blitz:

I never attended the training workshop, and don't have the passwords for both the admin and the studywiz.


Do I have to ask the teacher personally for it? :?

I think Skyjuice is also waiting for her passwords. The school is supposed to issue them to parents automatically. There will be a standard way they set the password, like birth date, IC number in certain format, etc. If you still can not access your accounts after the school has notified you, contact Paul Leong (HOD IT) for help.

skyjuice:

Thanks, MintLeaf, for all your helpful input. While in China in Dec, my son was drawn to this 喜洋洋 cartoon on TV. He would laugh and sing along with the song. So we bought the whole series home. We want to encourage any tinge of interest in the language, even if it's cartoon!

You are most welcome. Singing along is a good way to learn. DD sometimes repeats what some of those 神探狄仁杰 characters say. And she has the habit of replaying selected episodes of a drama series. She is much stronger at MT.

skyjuice:

Just wanted to share sth amusing...


The other day when my son went for his Chinese tuition class for the 1st time, the teacher asked him to take out his textbook. He said innocently 我的学校没有课本. Teacher and other kids all \"har\" and \"so good.\" Guess MT is a subj many kids would happily throw out.

I hope MS's MT standard would be manageable for my son, being a SAP school and all. This is absolutely his weakest subject. A friend of mine told me her S3 son's Ch improved tremendously after being in MS cos of the regular exposure to speech and culture. I'm certainly keeping my fingers crossed. Already, my son said he rather do Malay than Ch!

I wish I have a solution to this problem. During his real school holiday last Nov/Dec, we watched all 3 series of 神探狄仁杰 on DVD. It's a China production and the conversation is slow with Chinese subtitle. We are watching 2008 倚天屠龙记 on weekends now. I am hoping the DVDs will do some magic.

skyjuice:

Ranking in the class? That sounds pressurizing.

It can be, so if you don't tell the kid, he won't know his ranking. His own account does not show the ranking. With the ranking information, you can sometimes estimate how tough the test is to the class. MSHS boys may not be as confident as for example, RI boys, so it's important to regulate what we share with them. Once, DS came back and told me that the school flashed a slide that showed a correlation between T-Score and L1R5 scores. I don't agree and told him so. Today I am still constantly correcting such mindset in him that manifests every now and then. DS has fumbled and booed booed big time with his tests just because something trivial in the paper made him panic.

skyjuice:

I guess the school will be issuing the account userid and password soon? I reckon it shouldn't be too difficult to grasp it on our own considering the \"traiing\" workshop is only half an hr.

I noticed there is nothing on Studywiz for DS yet, even though he already has a test today. Maybe the school is still sorting something out. The web sites are fairly usable and I log on everyday to make sure DS keeps up. DS is also a sotong and sometimes he does not know about upcoming tests. Unfortunately, Studywiz does not always provide information on tests.

skyjuice:

I do wonder when they'll get the Macbook though. We haven't been given the order info yet too.

Somebody recently asked if the school is very 'luan'. Why is it taking so long? Apple normally has a big launch around March. If the notebooks come after the launch announcements, you can get better specification than originally communicated in the order, like more RAM, etc.

skyjuice:

Is Conversational Malay examinable or just a test? Or rather, what are the examinable subjects? EL and LE considered 1 examinable subject or 2?

DS learned Conversational Malay only in Sec 2. There is some simple tests, but I didn't see any grade. EL and LE are 2 subjects. The child must pass EL. The subjects that contribute to overall average are

CHINESE
DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
GEOGRAPHY (REVISED)
HISTORY (REVISED)
HOME ECONOMICS
LITERATURE(E)
MATHEMATICS
SCIENCE
VISUAL ARTS

And they just get a simple grade (A,B,C, etc) for
CIVICS & MORAL EDUCATION
MUSIC

The boys usually need to read 8 books per semester and more than half the books must be borrowed from the school library. It's called ERP ( Extended Reading Program?). The teacher will do a verbal review of the books with the boys. This is something I find DS rushing to complete ever so often, so look out for the genre of books to read and start your DS early if you can. ERP contributes to English daily work.

blitz:

Do we parents have password to enter Studywiz and Admin Breeze?

Yes, for both web sites. You can see the child's ranking in the class, only with the parent's account.

von72:

My son only feedback that he faces problem yesterday, vandor has to insert the cashcard few times before a successful transaction. But today, he came back saying they were told to tap the card at the reader instead of inserting.

If tapping works then it should be flashplay. The school just changed the canteen operator this year. I wonder in a typical school setup, will the NETS equipment be brought in by the operator or the school.

38daddy:

I think other than the \"old\" school building, we have no complaints on the academic teaching and discipline. But i realise that the school set very high standard for their subjects especially sciences.


2009 GCE \"O\", L1R5 had improved from 13.8 to 12.4, the target for the current S4 cohort is to bring it down even further....

Yes, the building is very old. I actually feared that they may rebuild the school and send my DS to a holding site to sit for the 'O' Level exam. Just heard they are installing aircon in the Hall this year so your DS can take the 'O' Level exam in relative comfort. Hopefully that will help boost the cohort's L1R5 performance.

Actually the school is located at a nice site, although some people may beg to differ, given its proximity to the cemetry. I can feel the breeze there. When I visited Cedar spanking new school during the Open House last year, I felt no breeze. And that was on a cool day.

Thanks for sharing the L1R5 performance. I didn't know that. My DS did say that 95% of this batch qualified for JC compared to 89%+ in the previous year.

blitz:

Any one's son have problems with cashcard at the canteen? My son tried to use the cashcard(not flashpay) for the drink stall, but didnt' work.


Now got to buy a flashpay card (although when I enquired thru the phone with the admin that the canteen uses cashcard, not flashpay) just in case I was given the wrong info.

I bought a new cashcard for my son Feb/Mar 09. Before that, we were using the older version of the cashcard. Sometimes the canteen operator has to swipe a couple of times before the transaction can go through. But my main concern was the missing transactions on the cashcard. I have a reader and I use the reader to check my son's expenditure and savings. I was unable to tally the amounts a few times. One day, we raised a query with NETS and were told a couple of transactions were not recorded on the chip for some reasons, but they were able to fax me the missing records. That triggered the new cashcard purchase.

My son has yet to report a problem with the new cashcard and the transactions read by my reader have tallied with the card balance up to now. And yes, I understand the school is not using the new flash technology.

38daddy:

Hi my DS is in S4, he had been late a few times but never got cane! Never heard him saying that 3 times late got cannning. Something new?

How do you and your son feel about MS?

skyjuice:

Yes, my son gets stressed easily lately due to the transition to sec 1. I had brought him to see the doctor, who also said it's probably because of anxiety, which commonly leads to stomacheache. It had happened on both Mondays and last Wed, when going camp. I hope things get better soon as he settles down. He didn't have these symptoms before.


In primary school, when he had diarrhea, for instance, I would let him stay home and self medicate. Then I write a letter of excuse for his form teacher. But I guess MS does not permit that.

It can be quite agonising for the family to go through this transition. Generally, Secondary School is quite a big thing for the kids. I hope your son enjoys the school soon. Perhaps tell him to make that his priority, that is, to be happy.

I just remembered a couple of my son's friends disappeared for holiday after exams but before the school holiday. They did not seem to run into any problems with MS. Another Indonesian guy went back home for a week during Chinese New Year. Maybe the school can be flexible after all.

If you have the time, take a look at the RI thread, starting from page 35 onwards.