To returning families – welcome back for term 3! To new faces, thank you very much for choosing the British Council. We look forward to working with you in the future, and hope that everything has got off to a good start. If we can help in any way – answering questions, providing more information – please contact our Customer Service team on the ground floor.
Our calendar of events for Term 3 is now ready for downloading here. The Global Art Competition is back, we have a storytelling session planned for our Primary students, and three parent workshops to look forward to!
Global Art Competition 2018
The Global Art Competition is back! The topic for 2018 is: School: now and in the future
The age groups are: 8 and under, 9 – 11, and 12 – 15.
Prizes for the winner and runners-up in each age group are up for grabs! The winner from each age group will then be entered into the global competition held in September. The winning pictures from the global competition will be displayed in British Council promotional materials all around the world!
The rules for all age groups are:
- It must reflect the theme.
- It must have a title.
- It must be in strong colours (paint, pastels, collage or wax crayons are good; coloured pencils are NOT).
- It must have a label attached (get one from the station near room 16).
- It must be between A4 and A3 size.
- You must do it yourself.
Deadline: 5 August 2018
Parent workshops
We have three parent workshops this term. Workshops take place in room 17 from 1:20-2:00pm and space is limited, so we recommend parents arrive on time to get a seat. There will also be a film showing in room 18 for children to watch while parents attend the talk.
The first workshop, which will be in week 3 (14/15 July) will be Introduction to our young learner English courses at the British Council. In this session, we will provide you with important information about the British Council, our teachers, our classes and how you can help your child get the most from their lessons. All parents are welcome.
The second workshop, which will be in week 6 (4/5 August), is called How we assess older students. In this session, we will look at how we assess our Upper Primary and Secondary students. We will show you examples of our writing and speaking assessments and how we provide feedback to the students. This workshop is for parents of Upper Primary and Secondary students.
Our last workshop will be in week 9 (25/26 August). In this session, Sharing Stories with Picture Books, we aim to demonstrate the importance of sharing reading with children and give you some practical tips to inspire your child to read. This workshop is for parents of Primary Plus and Phonics students.
We are looking forward to receiving your entries - Good luck everyone!
What are Life Skills?
We pick up life skills throughout or childhood, teens and into adulthood to help us to function in difficult situations. They include practical skills such as managing a budget and time-keeping, and abstract skills such as empathy and perseverance.
Although our children are achieving higher and higher levels of academic achievement, many employers and universities complain that students’ basic life skills are often lacking. How can we help?
At the British Council
- Our Primary Plus students complete tasks every five weeks which require organisation and team work.
- The topics of our Primary Plus materials are geared towards real-world skills, such as what to do in an emergency, how to follow basic instructions, or developing empathy.
- Our Secondary students are exposed to much more complex themes in our themed lessons every term, such as online safety or bullying. These issues require teamwork, communication, and empathy to understand.
- Our teachers help students to break up difficult language goals into manageable chunks through the use of objectives for every lesson, termly progress reports, and regular reflection on their progress.
What can parents do?
Although schools can incorporate life skills as a topic in class, teachers see students for such a short period of time that the vast majority of skills are learnt and practised in the home rather than in the classroom. Some practical ideas for introducing more Life Skills at home are:
As well as the obvious practical skills such as cleaning or cooking, why not include your child when you complete financial tasks, such as paying bills? Children can be involved in making a shopping list, planning a menu for a family meal, or any other practical task which you can safely oversee.
More important than practical skills, as a parent your biggest input is as an example of life skills for your child. This does not mean that you need to display perfect organisational skills at all times – you are human! But it does mean that when things go wrong, we can explain why and use perseverance to get back on the right track, modelling the behaviour we hope to see from our children in the future.
If you’d like to learn more how the British Council incorporates Life Skills into our lessons, you can visit our website at: https://www.britishcouncil.my/