Meeting Minutes 2 - 20/02/2008

Venue: Chao Yang school, Yio Chu Kang, Singapore

Time: 20 February 2008, 1245 - 1500

Present: Bryan Lim, Tan Koon Chong, Sean Yap, Yan Xiao Dong,

            Wang Kai Cheng, Other groups, Mrs Cheryl Yap,

             Teacher mentors of other groups

No.	Things Accomplished	Actions made
1	Traveling	Traveled by MRT to Chao Yang school, Singapore at 13: 00 pm, arrived at 13: 30 pm.
2	Briefing about Chao Yang school	Our group, together the other groups, were given a briefing by the staff of Chao Yang school in the conference room. The briefing was about Chao Yang school – its mission, vision, the subjects taught, CCAs available, facilities – and  also the students there – their age group, the problems they face, their difficulties. There was also a question and answer session whereby we asked many meaningful questions about the school and its students.
3	Tour around the school	The staff of Chao Yang school showed us around the school compound. We got to see some of the ongoing lessons of different classes.
4	Demonstration of the interactive white board	One of the teachers of Chao Yang school gave us a short demonstration on how lessons can be conducted using the interactive white board.
5	Discussion of the possible project.	We discussed and brainstormed with the staff the possible projects that we would do for the year. In the end, our group decided to do the project on the resource package for the interactive white board as it seemed the most interesting and meaningful to us.

  Hi and welcome to our first blog post of the year for this project. Just for your information, we are a group of students from Raffles Institution working on our research education project of the year. Our project involves working with the Chao Yang School to benefit the children there. This is our second RE meeting of the year but the first meeting working on this project after the VWO of our previous project, the AWWA backed out. 

   We met up at 12:30 pm as a group, had a quick lunch and headed down the Chao Yang School located at Yio Chu Kang by MRT. We met up with the other groups working with Chao Yang school before the staff brought us up to the conference room to give us a briefing about Chao Yang school – its mission, vision, the subjects taught, CCAs available, facilities – and  also the students there – their age group, the problems they face, their difficulties. There was also a question and answer session whereby we asked many meaningful questions about the school and its students.  Later, the staffs were kind enough to give us a tour around the school for us to get a feel of it. We got to see some of the ongoing lessons of different classes. The children were all so happy to see us as we “distracted” them from their lessons as we walked by the classes. We were glad to be able to put a smile on their faces. We then went back to the conference room where one of the teachers of Chao Yang School gave us a short demonstration on how lessons can be conducted using the interactive white board. It was really interesting and later on, after discussion and brainstorming with the staff of the possible projects that we could do for the year, our group decided to do the project on the resource package for the interactive white board as we impressed by the demonstration earlier on.  This is our first meeting working on this project and the first meeting with our external mentors at the VWO. We really hope that we will be able to excel in the project, give the VWO a helping hand, make a difference in the lives of others, as well as learn many new things and gain invaluable experience. To do so, each and every one of us will have to put in our best effort, see things with an open mind, word hard and work smart. We would really like to thank the school, our teacher mentor, and Chao Yang School for ever making this project possible. This amazing journey with the Chao Yang School has just started to unfold! We hope to see bright and good days ahead of us!

Bryan

Reflection on first visit to Chaoyang School(XD)

The schedule and events in the visit to Chaoyang School would be elaborated in meeting minutes. The idea that appeared to me most memorably was probably the concept of empowering the students, whom are either physically handicapped or intellectually handicapped, to be independent. This is a very good idea as this would help them through their lives, as shown in a story a friend of mine told me. The summary of the story was that instead of giving you fishes, it’s better to teach you how to fish. This is a very good approach towards helping the physically handicapped or intellectually handicapped. The kids there were very friendly and enthusiastic, but however there was a few whom were a bit shy. After an introduction to the projects that we could take up, the team settled on helping the school to develop two topics from the English department to the use of SmartBoards, definitely an interesting point to note. The teachers at the Chaoyang School were also very friendly and we look forward to working with the Chaoyang School.

Apology to our RE teacher mentor

This is a apology to Mrs. Lim Yoke Tong, our RE teacher mentor, as due to the team’s carelessness, we forgot to return the notebook to Mrs. Lim on time and hence have landed Mrs. Lim in some trouble. Hence, the team would like to sincerely apologize for the mistake the team had made. The team would not be so irresponsible ever again. As the saying goes, action speaks louder than words. Hence let this statement endure through the test of time and in the very end stand up to us.

Minutes of Meeting 1: 13/2/08

  Met at 11 :30 at the Hullett Memorial Library, this being our first meeting of the year as a group. First and foremost, we would like to introduce ourselves. Our group comprises my groupmates  Tan Koon Chong, who is the I.T. expert in our group, our group leader Yan Xiao Dong, our talented artist Sean Yap, academic ace Wang Kai Cheng and myself Bryan Lim, who will be the secretary of this group, which also means that I will be in charge of the minutes of meeting for the year. Each of us are special and unique in our own way and we hope to be able to put each other’s strengths into good use, as well as improve on our weaknesses as we learn. Our teacher mentor for the year is Mrs. Lim Yoke Tong. We believe that she can give us a lot of guidiance and support along this journey with her experience in RESL projects. 

We met up with our teacher mentor, Mrs Lim , and we discussed our project of the year, which was making corporate cards for the Asian Women’s Welfare Assosiation (AWWA). Because we have not gotten much information from the VWO yet, we decided to do some background research about the VWO and corporate cards. We also created this blog where we can post our reflections, minutes of meeting, pictures and other information in the future. This was how the work was split up.

Koon Chong and Kai Cheng - setting up blog

Bryan and Sean - Research on corporate cards

Xiao Dong - Research on AWWA

This is our first meeting of minutes of the year and our first meeting of the year as a group. We really hope that we will be able to excel in the project, give the VWO a helping hand, make a difference in the lives of others, as well as learn many new things and gain invaluable experience. To do so, each and every one of us will have to put in our best effort, see things with an open mind, word hard and work smart. We also believe that our teacher mentor, Mrs Lim, can give us a lot of guidiance and support along the way. This amazing journey with the AWWA has just started to unfold! We hope to see bright and good days ahead of us!

Bryan

 Kai Cheng, 25th Feb 2008

Last Wednesday we made our first visit to ChaoYang School (CYS). The following are some of the main progresses that we have made:

1. We understood more about the structure, system, target children, etc from the lecture by the Head of English Department of CYS.

2. We had experienced first-hand how the life of the children at CYS is like and some of the common disabilities that the children suffer from after the tour around CYS

3. We were exposed to the smart board. We realized that it has huge potential and flexibility in making fun, engaging and meaningful lessons for the children.