[Music] well Welcome to our first webinar for 2024 and uh I hope you enjoyed our video on death International the wonderful things that we do here at um death International hi U my name is Deborah and I'm so glad that you're joining us for your lunch hour today thank you for joining us and uh we'll be we'll be sharing uh vinaa uh Shila and and Anna Palmer will be sharing on curriculum re remediation and how it plays an important role for tudent students who learn differently uh so let's get started and I'll introduce our presenters who will be sharing with us today all three of these teachers have a very strong foundation in supporting students with learning differences both in mainstream and international schools so firstly let me introduce you to Anna Palmer she's a senior specialist teacher with d International since 20 2019 and for Anna Palmer it was students who learned differently that inspired her to move away from mainstream teaching to work with children with special needs she brings with her a wealth of experience as an international school teacher with over 15 years of experience in the educational space Anna Palmer is a lifelong learner and instills this into her students and her lessons next we have sha Madan shiler is a senior air specialist teacher at death International since 2013 shelper began her teaching career as a preschool teacher and then she decided to equip herself with the skills to support children with learning challenges and has been working for more than 10 years supporting students who learn differently with a strong background in and special interest in math she aims to build her love of this subject in her students and Vina Jan is a specialist a senior specialist teacher at DES International and um vena's personal mission as a special educator is to support each child individually as they have as they all have unique learning styles and a different piece of learning she has a wide and Rich experience in the in working with students from many different countries and international schools as well as mainstream schools here in Singapore and finally today we have anab Berta with us anab Berta is the head of death International Anna has a wealth of experience in providing support for students with learning differences and as head of death International she aims to provide a professional service to support those who learn differently both in Singapore and in the region so guys Anna it's over to you hi good afternoon everyone welcome lunchtime crowd yes hi um so you know you can munch on us sandwich or you know any takeaway that you have we find these lunchtime uh spotlights um very popular because um no no you don't need to rush anywhere and just just come and join us relax and and also ask us questions so welcome everyone uh and I'm your host along with Deborah Deborah is our deputy director special projects and executive publicity and Publications thought I introduce you right it's okay I don't need introducing you are more much more important than me so today we we really have a special series um our Three Special uh and very experienced guests we've invited them again uh We've we've run this very popular um uh webinar before and we but back by popular demand because the topic is always um of interest and I think not many people maybe know how to go about um using curriculum remediation you know so children you know that could be lagging behind in school they may or may not have a learning difference or learn differently so this might impact their selfesteem NE negatively and it could cause anxiety as well and and this ultimately affects could affect their academic performance so what we are trying to to today um Shula finina and anama is just to through their own practice uh their own professional practice they will be sharing some insights um for for you so over to you our ladies um please take over thank you hello everyone so Anu Vina and I we decided that okay I'll be starting it so okay so this is our topic today is why is curriculum remediation necessary for students who learn differently there may be a diagnosis there may not be a confirmed diagnosis but they do learn differently so we are going to try and share with you what we have learned and found through our experience so NEX slide Deborah yes thank you here is the quote I came across from do by Dr Kelly Sandman Hurley children even our youngest students know when they are behind their peers every year that they are left without appropriate instruction is another year they internalize their lack of progress as their own fault and start to label themselves as stupid I couldn't agree more when I read this we have come across so many students who start thinking that they're not good enough so our first aim is always to put that self-esteem back and how do we do it yes you know many of them come with a proper diagnosis and okay we can work on Phonics and basic math or disc calcula dyslexia but then again at the end of the day we can't forget that they have to attend a school they have to learn a certain curriculum and that's where you know the exclusion begins they start feeling not included because they think that they are not capable enough and then you know the whole thing the self-esteem gets affected uh they become more introvert and worst is like like this last sentence they internalize their lack of progress as their own own fault which is not true it's not it's not their fault and the labeling themselves as stupid is even worse so that's where we all realize that curriculum remediation it's like a bridge which we build we close those gaps and we start building their self-esteem and when I shared this quote with Vina and Anu Anu also said this they both shared some thoughts also Anu what what do you think like you also have come across right yeah yes absolutely um Shilpa uh it's like uh you know often we expect them to start learning the way their peers are learning where they probably learned differently and it's like setting them up for failure right from the start you know and that's that feeling of oh and that whole thing that you know that progress that lack of progress as their own fault actually they they start blaming themselves and you know I came across my grade four student who felt so sorry that her parents are going through so much because she's not performing as per the rest so they blame themselves which is actually not their fault they just need to be you know given the same material in a different way and they don't realize this so this whole spiral of uh you know has such a negative impact on them which um which we need to really address and I know Vina often says there's a song which you know plays in her mind when she's trying to work with which we all do but this is a song resonates with us I'm invite Vina to share that more with us with the next slide yeah Anu and Shila you know me very well and you've heard this many times me all the time saying that there is this song that plays like a litany in my mind it is this uh song by Abba which is like slipping through my fingers all the time I try to capture every minute I think we as special Educators uh we could replace I Try by we and the word capture by catch you know like uh most of the time we're trying to kind of uh um catch them at the right time and see that every minute becomes valuable for them in their Learning Journey in a classroom setting so that they don't feel um kind of um like Shila said not included or they don't have a lack of self-esteem or they don't think that they are not on par with the rest of their uh class mates yeah so uh moving on uh the next