to aid P1/P2 students in self reading, because there are too many words that they can't read now.  She said that they should be able to read Chinese books by themselves come P3/P4.  I agreed with her, because this is what I suspect was the reason too.  My own aim, before this PMT session, is also that Lynn should be able to read independently when she reaches P3.  One difference is however, i'm building her Chinese words vocabulary myself.  Lynn is someone who enjoys reading, so if she has 2 different tools (hanyupinyin and good basic vocab), she should be able to handle Chinese in times to come.

Here are 2 pics, which Lynn explained that the more smilie that one gets, the more she is 好宝宝

Then after a long wait, cos Mdm Ong spent a lot of time with each set of parents, it was finally our turn.  Mdm Ong likes Lynn a lot, as Lynn behaves well and is good at her work.  She commented that Lynn would concentrate and finish her work before she played with her classmate.  Instead of telling me that Lynn had change recently, she actually asked Lynn directly (in front of me) if her partner Ramos is disturbing her, to which Lynn immediately said yes.   Then Mdm Ong said that when they come back from the break she will change some of the seating arrangements.  She said that she will put the talkative ones with the quiet ones so that when one talks and the other don't reply, the conversation will stop there.  Hah, I'm still a bit amused by the views and observations by these 2 teachers.  But seriously, with such caring teachers who doted on her, I'm really counting my good luck and blessings with gratitude.

I discussed with Mdm Ong about her show and tell assignment, which I helped a lot in writing the speech.  i'm concerned that Lynn's not the one who contributed most of the ideas and points in this speech, but Mdm Ong said that it's ok, because they wanted the parent's active involvement so that the speech can be more "meaty".  I'm glad to hear that, but I will still want to start her on generating thoughts and ideas of her own.

Mdm Ong's main complain is that recently Lynn's getting too obsess with pretending to be a cat.  So much so that we will lick her friends and lick her watch!  I told her that I don't usually stop her from play acting, but agree that I will watch out.

We discussed the "late" incident too.  At the end of the session, I thanked her for being so caring, which she said is part of her job.  I think Mdm Ong is a dedicated teacher.  She said something which the K2 teacher said before, that they wished that here were more of "Lynn" in their class.  I think our school system would be fantastic if there were more of Mdm Ong as teachers.

Here's some other photos of the exhibits around the classroom.