School Visit: St. Andrews

I was very excited to visit schools towards the end of the trip!

In Singapore, their school year follows the calendar year, so they started on January 2, 2013 and will go until Friday, November 20 (40 weeks of school). In comparison, in the US our school year goes from September-June for 180 days (36 weeks of school).

The first school I was able to visit was St. Andrew's Junior School.

This school is unique because it has a 1-to-1 laptop-student program. I was able to visit a P3 (Grade 3) class that was studying energy. There were 40 desks in the room (a couple of the desks were empty the day I visited). Here are some photos of the students learning in the classroom - they often moved back and forth between their desks/computers and as a group in the front of the room. At St. Andrews, they have common powerpoint slides for each lesson, so that all the teachers are using the same slides to teach each lesson. In addition, Mr. Yeo, the teacher, used his smart board to display a google-doc form that each student was typing into from their own computers. This is how he facilitated much of the discussion.

On the computers and on the smart board the students watched some video clips about energy transfer, answered questions on their computers about the concepts of energy. The teacher emphasized the difference between temperature and heat. The teacher also showed a video of an experiment he had done with a prior class he taught, but these students did not get to do any experiment during this lesson.

Here are some photos of the school's "Eco Garden." My understanding is that all primary schools in Singapore have some type of garden like this.

Day Trip to Malaysia

It's the weekend, and I took Saturday to take a day trip across the border to the state of Melaka in the country of Malaysia. It is located in the southern region of the Malay Peninsula. The state of Melaka is predominantly Muslim (66%). The population of Melaka is 57% Malay, 32% Chinese (including Peranakan), and smaller groups of Indian, Kristang, and Dutch Eurasian.

We took a charter bus from Singapore to the city of Melaka. You have to go through customs leaving Singapore, and then again entering Malaysia, and similarly on the way back you have to separately check-out of one country before the check-in stop. Once across the border we had a quick breakfast stop (ate some hot noodles, dim sum, and hot tea) before getting to Melaka for our lunch stop. Along the way we saw all the Palm trees that are farmed to produce palm oil. It took about 3.5 hours to get there. Lunch was tasty Nonya cuisine, from the Peranakans (ethnic/cultural blend of Chinese and Malay).

Then, we walked down Jonker Street, popular for its shopping! I enjoyed browsing the shops, the interesting street food (see the picture of the candy-man chipping away pieces of candy), and had a refreshing star fruit juice at the Geographer's Cafe. Then, it was back on the bus to head back to Singapore, stopping for dinner before crossing the border for another big family-style meal.

Singapore's National Day

Today was Singapore's National Day! It celebrates their country's independence from Malaysia in 1965. Today celebrated their 48th birthday! It is a public holiday, so all public offices and schools are closed and I enjoyed the day to do some exploring of the city. In appropriate form, we wore our "I love Singapore" t-shirts we received as gifts! It began with a hearty breakfast, a "typical workman's meal" of soup, noodles, chicken, vegetables and traditional tea.

Then, it was off to venture around Singapore's Chinatown neighborhood. Like many Chinatowns I have visited around the world, there were a lot of places to buy inexpensive souvenirs, so I bought an assortment of items to bring back to the US. I escaped from the heat and humidity with a traditional shaved ice dessert from Hong Kong.

After Chinatown, I went to the Asian Civilisations Museum (admission was free for Singapore Day), had a taro ice cream sandwich (literally ice cream between a piece of bread), and had the traditional Peranakan dish of "laksa" (coconut curry soup with noodles) with "otah" (fishcake wrapped in banana leaf) for dinner. 

Finally, it was time for Singapore Day fireworks! We went to a barrage to see them from afar. 

Happy Birthday, Singapore!

Visit to the Science Centre

 

 First, a hearty dim sum lunch to get us started for the day! We went to the Chinese Swimming Club, where many of Singapore's national swimmers train, to the TungLok Signatures restaurant. We ate a variety of small dishes, such as Chinese-style fried chicken wings, frog and duck rice porridge, and some familiar dumplings similar to what we can find in Boston's Dim Sum restaurants. Finished with a house special fruit juice served in a test tube!

Then, off to the Science Centre, which is Singapore's museum of science! To me, the Science Centre felt like a cross between Boston's Museum of Science and the Children's Museum. In the center of the Science Centre was their stage for the electricity show, just like at our Museum of Science! Although their generators and metal cage were MUCH smaller - it was like a miniature MOS stage. Around the museum, visitors engaged in hands-on activities around different science topics such as sound, engineering, and ecology. Outside the Science Centre was the "Kinetic Garden" with fountains and activities for kids to play in.

 

  

 For dinner, it was off to the East Coast Park on the water, where we ate at Jumbo Seafood. We met up with Karen Lam, who works for the Ministry of Education, her husband, Peter, and Ken Jin Tan, Head of Department for Student Development in his school and also a physics and math teacher. We learned more about how Singapore's education system works, and about different professional tracks that teachers work along in their career. A very intriguing way to support teacher professionalism and growth along the career span!

We ate the famous Singaporean chili crab, as well as pepper crab, fried prawns with cereal, and crisp baby squids. Delicious! 