slide I think one of our parents quotes kind of bring this out very aptly um the words that uh actually hold our attention here is uh always playing catchup in this quote the parent clearly says that the child is always trying to play catchup and the word inclusiveness these are the two key words words that we we could address uh when we um deal with children using this curriculum remediation so we keep on saying curriculum remediation curriculum remediation so what does this actually mean let's move on to the next slide there yeah what is curriculum remediation um we all know as teachers and special Educators and people in the field that remediation is like um tailoring instruction uh to match the learning styles the ability of the learner it is a very indiv individualistic way of teaching and it aims and works with the strengths of the learner individual strength of the learner curriculum as we all know is that it's a framework within which a school or any educational institution um bases its instruction educational instruction and then bases the expectations that the students have to perform or in a particular way or should be able to kind of achieve goals in a particular setting in a particular way Loosely put curriculum remediation is a happy connect between the two it's like a bridge between curriculum and remedial work um as we move on uh Shila would you like to talk about why this is so important in today's scenario thanks Vina yeah what is curriculum remediation yeah you explained it pretty well and you know and why why is it necessary so here we if we see I have kept I have put a poster here which says that unsure puzzled confused lost unclear baffled we have heard these terms a lot we hear these terms from our students a lot when they come for class the reason is they probably have some diagnosis and we can always work on Foundation but like I said at the end of the day they have to face their school curriculum and when A New Concept is taught there can be a lot of confusion there they could be puzzled with if I do a lot of math with students so I have seen that there's a lot of uh confusion with mathematical terms the jagon and you know they are like I didn't understand it so that the missing this is what we call a missing a few critical skills many of our students we also notice that executive functioning is weak executive functioning so it all begins with that you know the or core organization then as I said conceptual understanding we conceptual understanding due to certain conditions and gaps in learning again we always keep talking about gaps in learning when it comes to curriculum remediation because it there are gaps we are doing suppose the child is learning something uh in school and then we still are touching the foundation things or basic math facts then the gap Gap keeps increasing so now what we why the curriculum remediation becomes important is we start filling those gaps we connect the lesson to the current curriculum topic which is being taught in school so that way what happens is the lagging behind in the class which is happening which will start kind of that process slows down you know because the lesson is connected he knows the child knows that okay this is what I learned in my class with the my my specialist tutor now I'm going to face the school that's fine the fear it lessens the fear another thing is like like I I said here inclusiveness so to unblock the hurdle in progressing and to facilitate inclusiveness that's the most important thing not being uh how to say like feeling left out you know when when they are learning something the whole class understands or probably we can say 90% of the class is understanding it very well they can go on doing their work and uh this student is not able to follow it there is just confusion going on and so that slowly what happens is they feel like they are not part of classroom they don't participate in any class activities or discussions and most important one of one of the things which we have observed here the lagging behind which we said it's not always due to only these gaps but long absence from school I have had a student who had serious depression issue so she was in and out of hospital she missed her school for seven months at stretch and that to at at grade nine that was quite a bit of curriculum lost you know so when she came back it was like I wouldn't even call it a gap it was like a wide wide Gap it was not even a small Gap so we had to work really topic-wise and every day like it was like like intensive work so that also is one of the issues which can cause another thing is moving schools when we say moving schools parents move countries move schools are changed you know everything again the method changes the methodology is different in every school so all these things can start affecting impacting their progress so best way is to do to go about it or rather I would say to rebuild that exper uh the confidence rebuild that confidence rebuild the liking of the subject and improve facilitate inclusiveness is curriculum remediation we can do our basic work like if a child comes with dyslexia we will always focus on our phonics based work but we will always also find out what the teachers are doing in school so if there is more writing work is going on definitely we will also side by side we will start doing getting the child to do that work so you know basically we want to change that this post poer into from unsure to Sure clear all those things no more lost you know slowly it takes it takes a time it takes a long time sometimes but yes we can we can achieve that we have seen that just to mention just this morning 750 I get a message from one of my students grade nine students Misha I scored 61 in my math test and there was like that girl made an effort to message me from school so that kind of you know told me that the same girl was asking me do you think I will pass this test so that unsure thing is always there and we have to be so sure and say yes you will because we have been working we have already connected this so don't worry we are going to do that and you will achieve it and I think that made my day I can say that so this is what is my like as a teacher it's our point of view right why curriculum remediation is important even the parents think like when we saw the the parents thought what does a student think what is their Viewpoint that's what comes in the next slide de can we go to the next slide Anu you can explain a bit about it yes thank you taking on um the you know the little lovely picture which Shilpa has just talked about the confused and uh you know lost now imagine that student who has received some form of curricul curricular remediation and how Shila mentioned that we're going to change those word from not sure to sure so when all this starts working we start plugging in the gaps as shilai said we start uh making uh the topic relevant for example uh you know a student who came to me and saying and Miss Anu in class we are learning about average but what is average I don't even understand so we plugged in the Caps we slowly teach it t it to her in a way which she could understand what is average how we can use average so what it what it did it became relevant for that student when she went back to her classro and she showed me next week Miss Anu I could solve these word problems because it became relevant she understood instead of moving so fast and not at her Pace you know in the classroom where she was feeling lost what's happening I'm just seeing some formulas here she understood and she could actually solve it so along with