The Alternative Story (TAS) - Discussion

[nissin]

smurfette3:

I heard from the TAS admin person that they will start a new K2/P1 class at Amk on sunday 11.50 am. I am re-arranging my schedule to fit that timing.


Anyone wants to join with me? Once there are 4, we can start. Better to start before school year starts.

May I know wats the fee like? I may want to enroll..

[Ymy]

Hi! I agree with Coolit. Younger child needs more guidance from parents. My DD has been with TAS about four months now . I don’t think she knows how to apply the phrase in her composition. She is in P1. She is required to write picture composition for her Writing assessment. She told me that her composition was too short after her exam yesterday . I have yet to receive the paper .


Hi! Nissin, fees are $388 per 10 lessons. 2 hrs once a week. You can let your child attend a free trial class.

[hquek]

Agree with coolit and ymy. If I leave DS1 to his own devices, he’ll be (or maybe act) really blur and lost. I have to sit there and remind him what teacher taught him for this/that scenario, then he will remember how to apply that. takes time.


btw, they are pretty good with missed classes. Eg if a child is sick etc, contact them and can miss the class without financial penalty.

[porkypig]

i m keen to enrol but AMK is abit far for me, i stay in the East 

Will have to go to their East location.
thank you mummies for your feedbacks on TAS 

[maltbibi]

smurfette3:

I heard from the TAS admin person that they will start a new K2/P1 class at Amk on sunday 11.50 am. I am re-arranging my schedule to fit that timing.


Anyone wants to join with me? Once there are 4, we can start. Better to start before school year starts.

Hi Smurfette

I'm keen. Have they confirmed the date of the class?

[coolit]

For lower pri, sometimes in school, they focus on the more journalistic kind

of writing which is not what PSLE test for narrative writing. TAS focuses
on the narrative kind of writing which is what PSLE demands.
So for lower pri after some guidance, dont worry I think most kids can pick up
and now my dd is writing very well for her school.

But definitely need to guide as my dd needed to be shown how to use the phrases
and techniques for the journalistic kind of writing.

[porkypig]

Coolit, this is Porky, i was at the JEI thread also haha!

nice to ‘see’ you here 

[N.029275Lo]

I am also interested in the K2/P1 class for my friend. This class is for this year right?

[TTYL1]

Hi coolit,


What is this journalistic writing? How is it different from other types of writing?

[coolit]

Hi TTYL1,


I am not sure if that is the right word for it. I call it that as the writing seems
like what you would write in a journal. The teacher would ask them to
write about what they did they did during the weekends, holidays or
what their journey home from school was like…(from my experience
with my kids)

In this type of writing, I think there is no need for a plot.
And it is difficult to use the descriptive and personification kind of phrases
that TAS teaches. The journalistic writing seems to me to be non-fiction type
of writing. For PSLE, the type of writing is narratives so that would require a plot and maybe personification kind of language to make the story interesting.

I notice that another type of writing that teachers ask the children to write
in lower primary. That is descriptive type of writing. My girl’s teacher
also asked her to write stories describing a trip to a zoo or to a pet shop.
This was based on a picture. This one seemed more like a story. I was also
not very sure because the school teacher just gave them the picture to write
without much help. So for this kind of compo, I asked her to use some of
the weather phrases or some phrases describing feelings in to describe the
story. I find that the writing practices given in lower primary are more
practices given to let the kids practice sentence construction, not so much
to plot a story. But this examples are from the practices given to my kids.
I have heard from some friends that their kids’ teachers hardly gave their
children writing exercises. For some, even at P1, they were writing about
incidents like ‘fire’. One of my friend’s daughter even wrote poetry which
I personally thought was very interesting. I think they just want our kids to
explore different types of writing before they start the narrative type later on.

But I do know that they do not start on the argumentative type of essay till
secondary school. That is a relief!