Looking to impress your relatives this Chinese New Year? Here are a couple of Maths tricks that you can showcase in front of your cousins! Trick 1: 1. Get them to think of a 3-digit number. 2. Multiply it by 7, 11 and 13 and hey presto, you get twice that number. For example: 1.[…]
There’s a Chinese tradition which requires us to clear all our debt before the Lunar New Year. How do you pronounce “debt”? a) deBt (pronouncing the B) b) Det (silent B) ___ (B) Det is the answer!The word was usually spelt “det” or “dette” in Middle English from the Old French “dette”. Originally it came[…]
How do we know if a number is divisible by 7 without a calculator? Easy. Follow these steps: 1. Take the last digit of the number you’re testing and double it. 2. Subtract this number from the rest of the digits in the original number. -If this new number is either 0 or if it’s[…]
It’s Chinese New Year in less than a week’s time. It’s the Year of the Horse and your annoying relatives will definitely ask you to spew some horse-related greetings before they give you that ang pow. Don’t worry. We are here to help! Memorise these and I guarantee that you will get a lot of[…]
A friend was feeling upset and posted this on Facebook: Life is like grass. 人生如草 We could have consoled her by saying: take care, life’s not that bad and so on. But if you were good in Chinese, you could say: 野火烧不尽 春风吹又生 Sounds more poetic, right? This means the fire can’t burn all the[…]
The great thing about teaching kids is you keep yourself updated with what’s happening in their world. The bad thing is- you feel like an old fogey. Asked the students to write a letter to their idol today and I promised to send them to the heartthrobs after the edits. One girl likes the “Little[…]
Collective nouns are nouns which stand for a group or collection of people or things. They include words such as audience, committee, police, crew, family, government, group, and team. Most collective nouns can be singular or plural. However, there are a few collective nouns that are used only in the plural form, the most common[…]
Over the past couple of days, a video of a student shouting at his teacher went viral.Yesterday, it was reported the student has apologised and “shown remorse.” This reminded me of my secondary school days when I was in one of the rowdiest classes. There was a classmate who joined a gang (the infamous 369[…]
Have you ever complained about doing Maths homework, saying you will never use it when you grow up anyway? Well, you are wrong. Someone used Maths to find love. True story. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/01/how-to-hack-okcupid/
I must say the P1-2 class is the hardest to teach. As the students are very young, we have to maintain discipline, ensure they learn, make it fun and be innovative. This combination is almost impossible.Besides focusing on their writing, I want my lower primary students to be able to present and express themselves from a[…]