becoming relevant she started meeting some of her grade level expectations like how Shilpa said her students scored 61 out of a certain score and she felt so happy similarly when they start seeing some scores which they were not seeing before they start feeling you know confidence building up for them um you know sometimes I've had students we have worked on some form of writing I've taught them introduced them to how to in you know start the the writing with a hook which it's done in school it's not that it's not done in school but the way it's done that it it is retained with the student these strategies and he could use it when in a piece of writing in his school so that became so relevant oh you know Miss Anu I did a piece of writing and I used a hook and look at the way I did it it became so important for that child and you know brought it back so they are making those connections that what we are doing in class at Das to the curriculum remediation they are able to use it in their classroom as well and uh you know that makes such a difference and what happens the main thing which happens is their confidence is reestablished in themselves they get engaged in their learning they are not distracted all those behavioral problems which arise due to lack of Engagement not understanding not able to you know access what is happening in the classroom starts to diminish they are not that fidgety anymore they start feeling their relevance sometimes we also pre-teach a concept before they are taught in this you know in the classroom so that also makes a difference because they already have some prior knowledge and they can actually access it so it's almost like working hand inhand in what's happening in school and we are doing it here but the most and the key part is the confidence building and their engagement and their you know generating their interest back into what is happening in the classroom so moving on um you know we are going to ask Vina to share a case study where she's found this uh relevant as well for the perspective of the sorry this is I think this is it's okay I'm going to share like what because why I'm going to share this case study right away after anu's uh explanation about what a student feels exactly what especially you know we notice this in older students right the high school level or like middle school high school because they are like entering teenage and other things other emotions are also playing up so here is a case study of a 15-year-old student grade n he came to me for math so the concerns were quite few weak working memory poor organization skills extremely weak retention of facts literally we would do uh one in one session we would doing that and he was doing twice a week by second session sometime 60% of the stuff was out of his mind you know almost wiped up confused with conceptual understanding fear of math which translated into anxiety and unwillingness to learn which caused a vicious cycle introverted Behavior as I said mentioned before and low self-esteem they go hand in hand unfortunately because the minute you don't perform well low self-esteem then don't want to mix around lacking participation in class negative impact on exam performance it was showing regularly consistently negative weak performance had worst of all was he was a classic example of that quote which I we we shared with you had internalized the lack of progress as his own fault he would very very regularly he he would tell me because I'm not good you know I'm not good only I'm not smart I don't understand my I I'm he even said to me once that you know I feel very guilty to go home because I feel I disappoint my mother because I am not smart so when we hear that it hurts actually you know because as teachers also we feel oh no that's our job to bring out so the what I did with that student so what uh I have written it in short of course try to write what what I planned the lessons there was a lot of pre-teaching which I started Anu just mentioned that pre-teaching so I communicated with the teacher I kept regular communication with his teacher asked what topic was going to be taught next session or whatever in next uh after few sessions then I would introduce him to the terms the words the topic the base not too much but just go into it teach him and then so it all became very targeted intervention you know and whenever I noticed some gaps okay it was quite interesting like when I was teaching him something like map scills and standard form which is very complex for them to understand and the IND they have to use indices and all that in that but suddenly I would see that there would be a big gap with multiplication operation which they have learned in primary or there would be if we had to solve algebraic fractions a basic fraction addition would be out the window so then so main part of work would be on on the Whiteboard three quarters one quarter of whiteboard will be revisiting the concept so all the way back we would just do with the numbers basic fractions but it was very interesting to see that he liked it this student he he said ah okay it would be always like a light bulb moment later I I've seen it in one of Vina's slides there is that light bulb moment also so you'd say yes oh yes I remember this now that's fine then there would be the application of that concept you know that pre-learned knowledge so that was I I did a lot then another thing is I used a lot of assist technology and virtual manipulatives to do the basic stuff because then every time writing on whiteboard so to make it more interesting because some of the young students I I would like to share they would say oh why are you taking me back again you know do fraction addition and all of course I have done that they forget that they have forgotten it they don't like it so the best way is to go through uh something like you know virtual manipulatives or some assistive technology program that they don't mind they don't seem to mind because I guess they think okay it's a some kind to something to do with a computer I don't know why this generation they just love computers more than anything else in this world yeah so so that work and metric conversions oh my God this topic keeps coming all the time this never leaves our back does it and that I have noticed they really really struggle because they forget the facts forget so we we did a lot of charts we created our PowerPoint you know lot so that's where our assistive technology comes very handy and choice of multiple strategies yeah it sounds very interesting when I say multiple strategies not that I was giving him 10 strategies but definitely two to three so when we Sol quadratic factorization I would give him three strategies which he could choose and it's interesting every student chooses what they feel comfortable with so here I'm talking about more of high school students the reason is lot of curriculum remediation there is no way out I can't say okay let's just stick to multiplication division or decimals because no use he'll go to school and whole it's something totally different happening right so anyway so after few sessions and I I was sharing this experience with Vina and Anu the student when I told him to write on the Whiteboard you know we have such beautiful huge whiteboards in Das right so I told him why don't you solve it on whiteboard the body language was so negative he just gave me one look and he said no why do you want me to go to the Whiteboard I hate it so I asked him why do you hate it it's okay you can use whatever colors you want just have your you know have a good time on whiteboard it