There’s a famous saying by Norman Vincent Peale, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” Parents, this is a great mindset to instil in your children. Setting ambitious goals and holding themselves accountable to their progress towards it enables children to achieve their personal best in the classroom and beyond. Contrary to popular belief, the key to academic success does not lie in rote learning. Hear from the experts at The Learning Lab (TLL) on how you can bring out the best in your child and empower them to realise that truly, the sky is the limit to what they can achieve.
1. Parents do the Parenting, Teachers do the Teaching
We know, it’s hard to do this but here’s the thing. While it’s fine to help your child occasionally, they don’t always need you to be their teacher. They need you to play with them, ask them how their day was and teach them how to rise above their challenges, among other things. Don’t exhaust your precious time with your children doing the teaching. Leave that to the experts at The Learning Lab. Focus instead on strengthening that invaluable bond with your child and imparting in them the right outlook to approach life and tackle any curveballs it throws their way.
2. Empower Children and Hear their Voices from a Young Age
While entrusting your child in TLL’s care does empower your little one for academic success, TLL also hones learners who are programmed to achieve success even outside of the classroom. It’s never too early to expose children to current affairs and encourage them to take a stand. This shapes students into citizens of the world and prompts them to think of the part they want to play in shaping it.
At TLL, teachers incorporate different themes such as environment, and society into lessons. By shedding light on some of the challenges the world faces today, they prod students to think about how to affect change. Schools may not always have the capacity to do this, given the bigger class sizes as well as syllabus constraints. Yet, the right enrichment centre – TLL, has the bandwidth for such learning opportunities.
Here’s an example of how a TLL teacher managed to carry out such an activity in a class of young English learners.
By introducing these out-of-the-classroom concepts in lessons, TLL encourages students to form their own opinions, learn new vocabulary and hone their writing skills. On your part, you can get your child to think even more deeply about what they can do in their community to affect change – will they champion a recycling drive in their neighbourhood or pick up litter on the beach?
3. Help Children Understand that Not Everything is Black and White
An important skill that children need is to understand that there are multiple perspectives and that things aren’t always black or white. This is especially important in the 21st century as we battle a host of issues including globalisation, inclusivity and cultural assimilation. TLL recognises the need for students to build on this skill and has incorporated it into our lessons.
Instead of simply giving students worksheets, hands-on experiments like this one give children some serious food for thought and hones their critical thinking skills. Over time, they will start to look at situations and issues from multiple perspectives. This will also help them to learn an important life skill – that oftentimes we must agree to disagree with those around use. Parents, you can help to develop this maturity in your children too. Spend some time doing non-academic activities with them – build something together, allow them space to make some decisions, talk about current affairs, anything that works for you!
4. Bringing the World into the Classroom
Children are more motivated to learn when they see the direct relevance of what they learn to the real world. Making learning fun, engaging and relevant is the trinity for success.
TLL emphasises on such activities during lessons. They have a range of activities to stir students’ curiosity through a range of experiential, experimental and hands-on-learning activities.
For example, during a secondary school Mathematics lesson, students played a board game, similar to Monopoly, to learn the concept of ‘expected value of a certain outcome.’
Similarly, in a Primary 5 English lesson, students were made to read a travelogue and identify the different writing techniques that the author applied when talking about his trip.
These are examples of how TLL believes in pushing students to apply classroom concepts to the real world instead of merely drilling them into students. TLL’s hands-on lessons enable students to understand that what they are learning is related to the world around them and makes students want to discover more. This willingness propels them to be more open to learning. When learning is a joy instead of a chore, children are intrinsically motivated to learn and you do not have to sit with them and cajole them to do so, giving you more quality time to spend together.
Parents, we hope that we have given you a glimpse of how learning can be fun, engaging and effective all at once! With a carefully curated curriculum and meaningful activities to complement it at TLL, children look forward to their lessons and leave each lesson with food for thought. We believe this goes a long way in raising them to be trailblazers in the future. If you’d like to get a better idea of how TLL can help your child to love learning, visit their website to find out more about what they have to offer.
Plus, enrol today to enjoy $350 off Term 1 -23 fees.