Term 1: Learnt about Lamb to the Slaughter
Other learning points: Learnt about inference questions. We are required to write a long piece of "essay" within a short period. In primary school, we were required to write a piece of composition within 40 minutes,but now, we have to write two "essays" within 50 minutes. It really tests our writing speed and on-the-spot thinking.
Term 2: Read about "Village by the Sea"
Other learning points: I learnt more about Anita Desai. She is able to combine major events and significant problems in real life and craft them into an excellent story. The story depicts a family who encounters many problems, but they stay together to overcome the problems together.
Term 3: Taught about unseen poetry
Other learning points: We were also taught how to analyse a poem properly and how to answer questions related to the poem, as well as the different "languages" in a poem, such as metaphors and similes.
Overall, I learnt many skills, such as inference and analyzing questions. However, I need to master the art of aceing them.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Inside the Minds of Animals
Recently, I read an article in the "TIME" magazine, named "Inside the Mind of Animals".It is about how smart certain animals are, and also raising questions about how we treat them. is fascinating and an eye opener into the minds of animals. You never know what an animal is thinking of as it looks at you. It could well be studying human beings too?
Kanzi, a 29 year old bonobo, is very talkative. He can build thoughts and sentences, even conjugate, all by pointing. The paper sheets he points at, includes not just easy nouns, but also concept words, as well as grammatical elements, like: "-ing" and "-ed" which signifies tense. To Kanzi, Slow + Lettuce = Kale It takes a long time to chew Kale, so Kanzi named it accordingly.
Crows and other corvids excel at tool use, a function of both clever brain wiring and the bird's complex social structure.If creativity lives in the cerebral cortex, why are crows and jays, better tool users than nearly all non-human species.
Orangutans have a very strong sense of the difference between self and others,so they will preen at their own reflection. It is easy to study the brain and behavior of an animal, but subtler cognitive abilities are much harder to map.
Elephants are familial and appear to mourn their dead. If they find other elephant bones, they will gently examine the skulls. Many questions have aroused - Can they feel? Do they experience empathy and compassion? Can they love or care or hope or grieve? And what does that say about how we treat them?
So who is the smartest out of all? The great apes and cetaceans are the smartest, followed by the corvids. They are under the "very smart" rank. Social carnivores and herd animals are under the "sort of smart" ranks. Bivalves have no smarts to speak of; may well lack even consciousness.
Kanzi, a 29 year old bonobo, is very talkative. He can build thoughts and sentences, even conjugate, all by pointing. The paper sheets he points at, includes not just easy nouns, but also concept words, as well as grammatical elements, like: "-ing" and "-ed" which signifies tense. To Kanzi, Slow + Lettuce = Kale It takes a long time to chew Kale, so Kanzi named it accordingly.
Crows and other corvids excel at tool use, a function of both clever brain wiring and the bird's complex social structure.If creativity lives in the cerebral cortex, why are crows and jays, better tool users than nearly all non-human species.
Orangutans have a very strong sense of the difference between self and others,so they will preen at their own reflection. It is easy to study the brain and behavior of an animal, but subtler cognitive abilities are much harder to map.
Elephants are familial and appear to mourn their dead. If they find other elephant bones, they will gently examine the skulls. Many questions have aroused - Can they feel? Do they experience empathy and compassion? Can they love or care or hope or grieve? And what does that say about how we treat them?
So who is the smartest out of all? The great apes and cetaceans are the smartest, followed by the corvids. They are under the "very smart" rank. Social carnivores and herd animals are under the "sort of smart" ranks. Bivalves have no smarts to speak of; may well lack even consciousness.
National Day Celebration
It is going to be a long weekend for me.... National Day is just round the corner, Everyone is preparing for it - hanging Singapore flags outside their houses, planning for the National Day Parade, catching up with friends.
The school organised a National Day celebration yesterday. It was packed with activities. It started off with the singing of National anthem and reciting the pledge. Somehow, this was different from the daily routine. I felt an extreme pride as I did that.
After which, we proceeded to the Kah Kee Hall for a concert. The concert was truly amazing, with different performances by some selected CCA groups - Wushu, Gymnastics and many more.
There was the NDP quiz where both students and teachers participated. We also sang some National Day songs, along with the choir group.
The "Don't Forget the Lyrics" was the highlight of the day, 3 students and 3 teachers were selected to take part. They were supposed to pick number with each representing a National Day Song. They had to sing the song they picked,with many blanks for them to fill in the lyrics.
The concert came to an end at about 10.30am. We were encouraged to make use of this opportunity to go back to our primary schools to visit our ex-teachers and ex-classmates. This must be part of remembering our roots. I thought this was a very nice gesture on part of Hwa Chong.
What a day it had been! It is a very long weekend, I am going to make use of this time to revise for my upcoming tests in the next two weeks...
The school organised a National Day celebration yesterday. It was packed with activities. It started off with the singing of National anthem and reciting the pledge. Somehow, this was different from the daily routine. I felt an extreme pride as I did that.
After which, we proceeded to the Kah Kee Hall for a concert. The concert was truly amazing, with different performances by some selected CCA groups - Wushu, Gymnastics and many more.
There was the NDP quiz where both students and teachers participated. We also sang some National Day songs, along with the choir group.
The "Don't Forget the Lyrics" was the highlight of the day, 3 students and 3 teachers were selected to take part. They were supposed to pick number with each representing a National Day Song. They had to sing the song they picked,with many blanks for them to fill in the lyrics.
The concert came to an end at about 10.30am. We were encouraged to make use of this opportunity to go back to our primary schools to visit our ex-teachers and ex-classmates. This must be part of remembering our roots. I thought this was a very nice gesture on part of Hwa Chong.
What a day it had been! It is a very long weekend, I am going to make use of this time to revise for my upcoming tests in the next two weeks...
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