was a struggle to get that boy the reason of course I kind of understood why he was kind of you know so conscious uh then he went he stood and he said you know what my teacher tells me in the classro to do something on the Whiteboard I can I cannot do it and the whole class laughs at me I I am so sure I'm so sure not many people mock him but it's all in here it's all already he he has internalized it so much now that he thinks the whole class is laughing at him because he can't do that's the that's a sad thing you know so anyway I told him that you know what here I'm the only one no audience do whatever you want and it was amazing to see we in that one session we solved eight big problems again here I'm talking about something called s cosine rules in scaling triangles people who have done high school math will know it's it's a complex thing I I just didn't say anything I went on uh putting a some a problem on the board I would just drop some hints I would say of course he needed some assistance he couldn't believe himself at the end of 8 some I said do you even realize you have done this he said oh but how did I do it I said that is what you need to discover yourself that's what we we need to do here you have that thing in you we can achieve it so this is what we do when we do curriculum remediation and the best part is he messaged me later and he said okay now I think I will not be so worried if my teacher asked me to go to the Whiteboard great at least one step achieved you know by doing this so the I have already observed that he there is definitely I don't even have to mention this the procedural fluency was good he was comfortable with technology I don't even have to mention it and most importantly he's overcoming the fear of the subject which was only achievable because of curriculum remediation wouldn't have been possible any other way I don't think so and uh the latest math test performance was definitely much but I will not say it was excellent but like one of my old students said to me I fail better I really like that statement I said she didn't pass and she said yeah but I failed better this time so that's it so that is what I think I would come these were the outcomes which we saw and uh but again all this is it was possible we could I could facilitate a lot of things because of the communication the three-way communication which was happening between the teacher myself and the parent I think Vina will explain more on it now over to you Vina yeah uh when we talk about curriculum remediation like Shilpa was saying and Anu spoke about it earlier also that there has to be uh a particular method to how we go about doing this and there are very very key stakeholders that are involved in making this curriculum remediation a success or more relevant and how do we do this we don't work in Islands by ourselves we need the support of parents we need the support of the teachers and then these two along with us together is when we can make a student a very happy learner so what we do is we communicate with the parents the parents are the first point of contact more often with the younger kids usually they are the ones who realize and they come back and then the school we connect with the school we try to figure out what is happening in a classroom what is the methodology used and where are the gaps and then what happens next is that we form a triangle of communication and then based on this we go on helping the student and uh this is best demonstrated in the case that Anu is going to talk about one of her students and how the student benefited using this particular form of communication over to you Anu yeah hi thanks Shilpa so taking on from what um Shilpa had mentioned earlier we help students to discover themselves right and what Vina also mentioned that the three pillars of communication is really important and that transference of that communication so yeah even trying to establish a communication is very important with the parents the schools and with us the specialist teacher but it should be a smooth flow it should be a constant and without that being established it's really difficult for us to you know uh to make a successful remediation lesson now let me share with you where a successful um communication has been established and how did it work for us um so this particular student uh typical case of disra disg graphia hates to write but he's very verbos he's got excellent ideas can talk for hours and and loves to express himself but give him a paper and pencil he'll run away all right even in our small classrooms he will find a place to you know Escape that as he Grew Older he would find ways to uh you know not hold that pencil and paper or even the Whiteboard or anything uh you know he'll talk with me and we know what is he trying to do task avoidance right now what happens is uh we started having um um you know email interaction so the school support and the school teacher would tell me what's going on in their class we would also establish uh a pre-term meeting the parent the uh the school support and the school teacher we'll have a zoom online meeting to understand uh this particular student of ours let's name an X and also what's happening in class what is HE capable of and I'll share what I have also been doing so we worked hand inand some strategies what the school are doing I will adapt it to my lessons and strategies which worked for me I will share it with so they will also engage him in the same way so then the progression happens for example uh if the school was doing a piece of writing and they gave him a graphic organizer okay to um plan out his writing now what I did it I adapted it to him because what was working with student X was strategies such as modeling so if I would write he would write back I would do shared writing with him okay I write you write you know uh so these are the ways I started to engage him in writing so modeling or uh partner writing worked with him and I would share that with the school and they started also adapting you know his little lessons with in the same way the graphic organizer G came from the school I use the same so he's familiar oh this is something we're using but what did I do I modeled some pieces on him so we added an extra column and I would model it for him and he would have another column where he would write his own so this way we adapted all right uh I would also tell them to share weekly homework weekly task um with with me so we he would get a heads up before submitting on how to go about the homework how could he start how could it and we would do um I would also modify the homework so this was all in conjunction with the teachers um you know and their acknowledgement that I will modify it make it little more interest based for him because so then it becomes relevant we had spoken about relevance earlier now this student uh you know through our meetings I came to know he for example he loves football so writing an explanation text for example that's what they were going to work on I said okay I don't understand anything about football tell me what it is introduce me to that game you know and he had a leny speech about it he could tell me all about it I okay now let's write something about it so that became relevant who he could write with another student you know I'm deviating from student x uh he was so into F1 racing and he got interested in writing is because when he wrote me an email and said okay right send me an email because we were working online that time about what is F1 I've never attended I though I've attended I pretended that I had no and he wrote