Scholars enhance UWC life - United World College of South East Asia

Dunia, April 2010
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“Reading Opens Doors: Step into the Magic”
...was the theme of this year’s Book
Week at the East Campus, where each
day of the week brought a different focus.
The week started with Mother Tongue
Monday, i.e., languages other than
English. Grade 2 students had a visit
with local author Adeline Foo, who taught
them some Baba Malay words during
her presentation on her picture books
which feature the Peranakan culture, The
Kitchen God and The Beaded Slippers.
On Poem-in-your-Pocket Tuesday everyone
shared their favorite poems. The
overwhelming favorite poem was online:
a video of former UK Children’s Laureate
Michael Rosen performing his No
Breathing in Class. Students repeatedly
watched the performance, along with his
rendition of his picture book, Going on a
Bear Hunt on the Book Buzz mini-blog,
which was unveiled in honour of Book
Week - http://bookbuzz.tumblr.com.
Book Award Wednesday was the last day
for students to vote in the Red Dot Book
Awards, an initiative of the international
school teacher-librarians in Singapore
to encourage children to read recently
published quality books from around the
world in four categories: Picture Book,
Junior, Middle, and Senior. Junior students
voted online, while Infant students
voted at the station in the library. Over
7,000 votes were cast in the awards by
students from a number of international
schools in Singapore. The winning titles
can be viewed on the Red Dot Awards
website: www.reddotawards.com.
Get Real Thursday recognised great nonfiction,
while Book Character Dress-Up
Day on Friday made for a very colorful
assembly. Students were entertained by
Garde 4 teacher Bruce Home, a master
storyteller. Throughout the week classes
also enjoyed guest readers and more
D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Read)
time than usual. Students had a chance
to increase their home libraries thanks
to APD Books, who ran a sale in the
canteen and to the Grade 3 “Read and
Recycle” sale on Friday morning, with
proceeds going to support literacy in our
various service projects. The cap to Book
Week was a visit by Margriet Ruurs, an
award-winning picture book author from
Canada.
Katie Day
Making new friends
In March, East Grade 5 started their service programme with a visit from the Darul
Ma’wa Jamiyah Children’s Home in Eunos, which cares for orphaned, neglected and
at risk children. We chose a day in the Singaporean school holidays for a group of
residents to come to the campus for a day of friendship, activities and educational
experiences.
The Grade 5s took the lead in familiarising the Jamiyah children with our school
through a series of planned activities centring on the recent Simple Machines Unit
of Inquiry. The activities focused on the
specialist curriculum areas of Art, PE, ICT,
Music and Technology and were thoroughly
enjoyed by all participants.
The Grade 5’s all made new friends and
hope this will be the start of a solid service
link for the future. East Campus runs a
number of service programmes in conjunction
with Jamiyah Singapore.
Luke Whitehouse
Photos by Wendy Liao
Photo by East Campus staff