Kavitha Tiruchelvam, a Senior Educational Therapist from DAS Woodlands Learning Centre has created the Science short-term programme for Primary 3 and 4 students and here she shares her love of science and what we can do the help our students in this subject.

I always felt that as parents, we have this strange sense of nostalgia or more aptly ‘Deja vu’ when our own children have to sit for school or national exams. The gruelling revisions and pressure to do well can result in both child and you facing elevated levels of stress and anxiety.

However, revisions do not necessarily have to stir up such emotions anymore. At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), our mission is to help our students achieve and to build their self-confidence. DAS is delighted to launch our Science Explorers Short-Term Programme in 2018, for both Primary 3 and 4 students. Through the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach, students will get to explore, discover, investigate, evaluate and elaborate on Science as an experiential.

Inquiry-based learning in our upcoming Science Explorers Short-Term Programme supports our students to become thoughtful, motivated, collaborative and innovative learners capable of engaging in their own inquiries and thriving in a world of constant change as well as helping them with the Science literacy, understanding of the science processes and vocabulary knowledge (Lindberg, 1990). As such, the Science lesson will be focused on student-centred learning. The educational therapist will be the facilitator who will be responsive to the students’ learning needs and knows when and how to introduce students to ideas that will move them forward in their inquiry with multi-sensory activities, to be structured and organised, have inbuilt reinforcements and also the application of their knowledge and skills to answer Science exam questions. Together, both educational therapist and our students co-author the learning experience and wide understanding of personally meaningful content and ideas (Fielding, 2012).

The most exciting part of our Science Explorers Short-Term Programme will be the collaborative partnership between DAS and Parents! Yes, we will be sharing with you on fun experiments that you can conduct together with your child in the comfort of your home and wonderful Science resources that you can use to reinforce your child’s learning. Subsequently, we also look forward to your sharing sessions with us on the Science experiments and resources.

This article was published in FACETS Vol 4 2017 

To read the article in full click here

By Kavitha Tiruchelvam
Senior Educational Therapist
DAS Woodlands Learning Centre