me an email about what is F1 when is it happening what are the different categories and that's when he got actually interested in you know uh that something a light bulb movement happens and I think that's something which Shilpa and Vina will also resonate with that you know we have to create these light P moments for our students which then they can start you know that spark comes also coming back to my this student ex we realized that even what they were working in school and here we all were having one common issue that this the student was still you know very adverse towards paper pencil writing and I discovered that when we started typing he was very slow at typing dis graphia also affects your typing ability takes time to for you to type so we started using voice to text and when he discovered that voice to text his ideas his small paragraph became you know three four five paragraphs all right of course he would want to play a little bit around oh okay I shout out this word and will it come of you you it's a give and take with students and I think V and Shila will also agree that we give them inputs we take in a bit of their little um their quirks and all of that and uh that's when we buil up the rapper so and we share all this with the parents and they say yes yes yes we we agree so but making that strong Foundation of uh parent teacher and uh you know the and ourselves communication strong is really key to a successful um you know stepping up the curriculum remediation often and it's not only just the parent teacher sometimes we have different stakeholders also involved and I know one of my colleagues who sat through lessons having not just the student but the other stakeholders also involved in the lesson so and that made it a very successful handholding for a point and then she started giving it away okay one stakeholder like maybe the shadow teacher even me I've had that experience you know the shadow teacher also sitting through our lessons and slowly we build up the confidence in the child to just make it um um just the you know us as The Specialist and the student themselves um so yes communication is key for anything in life especially when it comes to you know remediation so let's move on further next slide please yes so about different approaches now like I just said that we adapt our you know the way the school is doing it and adapt it to uh our student I think Vina also has to share a little bit more about how we adapt ourselves and make our approach different for different um you know topics and things like that over to your WEA uh thanks Anu um um like what I would say is different approach could also be said as a special approach or a unique approach kind of uh relevant individualistic targeted uh one-on-one sessions which are like very focused on uh what we are going to be dealing with on that particular day and then always kind of set up for Success so build small small successful modules of every lesson so that it builds up into something that is um for the child something that is a confidence booster uh and also interesting and many of times as uh specialist teachers we act as an advocate we try to fight for AC accommodations for the child learner we fight with the school we fight with the system uh we try to get them to kind of understand and also uh try to mirror uh what the child can do rather than cannot do so we try to get them uh to understand this and this I think is uh best demonstrated in the um uh student that I'm going to talk about uh next in the next slide please Deb uh next slide please yes thank you Deb uh this is a child who was in grade two who is in grade two uh who um definitely has gaps in her uh phonic uh knowledge and she's struggling with uh letter sound and then blending she's at that level actually uh and suddenly uh the parent and the school sends a a list of spelling words 10 spelling words all of them ending in a l e- l or i l and uh I think as special Educators we do know that um these sounds Al L and L are very very difficult with for children especially children who have an issue with auditory discrimination because the the minute they hear the L Sound they will only put l and they will not bother about the wow that is preceding it so already it's a challenge and the child like I said was only doing letter sounds two or three blendings okay with consonant blendings and one wavel maximum uh so this list came in and so what do I do do I just tell the child that oh no you or in my mind I do know that it's a very hard uh task for the child but then I don't say that out loud so I said okay let's try and do this so we what we did was that we started reading the whole list of words I helped the child read the words so that the child felt that an effort was being made and totally not blocking out the whole list uh as something that she couldn't do then we moved on and said that okay choose three words from this list so that immediately sparked an interest because you know I'm giving the child something that he or she is going to be accountable for so by choosing those three words she was being made accountable for something she's chosen some three words from that list so she chose local travel and pupil and then um so of course local I also try to explain the meaning said local means what so it's something in your surrounding travel of course she knew very well oh oh travel by flight travel by plane I'm going here I'm going there all that started then pupil she was a bit stuck then I told her pupil means student just like you so you are my pupil so then it kind of stuck somewhere then how am I going to teach how to spell these so I had to kind of break it down so local and pupil were pretty okay for her because low means she knew that L and o sound is coming and Cal okay she might put a okay but it was still fine she was coming closer pupil was the same but what about travel we all know that travel actually has to be split as Trav and L but then you know for her she preferred it as Trav and well okay fine that was because she had this auditory discrimination issue so if I said l e l she would have just put an L so I let it go so and we practice this a lot on the black on the white board then at the end of the lesson again I made her go back to it and write it all again on the board quickly by just giving her the sounds and she was able to do it and I left her with a feeling of success that she knew three words out of the 10 but in my mind I was thinking okay now I have to really communicate with the school I have to tell them that they could add about five or six ability based words for her along with the list so this was the accommodation that I was going to probably talk about to the school and I did that and from the next lesson onwards they did add a few of ability words for her as well as what was going on in the classroom and then she came back to me the next class and she said you know Miss Vina I spelled the word student correct I said what do you mean student then said no no no remember that word you taught me which began with p p then I said okay pupil she said yes I got it correct so there is my success story here we go it was something totally not in her ability level at that particular moment but we had to do it because it had to be relevant to what was happening in the classroom and I could not say you would not be able to do it to her we had to try and try we did and try she did and so she was able to go with a smile you know like okay I got three words out of the 10 which is fair enough you know instead of getting everything wrong she got three correct so we'll focus on