National Institute of Education

Today I went to visit Singapore's National Institute of Education. The NIE is an institute of the Nanyang Technological University. It is where all of Singapore’s teachers go through teacher preparation. Students can go through a 1-year postgraduate program, or a 4-year undergraduate program. It is a competitive application process, which includes an interview and sometimes a teaching stint in a school where they can see your teaching aptitude. When students are admitted, they are considered teachers and are given a stipend while they do their studies.

At the NIE I met with the science education faculty and some of their students to share about how we teach science in Boston. In Singapore they do not formally include science in their curriculum until grade 3, so they were very interested in some of the student work samples that I showed them from my kindergarten and first grade students. They shared that in Singapore they are also working on improving student writing in science, like we are in Boston, and some teachers are even using the framework of Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning (CER) that our students are familiar with!

For lunch, we drove to Singapore’s countryside to Bollywood Veggies, a farm and education center. We ate at their restaurant, Poison Ivy Bistro, named for the founder Ivy Singh. We met Ivy, self-identified “warrior” who is an outspoken woman who doesn’t hesitate to tell you what she thinks about Singaporean politics and policies, while working for a more sustainable Singapore. We often eat family style, and this meal consisted of farm fresh veggies, along with curry chicken, tofu, and fried fish! (For fun, click here to see what Martha Stewart thought of this place!)

Aside from learning about how Singapore teaches elementary science, I am learning about how to eat my way through Singapore! For dinner, we ate the traditional meal of "Chicken Rice." It is rice, cooked in the chicken broth, eaten along with boiled chicken, chili sauce, and a variety of side dishes! Yum!

Academy of Singapore Teachers

Today I went to visit the Academy of Singapore Teachers. This is Singapore's institution that focuses on teacher professionalism and the professional development of teachers. I attended part of a workshop for their "primary" (elementary) teachers that focused on "Students' Alternative Conceptions" in science.

During the workshop I was able to spend some time speaking with the teachers about their approaches to teaching science at the elementary level, what they do, and what their challenges are. The teachers shared that they are working on how to bridge what students already know with what they need to know; that if students are able to connect to science they like it, but if the science is too abstract, they don't. Most of the primary schools in Singapore have "science gardens," and one teacher shared about their school's eco-garden and wilderness trail that they use to teach concepts like adaptation and environmental science. Many of the teachers described how they might take the students outside to look for seeds if they were studying seed dispersal, for example, which was neat for me to hear, since that is what we do during our field trip to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston! Each primary school also has 2 science lab rooms where teachers can take their students to do science activities, but if the materials are easy enough, students can also so science in their classrooms.

I also asked the teachers what some of their challenges were. Similar to Boston, the teachers mentioned the issue of time. In Singapore, students do not have designated time to do science until Grade 3. In grades 3 and 4, they do 2 hours of science a week, and for grades 5 and 6 they do 2.5-3 hours a week. The teachers felt like they could do more in-depth science if they had more time. A teacher also shared another challenge, which was getting students to write thorough science answers. She felt like students would often give short written answers, and would often leave out key words, for their exams, but during in-class discussions the students could explain things very well with the teacher's guidance. This also sounded like a familiar challenge that we are working on in Boston! Sometimes it's just nice to know that kids are the same, even on the other side of the world!

After my day at the Academy of Singapore Teachers, I took the subway to Dakota Station, near where we were going to eat dinner. Here is the subway map, and also make sure you don't bring any durian fruit on the train! (It smells too bad.)

For dinner, we went to the Old Airport Road Hawker Food Stalls. We drank refreshing sugar cane juice, and ate barbecue sting ray, chicken satay, spicy Singaporean noodles, and more! Everything was very tasty.

After dinner, we headed out to the Malay Village, where it was the final night of the evening bazaar, celebrating the Muslim holiday of Hari Raya (the Malay word for Eid al-Fitr), the end of Ramadan. We browsed through the shopping tents and tried some Hari Raya cookies.

Getting here...

7:45pm
To get to Singapore, my flight departed from Boston, with a stopover at London Heathrow Airport, and on to Singapore. The first leg of the flight took about 5.5 hours to get to London, and went quite smoothly. However, when I got to the airline transfer desk I found out that my reservation for the Singapore leg of the trip had been cancelled! Put on stand-by for the rest of the day, I made it on a flight six hours after my initial reserved flight, and arrived in Singapore at 5:00pm.

Boston Logan Airport

International Terminal, Singapore Changi Airport 

6:00pm
Thanks to the generosity of another science teacher here in Singapore, Ken Jin, I am staying in his "flat" while he stays with his parents during my trip. It is so nice to have a full flat, with a kitchen, washing machine, and balcony! It feels like a great home base and I am excited to be living among the Singaporeans!

7:30pm
For my first meal in Singapore, I went to the nearby Parkway Parade Mall to a Taiwanese restaurant, Din Tai Fung. They have some of the best dumplings around, and I love the ones that have soup inside! I am exhausted from the travel, so it's great to get to sleep. It will probably take a little while to adjust to the time change since Singapore is exactly 12 hours ahead of Boston - basically I have to completely switch my day and night! I have a full schedule ahead!