Teacher-Parent-Meeting

I met up with Phoebe's teachers this week, Thursday 28 May 2009. The teachers, Miss Hoe and Zhou Lao Shi, did not comment much about Phoebe, except that she is rather quiet in class. Quiet in class??? Haha. Is that my little Phoebe ? Her papa calls her, his little radio you know. I am glad that she is not talkative in class. Miss Hoe also said that Phoebe is attentive in class. She is able to sit down for the required 5-10 minutes to listen to instructions or story. However, the teachers commented that Phoebe lacks confidence. She is also afraid sometimes, e.g. she will be afraid that her friends will not wait for her in the toilet or during eating time. She'll say in an anxious manner, "Wait for me, wait for me..." I do agree with her teachers. I have ever heard Phoebe saying, "Hurry up, later my friends go away already, quick hurry up!" The teachers said that they will reassure her that they will wait for her. I must constantly remind her of the same message too.

The school adopts a progressive way to grade the children. They have a booklet that records the children's development in several aspects and here are the overall grades in each aspect:

1) Personal and Social Development (Work, Health and Safety Habits) - B
2) Physical and Intellectual Development (Motor Skills) - C
3) Language and Literacy Skills
a. English Language Speech and Hearing - C
b. Reading - B
c. Writing/Drawing - C
d. Mother Tongue - I
4) Numeracy Skills - B
5) Creative Expression - C

(A = Excellent, B = Good, C = Average, I = Improving)

I am happy that Phoebe is doing well in school. Most importantly, I'm happy to know that she's a normal girl, not someone with learning disability. As a teacher, every year I meet many children with learning disability. Naturally, as parents, one of our greatest fear is that our child(ren) may turn out to have such disability too. So it was a relief to me when I know that Phoebe is an average and normal child. The only aspect we really need to work on is her Mother Tongue. I think Phoebe needs to speak Mandarin more. Right now, with the help of the Chinese readers, she is able to build up her Chinese vocabulary. When you ask her for bread in Mandarin, she is able to say, "Mian Bao". I think it is an achievement for this semester! =) However, she is unable to construct a whole sentence in Mandarin yet and we have to work on that.

For this June holiday, I plan to work on her Mandarin. I will try to speak to her in Mandarin as much as possible. Sometimes I tend to forget and start to rattle on in English. This holiday, I will consciously make an effort. Hopefully, Phoebe will not reject it.

This is Phoebe's recent drawing, done 3 days ago. Her handwriting has improved. She has some form of control when writing her name. But there is room for improvement. I think I need to get her to write on a line, rather than lineless and her words look floating. This will train her fine motor skills and her writing will be more controlled and neat. We have bought several books on tracing and the alphabet. I think it's time to take them out for her to practise writing. Maybe we will just write one page a day. And on days when she's in the mood, we can write more pages. The target that I set will be small so that it'll be easily achievable and she'll not feel burdened and detest writing altogether.

She has drawn a cat (in red), a rabbit (orange), a dog (green), a fish jumping out of water (blue) and an elephant (purple, with mommy's help). We will learn to draw these animals in greater details (e.g. rabbit should have longer ears) and also other living things such as the pig, butterfly, tree and flowers.

I want to make good use of this June holiday to spend some meaningful time with Phoebe. As for Reuben, whenever Jie-jie is doing an activity, Di-di can tag along and do likewise too. He loves scribbling at this age. We'll give him his materials to keep himself busy.

Seems like this holiday is going to be very busy. BUT I know that I will enjoy it! (^_^)