the three correct and see what can be done to build up a confidence by trying to let the school know if the words were too hard for her and how they can try to make her feel more and more confident and attempt these spelling words in style so this was my experience and I think um I really enjoyed doing this and pupil student stuck in my mind for a long time yeah so that that's how we go on with curriculum remediation yeah when we talk about curriculum liation there's also about smooth transitions over to Anu to talk about smooth transitions yes so let's remember this uh not remember we all use this uh uh you know phrase to be there at the right place at the right time now that is so relevant when it comes to curriculum remediation and let me tell you why because uh we have all heard of the term chunking right chunking is breaking it up into different different parts now our curriculum is also similar like if you'll see a transition from you know the pre prechool years all the way to grade 10 there are chunks right of learning and then suddenly you'll say oh now he's moved on to this great and Suddenly It's So High why because the previous two years was you know two three years were building up those foundation and then you start assimilating and start introducing so if we are aware of these chunks okay and we give that intervention or the remediation at that right time all right it makes such a difference for example at uh you know just before grade one is when you will start obser you may observe that the students uh you know or the learner is unable to you know understand the phonics is under is unable to maybe recognize the letters the sounds and we give them intense um intervention at that time you know fill in the gaps with those curriculum before he gets into grade one that prepares them for that grade one it makes a difference over there I had one student who had come very intense you know just before she was going to start primary 1 she came for at least two months November and December for intense and that child was I think amazing she would sit for me for with one and a half hours almost three times a week and we did intense remediation and you know intervention at that time and she's not had to come back she was prepared for her reading level for primary one and a mother wrote back to me one year later saying um Miss Anu it was so wonderful to get that you know intervention at the right time she is reading so well now so that's so important similarly I think Vina and Shila and me we have had experiences if they have come at you know just before they start the O Level preparation so by 6th and 7th uh you know they're having so many caps red flags in their School academic work and we start you know giving them that bridging those gaps at those times it helps them to prepare for their old levels uh imagine you're coming you know the student is coming at grade four with you know very very low reading skills now imagine grade four grade five they're already doing comprehension higher level comprehension all right they already uh into you know uh big par you know five paragraph writings and then we need to start off with um just basic reading you know leing strategies at that time how many gaps you have to fill think of that how many gaps are we going to try to fill in that even as a specialist tutor you have a long list do I teach uh you know comprehension strategies do I teach uh uh you know reading strategies do I teach writing strategies how many things to work on in that one hour with the student and how do we plan so you know this is a little like a appeal to parents and Educators When You observe these GS in learning to seek for the you know the intervention the remediation at the right time it's going to help them because it Bridges the gaps it makes it relevant they start you know because the gaps will just widen if we don't uh give that uh remediation at the right time also what happens it's a holistic uh approach right we teach them they learn about the study skills right something simple like and Mina will um Shila will agree who works with intensely in maths that when you're doing word problems or anything in maths if your working space is not organized how are we going to even you know help them with you know solving so it goes back to that those small small little steps of organizing your workspace to be able to do your work all comes you know your executive functioning your study skills all you know and as you grow older you're going to need more of those organizations skills so it all starts at the right time so you need curriculum reputation so you can help the student the learner to have a smooth transition from one chunk of you know their learning period to the next chunk a smoother transition um so moving on to the next slide let's talk about the different uh curriculums that uh which are there which uh as specialist teachers we are addressing one is of course our Singapore local Ministry of Education System uh the Cambridge the IPC the pyp which has all the way to IB and also uh the cbsc so Regional um um education systems and each one has their unique expectations their unique scope and sequence and we need to be able to plug in and prepare them for these different different levels right right for example the IB would probably focus more on their thinking skills and their communication skills not only in writing they want the oracy they want their presentation so when it comes to presentation we also need to help our students prepare with uh you know different apps now it's not only just PowerPoint like Vina said you know Shila said why do students love their computers so much but they are so involved like I have a student who needs to who creat um you know leaflets and um you know whatever their understanding on Cana now so before we are yes so before we are so it's a a whole lot of things which we need to adapt and get them comfortable with so different curriculums are also so so relevant and to be AB breasted with all of that uh so besides curriculum moving on to the next slide we have different topics also which Vina is going to elaborate and then Shila and me will also add up this so over to you Vina uh um many times um the children do come with one particular um assignment or a probably um kind of a presentation that they have to give the next day so it's usually like that because you know children are children and they will work last minute so they will come back to you and say we have one hour and then we have to prepare something so that topic might not be familiar to us uh it has happened many times because I've had to work with uh IB students I work with uh University students on Executive functioning and organization and I work with u high school kids uh so they all come it's it's quite a normal thing for them to say uh okay we have this topic and we have to do this we might not be familiar with what the content of that topic is but do we say oh we don't know how to do this no we don't we always say we can do it together or let's find out more about this let's see how we can go about this let's see how you can we can put you at ease so that you're not anxious about how you're going to finish that task for the next day so what do we do we do our thorough research probably sometimes in private on our phone because we don't want the children to know know that we don't know straight away their confidence just shatters if we say we don't know so we have to quickly do a research and then we have to say or we can say come let's research together so that way we learn and they learn simultaneously and then