The Learning Lab Review
Advertorial
Recently, we had the privilege of sending Nathan to The Learning Lab, to experience their English Enrichment Programs. On our first visit to The Learning Lab, we were invited for a tour of the centre, and walked through display boards with impressive academic performances of their students. With the unique track record of having produced 7 President scholars and 27 PSC scholars, we were excited to discover how Nathan would fare in their classes. To give us an more in in-depth view of their programs, we were also given access to one of Nathan’s classes. So what does TLL do? Does it live up to its reputation? Will my kids be enriched, if they attend classes there? Well, do keep on reading to find out our experience! 🙂
Keeping up with The Learning Lab ideals of preparing students for the working world, Nathan’s class was set in a board room, where kids are trained to adjust to a corporate environment. There were 10 students in the class, which was just right for classroom interaction.
Classes at The Learning Lab are very different from the tuition classes that I had while growing up. As The Learning Lab has its own team of 30 in-house curriculum writers, kids get a good worldview of current affairs, social issues and historical tidbits incorporated into the lessons. The mode of instruction also changes, as in this lesson, they watched a CNN feature, to supplement the comprehension passage that they were reading.
But the most important component of every class, lies in the hands of the teacher. I remember being bored to death by some teachers, and also loving certain subjects due to the passion of my teacher.
In this respect, I have a great report about Nathan’s teacher. Miss Queenie was totally passionate and engaging in her craft. Due to her love for teaching, she quit her former job, and made a mid career shift to enter the teaching profession. Her bubbly personality certainly rubbed off on the kids, and they were always quick to respond to her questions.
In order to bring different paradigms of stimulation to the learning process, the class had many active games, where they scored points for correct answers, and were able to feed the “hungry Minions”, who are the current rage of the season. A further reward which Nathan and many of the students were looking forward to were, the stickers and Country Erasers, which was the “booty” for the completion of classroom exercises.
For this sit-in class which I had the privilege to attend, they had a practice Test. These practice tests are conducted periodically, in order to set the exam conditions, which kids will go through at school. It is through this exposure, where kids will also get used to “Test Conditions” at school. Although this was a test, students were reminded to set high goals for themselves, so that the idea of goal setting is internalized into every student.
As expected, The Learning Lab curriculum is pitched to enrich and help student develop. At The Learning Lab, all lessons are pitched 20-30% higher than MOE’s requirement, so as to give kids a confident head start in school. At the end of the class, the kids list out the new words which they have learnt for the day. These words are written out on the white board, and the kids are requested to write out these words again for homework. Through this transferring process, the new word sticks better to the child’s memory. For Nathan’s class, they even played a game with these words! They had to shoot a Magical Mystery Popper at their favorite word, and therefore earn a prize through their shooting 🙂
Although The Learning Lab is on the “pricey” side, but it does offer quality curriculum and instruction. Nathan never complains about going for classes there, and I think that this is always an important variable when we look at enrichment classes. If our budget permits, we will love to have Nathan continue his classes there, and to watch how he progresses under their tutelage.
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(This is an advertorial, but all opinions are 100% our own.)