great job elementz team!

this year, these 5 students from 4/5, made improvements in their project from last year and entered the elementz competition for north zone schools and other invited schools...

and this year, they received the Silver award for their efforts! congratulations and well done! :)
i've only this one miserable picture of them... i forgot to take a picture of them with their trophies...!

in front of their booth during judging day...

from left: zarifah, jingwen, liting, henry, junwei

pre-class drama pics

the class performed once again, within one year, for the inter-class drama competition on 12 march...

this year, the theme was "being singaporean with a globalised outlook"... our class had a serious take on this theme, with the september 11 attacks as the main focus.. it depicts how a busy singaporean reporter, with no time to spend with her family, went over to the 911 site in nyc and having seen what the victims were going through as well as the massive destruction, came back to singapore with a different attitude towards life as a singaporean.. she now sees the importance of unity and responsibility which all singaporeans should have to help singapore progress..

and here are the pics of 4/5 just before their class drama...


pamelyn (the reporter) and wenxiu (a victim) rehearsing once more before the actual performance


yin kiat (a victim) trying to look as devastated and in pain as much as he can...



jingwen, another victim, with "blood" on the her arm... thanks to chongxi with her injuries make-up knowledge..

xueting and jiaqi, both victims, looking as sad as they can..

here's a happy victim, jyun yao.. with, apparently, non-painful "bleeding" wounds...

diwakar rehearsing with yin kiat, and the ambulance prop (proudly made by the props team) in the background... there's lots of "rubble" as well...

i wanna thank the whole class for the effort you've put in for this class drama, even at the expense of missing your cca, and showing less commitment to your studies... thanks too for coming early on mondays, staying till late or coming on saturdays, to do up props and to rehearse... the result doesn't matter, what is important is in the making of the "product" and the successful completion of the "product" itself... i'm sure, despite all the sacrifices made, we have also learnt one thing, that teamwork is important...

let's cross our fingers for the result! :)

pics of rcy at pizza treat

these pics were taken on 20 feb, when me and ms chan, treated the rcy unit with pizza for their hard work and effort in the footdrill competition... i just realised that i only took 3 pictures... nonetheless.. here they are..


the girls at the table just before they dig in...


a group pic at the foyer, including seniors qianhui and yifang...


here's another one.. just in case the first one didn't turn out right...

congratulations, once again, to our unit for the many awards we've won so far...! keep it up! :)

45 '09 first birthday celebration photos

our first birthday celebration of the year with our oct, nov, dec (from last yr) and jan and feb birthday girls.... and i still owe all of you birthday presents! haha... all of you may have to wait till after june holidays when i have slightly more time to do something..


birthday girls (from top left, clockwise): loo pin, jyun yao, jingwen, michelle, alexis, sharlyn, xueting, zarifah, kiah yeen, jyun yir, xingjie


another pic of the girls...



and here's one of them blowing the candles...

i think it's time we have a second celebration for the march and april babies...

pics of red cross youth and 45 '09 at line dancing event

here are the pictures i took of 45 and amkss rcy during the line dancing event in january. i know it's long overdue... but i've been really busy to edit photos till now.. haha..


the rcy girls


chunhui and xinhui


the backview of all the 45 students who were at the event... and of cos' their math teacher, mr chio, was there too...

here we have felicia and kiah yeen smiling for the camera

jiaqi laughing at some mistake she made

sharlyn and liting posing for the camera

amanda and huilin concentrating on getting the moves right...

the perils of being in the top class

i finally understand how it feels to be in the "best" class.. in my case, more specifically, to be the form teacher of the "best" class...

when i was a student (and yes, i wasn't in the top class), together with my other classmates, we would always think that our fellow schoolmates, who had excelled in their final exams in sec. 2 and got good enough results to be in the top class, were smart but arrogant nerds. we couldn't stand the way they always scored the best results, given the best opportunities... basically, just about everything good that happened to them, our first thought would be "just because they're in the top class, they can have/behave like/get away with this and that..."

thinking back, i guess me and my friends just didn't want to feel inferior to them, and we were most likely super jealous of them too.. so we just made these remarks to make ourselves feel better... (well, it happened long ago, i'm really just speculating that those were our thoughts then)

but now, being a FT of the top class.. i finally can empathise, not just empathise, i can actually feel how it is like to be in the top class...

many people think that as students in the top class, they're able to get away with many things.. like how the boys wouldn't get caught for having long hair... the truth is, if you have long hair, you get caught, whether you're in top class or not... its simple as that. and yes, i do have boys who were caught even though i truly wish they had listened to my warnings and had their hair cut before the school wide spot check. and if no one gets pulled out, it doesn't mean they're excused because they're in the top class... it simply is because they all had neat and tidy hair.

but that's not all... when they're given the ok for hair check, many people would also say other things like "they're in the top class, all of them are so kiasu, they'll definitely get their hair cut"...

left or right, up or down, no matter what the students do, just because they're in the top class, others will just have comments to make...

all the other classes have faulty whiteboards... whiteboards with "pit holes" on them, whiteboards that are difficult to erase... now look into the top class, they have a whiteboard which looks brand new, with its seemingly gleaming shiny surface which erases with ease....

once again, there's talk.. talk about how the school is bias to give the top class the best infrastructure... now, hold on, just hold on.... the whiteboard we had in our classroom was in the same bad condition as the others have now, one year ago... when we had a faulty whiteboard one year ago, i asked for a change... so one year ago, we already had this "new, gleaming, shiny whiteboard"... but other people wouldn't notice.. there isn't a need to.. because their whiteboards were working then... it's only when their whiteboards get damaged will they start to compare and realise and assume that the top class always gets it first...

as the FT of this class, i feel really sad for my students... they are always, and i do mean always, being "picked on"...

for all the others not in 4/5 or 3/5, and you're reading this, please remember that before the students of 4/5 or 3/5 were in their respective classes, they were once your friends and classmates in lower secondary. they are in this class, some because they chose to be, some because they are allocated to be in this class... 40 students from every cohort have to be in this class.. if you were one of the 40, how would you feel to be in their shoes? if they were truly arrogant, if they had looked down on you, let me know. i'll have a chat with them.. but if they haven't, don't find fault with them just because of the class they belong to... they're all just normal teenagers like the others in the "non-top" class too...