we pick out the key words we pick out the relevant uh lines and uh information we help them sort them in chunks so use the necessary graphic organizer that that they need whatever they need to kind of put that information and then let them have whatever they need to do their work independently we leave them at that point and whatever they do afterwards however they assimilate this information afterwards is their own I it's their own USB it is something that is very very individualistic so we did not hold hand in making them construct the whole thing we give them only the methodology or the AIDS that they need to kind of assimilate this knowledge and then they take it back and they put it all together this is the part where we build their confidence it happened to me with a child who came saying that he want had one hour to write a blog about his hometown but here here you go it's not something that is as simple as that but using the pr the pillars of geography wow now what I know know that there is certain things that you have to involve when you do a Blog about your native about your hometown but then what is this pillars of geography I had never heard of it so quickly I said okay I gave him the outline of the blog I said okay whatever information you have start sorting out here and in the meantime I went back to see what this pillar of geography was and it were it was five points location Place region movement and human and environment interaction so he had to sort out all the information that he had about his hometown in on the basis of these five so we left him with this particular sorting out action and in the structure of a Blog and then he went back put it all together and submitted to the school and then got very good feedback about it so this is how things are done within an hour over to you Shilpa and Anu if you have something share about this um yeah I had a you know a student I used to work on literacy with and uh suddenly during a lesson it was an online lesson and luckily for me saying I need to do a business study report business study report now obviously I had to hide that big shocking expression of mine and and it was not just a simple it was about uh how to create a successful um trans position of retaining employees who are oh my okay so quickly on like she said on the side I'm you know on my phone on my iPad I'm doing a little research business business study terminology about this so I have a vocabulary Bank ready for him to help him create that report yeah so these are topics you suddenly come up with and the Mantra is you don't say no I don't know let's do it together and uh you know explore the topic with a child and then they also enjoy they enjoy the discussions we have they enjoy sharing because it's sometimes not that regular math or literacy they're doing uh I had one student who came to do I need to just work on giving a speech I want to come and he came actually for a whole week for intense is drafting and you know U probably just um you know on building his oy and confidence to give speeches and he wanted to stand for his um school um um committee so that it worked well for that and I sha I think you have also done some interesting I had another like this this grade eight student came and just told me that okay this is a project for design and technology and uh we have to decide what type of design we choose for homeless people for homes for homeless people now this project for for homeless people in Los Angeles this kid sitting in Singapore the school had given them a project first thing is our kids in Singapore don't know what's homeless so it begins from there you know so we did a lot of research on that because I and when I said to him oh there's a lot of architecture thing then he looked at me and he said but you you are good at math and how does that make me good at all the other things so I had to tell him no my DEA we need to do some research so we both went like I think Vina mentioned that word the credible uh websites we have to be very careful where we do our research so we guide them when we do that research we don't let the student do okay go you find your own stuff because once they come to us look if they don't come and ask us then it's okay but the minute they come and ask help from us it becomes a total responsibility for us you know it's our responsibility what we are telling them where to research and they are at risk if we don't watch what they're doing yes so what all we did we found three designs of homes and it was very interesting to look at uh to hear his perspectives you know he even spoke about uh mental health when it came to homes for homeless which actually taught me a few things as well you know because he's when we went through those designs he said uh not only he said of course there were a lot of articles about it as well that if this kind of like one whole big long Hall uh is built for home place and there are some 100 people kept in that one big room they there can be more violence yeah there will be more depression cases so it was very interesting to find out what all these children are learning now why we are putting this in curriculum remediation because it was not some hobby project it was included in their curriculum they are graded on that that is why we cannot say I don't know we at least say okay let me help you let me try guiding you on this so he the kid that kid prepared his report he sent me his uh draft he decided on whatever design and I did not correct his draft for the facts I corrected the grammatical mistakes I suggested maybe you could do these edits grammatically correct or whatever spellings but the material was his basically it has to be a very independent work we teach them to be independent not no spoon feeding you it is curriculum remediation but it is not spoon feeding very very clear words okay so it is always that path we show we show them that path come on you can walk we are there to hold your hand and we are going to achieve whatever potenti you have whatever potential you have and whatever Target we are aiming at that's all we are teaching when we are doing curriculum remediation it is not homework help it is not doing work for them no so you know what that's uh it is it is a it is an excellent way of building their self-esteem and knowledge so we can go on doing that what's the next slide debah I think we are summarizing it already right we will that's a summary slide yeah Vina would you like to talk about it yeah uh yeah like to put it in a summary what is curriculum remediation all about what are the important things it's the flexibility like we said we should be ready to kind of deal with anything that comes our way at any time um it is like familiarize with respective curriculum objectives because we are working with particular schools particular uh curriculum so we need to understand what their objectives are then we have to develop a relationship between the school and parent which is the most important aspect of this particular way of working with children research topic research topic has to be like sha said credible websites like National Geographic and something that we know has done enough research and not any random we have to teach the children what is a fact what is an opinion how to differentiate that so that they are aware of what they are trying to use even as they move forward so putting all this together is what we do when we do curriculum remediation yeah some parting thoughts um like we said it is generally observed that when children come to us only for remediation um when they start working on phex and spelling