Sunday, April 3, 2011

Session 2: Humility, 25 Mar 2011

Welcome back to YRS! (:

As usual, we started with the anthem and flag-raising (: Each week, we let different kids take turns and try raising the flag. We hope this will help build their confidence so that they will feel less shy about being in front of a group.

Teacher Hong Seng and Teacher Phyllis explaining how to use the coloured cards. During the skit/game, the children have to pick the correct words to fill in the blank by flashing the corresponding coloured card.

Today's theme was on humility, and the story used for teaching was "The Tortoise and the Hare".

And here are our actors for the day! Guess who the tortoise is?

The kids learnt that humility means not laughing at others :) The skit also focused on the teaching of verbs, so the kids managed to find out more about action words.

We proceeded with the reading segment (: As you can see, all our volunteers and kids are really very cute and nice people :D

And S did something very sweet for her teacher :D

Here's a close-up

Meanwhile, Mr Wolf gained an ardent fan from last week.

Teacher See Theng put very aptly in her feedback that R was "only concerned about the wolf".

Glad to see the kids enjoying themselves! (:

~YRS Comm :D~ 1:07 AM

Welcome!

About YRS

Yishun Reading Stars (Social-skills Training And Reading for Students) (YRS) is a program which aims to enhance every child's social and reading skills. The children are aged between 8-11 years old and are referred by the Educational Psychologists from the Student Centre. Some of them have limited exposure to English in their home environment, while others may have learning difficulties. YRS hopes to equip the children with some basic strategies to help them deal with their emotional needs. More importantly, we want the children to realise that they are SPECIAL in their own ways!

*Do note that we have blurred the children's faces to protect their privacy. However, we still hope that our entries will give you a good idea of what we do!

Activities

YRS usually carries out 12 sessions every academic semester. Each session is tailored to themes with a primary focus on promoting social interaction.

We devote half of every 90 minute session to Guided Reading, where volunteers attach themselves to a child and read a story to, or if possible, along with the kid. The focus is on helping the kid to improve his/her oral and reading comprehension of the story, so that the ultimate goal of independent learning through a love for reading may be achieved!

Besides the regular sessions, we organise camps and outings for the children too! :)

Quotable Quotes

"As we lead the children through the Guided Reading session, it really touches the heart to see them improving bit by bit, especially when they remember words that were taught the previous session" - Laura Lye

"Yishuners are really a team that cares about helping these kids and no matter how much time we put into volunteering for Yishun Student Care Service, it’s all worth it." - Tay Ming Hui

Volunteering

Our current season will be running from 25 February 2011 to June, with a 3-week break in between from 19 April to 6 May due to exams.

The satisfaction from being able to mould and shape a kid's future is priceless, and only when you personally experience it can you then understand it, so come on down to YRS to shape a child's future today!