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[✐Stationery✐] An interview with Christina Tan, a parent of a dyslexic child living in Singapore

FeaturedJim L. Leave a comment

As an educational therapist, I’ve worked closely with many parents of special needs children. I’ve seen the struggles that they can face, where oftentimes confusion and despair come from not having a firm, solid shoulder to lean on. Recently, I came across a parent-support group (Dyslexia Support Group Singapore) for people with dyslexic children. The initiative is spearheaded by Christina Tan, a lawyer by training and mother of two, one of whom has dyslexia. I reached out to Christina for a chat and an interview—several areas were discussed, including the difficulties that her daughter (’E’) had faced and what she had done to help ‘E’ overcome them.

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[✐Stationery✐] Understanding Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Jim L. Leave a comment

As more people are being labelled with ADHD today while parent-child dynamics continue to change, one of the rising questions is: how can kids and youths with ADHD be trained to cope with this learning difference? ADHD can, in many cases (including my own experiences of working with youths that have it), be turned from an actual difficulty into a tool that helps the learner to achieve. In order to do that, we need to know what ADHD is and is not, and what causes its negative traits to flare up. Continue reading “[✐Stationery✐] Understanding Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)” →

[⚔Swords⚔] Three family-friendly board games you should absolutely check out

Jim L. Leave a comment

For non-gamers, there’s a whole world of tabletop games out there that might seem intimidating to dive into. Even as a seasoned and regular gamer, I occasionally find myself struggling to keep up with the introduction of new games. Nevertheless, there are a few games that I keep coming back to, and which over the last few years I often use in the classroom during the kids’ break time. In today’s post, I’m highlighting three such games—great family-friendly games that are very affordable—so if your kid is sick of Scrabble or Monopoly, you might want to have a look at these. Continue reading “[⚔Swords⚔] Three family-friendly board games you should absolutely check out” →

[⚔Swords & Stationery✐] Learning from the post-apocalypse

Jim L. Leave a comment

I’ve been quite fascinated by the post-apocalyptic genre ever since I played the first Fallout game; subsequently I ventured into post-apocalyptic cinema, starting with Mad Max, then moving on to The Road Warrior. Despite the genre’s inherently violent, grim-dark and/or over-the-top overtones, there is a lot of underlying social commentary to be found if one explores the material. It is for this reason that I think it deserves to be introduced to older students.

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[⚔Swords & Stationery✐] “Visual cards” as gaming and teaching aids

Jim L. Leave a comment

When playing tabletop RPGs, I use and re-use these handouts which I call “visual cards” to better illustrate the imagery of the scene. However, I’ve also found visual cards to be very helpful and, more importantly, cost-effective when teaching various concepts. Read on to find out more about them. Continue reading “[⚔Swords & Stationery✐] “Visual cards” as gaming and teaching aids” →

[⚔Swords⚔] Getting players to be personally invested in the game

Jim L. Leave a comment

About a year ago (has it really been that long?!), I brought up the empowerment effects that RPGs can have on learners and their self-esteems. One caveat: empowerment isn’t necessarily assured if there’s no personal investment in the game. Let’s look at what might go wrong, and how we can fix that.

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[✐Stationery✐] Filtering Out Irrelevant Information – Part 2

Jim L. Leave a comment
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Source: Wikimedia Commons / chris 論

In my previous post, I talked about the preliminary steps towards cutting out information bloat — in a nutshell, before one can distill anything useful from the mass of information, one should know the expectations and requirements of the (sub-)topic(s) that he/she is studying for. Failure to do so would make it difficult to identify helpful information, and, by extension, make it more difficult to revise for that subject.

This follow-up to last week’s post is going to examine what the learner needs to do to actually distinguish relevant from irrelevant information.

Continue reading “[✐Stationery✐] Filtering Out Irrelevant Information – Part 2” →