rules and uh syllabification and all that they are doing very well here I mean they're learning those but still sometimes majority of the concerns connected with the child's ability is in how a child is able to assimilate learning in a classroom setting so to connect the two I think uh the bridge would be definitely curriculum remediation don't you agree Shilpa have you gone through something like this the second point about uh the poly students and uh you know the senior basically uh University students I will just share a a case I mean my student uh he he was with me since primary 5 he was with me now he's already finished he's working he's finished his it and everything I remember he was labeled that he's not good he can't do things and nobody had time to teach him or take him through certain you know like I said the pathways and I remember when he was doing math obviously and unfortunately he had another background like he he got involved in some thefts and all that you know so there was some police record so what happened was a simple topics like ratios and all he was he was already 16 17 what I started doing was was I would I included food making food and I mean I won't explain too much everyone of us knows we are using ratio and all these all the time when we cook right and it's so interesting to know that this kid went to it and he took up culinary uh skills program and now he's working with some restaurant or whatever he keeps sending me pictures of food fancy foods which I don't know what they are and he keeps asking me guess what it is the point I'm saying this is he always said to me you know when he started sessions with me but nobody told me that I can learn like this but I I always thought I was stupid this is where I felt really sad even his mother thought like that so you know this is what they say right they they come forward to talk about the difficult what difficulties they faced in their Learning Journey I think we really need to pay attention to that early assessment early intervention and that can take them a long long way yeah so that's what it is Anu what do you think about this uh very true you know Shilpa Vina and to everyone listening today the moment a child is born you know we are waiting for him to do the next thing Milestone or when will he walk when will he crawl when will he say the first word and that is always there so that expectations of a developing child is there now similarly when a child goes to school there's a curriculum and as long as there's a curriculum there will be expectations to be able to read to be able to write to solve math problems uh at different stages different things to write three letter words then to write you know three word sentences and then to write three paragraph um you know essays so those are always going to be there it's not changing uh it's a given so in this situation what can we do do now when students or children or Learners however we want to term them are not meeting those expectations you know when a child is delayed in achieving a milestone is not working we are seeking intervention we'll go to the pediatrician look for you know what we can do over there uh maybe some kind of therapy or things like that similarly when it comes to school and okay not yet writing three words sentences not yet writing we need to look for that that link to bridge those gaps all right to create those light bulp moments so they connect what they are capable of doing and what is expected of them to do all right handhold them and we we try to shorten this Gap and help them over here this is what we are trying to do as curriculum because the curriculum and that expectations are there what they can do is also there and there's this Gap and through remediation we fill the gaps and uh yes so let's not shy away for you know parents especially are listening through from this because it's going to help you these would be our last words here over to back to Deborah and Anna to see if you have questions and if he can address them thank you so much on behalf of thank you all for being here today thank you um Anu finina sha it's so interesting yeah very powerful very powerful Deborah and I will we love the stories we love listening to you guys yes yes thank you there is one there is one question um and that's um how do we know if our child needs curriculum remediation big question so um or or and the it was or do we just give them more time to settle it's a it's a it's a fine fine line right I think the first step would be give time to settle in but uh because you know child will perform at their Pace at their time but if many red flags are observed by the teacher and by the parent it's time after giving enough time to settle in you know uh then you we need because it will show up in many ways all right uh give given a few weeks or a month of settling into the school routine one and a half months Max and then you are still seeing those you need to uh that that's from my perspective Vina and Shila maybe I I have a point here yeah that's that's a good one the red flags but what is enough what is the enough time I have a feeling that it is it depends a lot on the different curriculums different schools because uh sorry but if the child is an Moe student that red flag will those red flags will come up too early and because the expectation starts at a very early age but having said that in international schools they are given enough space time there are different approaches so you know I think uh I think teachers only start doing that in international schools most of the times so probably it depends on what curriculum the child is studying and how the atmosphere is but yes like you said Anu mostly the teachers will raise the red flags the parents will know parents will know as soon as the tests begin the tests are the you know benchmark right we immediately know what's happening so yes we know I think it's not only the academics uh the red flags could appear in Behavior you know like and uh that would probably direct sometimes that would be the visual uh actually or uh something that alarm that Rings first to kind of project or uh point out to where actually the problem could be so if the parent or the teacher is repeatedly observing certain Behavior patterns in a child and the child is not able to kind of fall into a particular way of managing those behaviors then again it could reflect back into what the child is feeling in the classroom true so that could be also a key Point very true yeah we've run we've definitely run over time today but it was such an interesting conversation very interest I mean you had me enthralled the whole way through um uh if if if our attendees would love to give us some feedback on the Forum uh we' love to hear from you and and uh obviously our presenters would love to hear from you too sure um we have another webinar coming up next week uh so please join us for that um and if you haven't registered um you can look to D International social media um to find the registration link actually it's the same one that you did for this one so if you if you registered you'll see it there as well but over to you Anna would you like to sign up sign off for us let's let's sign let's sign off okay bye bye everyone thank you everyone for coming and joining us and giving up your time your lunch hour to to to hear all of you know our experienced teachers really we appreciate your time that you've given us Shila Vina and Anu and thank you Deborah thank you thank you for the opportunity thank you for all of you for being here thanks de thanks Anna okay good day bye bye bye [Music] bye