Longest Attending Students Photos

Last week we recognised and rewarded our 5 longest attending students and their parents. This is our little way of saying thank you and showing our appreciation for their commitment in sending their children for English class with us, and supporting Horne Learning Services in the process.

Each child received a certificate of recognition along with a small reward. They will also receive a photo to mark the occasion.

Jen Yee is currently our longest attending student. He's been attending for 3 years!

The following students have all been attending our classes for more than 2 years:

Jia Yi and her dad

Jen Haw with his mum

Marcus and his dad. (Apologies for Mr. Duncan's absence in this photo - he was quite sick on this afternoon!)

Ye Hao with his dad

2014 Syllabus

We hope everyone enjoyed the New Year celebrations, wherever in the world you may be.

We are welcoming back students old and new to our classes, which are filling up quickly. Please be aware that Thursday afternoon is the only class remaining for children with available spaces.

During the Christmas and New Year holiday I've been busy preparing the new syllabus for 2014 at Horne Learning Services. A lot of the exercises which our students are accustomed to will remain, but there are some new additions too.

Once every 2 months (Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sep, Nov) we will be conducting a variety of grammar exercises from The Word Bank, a more fun and flexible way of learning tense work, nouns, verbs and adjectives, synonyms and antonyms, word lists and making sentences.

During the same months we will be continuing Movie Week, essentially a listening test with comprehension questions, but doing so by watching a fun movie.

During the months of February, April, June, August and October there will be a Games Week where we'll be learning English in a fun way by making short stories as a class, doing word searches, and other games.

A new addition for 2014 is Exam Week. There will be five Exam Weeks, held on the 4th week on the same months as Games Week (mentioned just above). Exams will involve vocabulary, speaking, reading, writing and grammar exercises. Results will be recorded and passed to parents. (Exam Week will only be for students who are capable of reading and writing and who can understand and answer grammar questions. Those of a lower standard will continue with simple exercises)

Activities including speaking, creative writing, reading and word games will remain on the syllabus. We are confident our students will enjoy the variety of exercises, a  more fun way of learning, as well as being more accountable to their parents through exams every two months.

The Word Bank

To our students, young and adult, and to the parents of our students, here is an explanation of some exercises we are doing this month.

During the month of October 2013 we are conducting exercises from "The Word Bank." The Word Bank consists of various English words, which are made up of correctly and incorrectly spelled words, as can be seen above. Identifying the misspelled words and correcting them is one of four exercises being carried out this month.

In the second week of October, students will be asked to make 3 lists of words from The Word Bank, by searching for 'feelings', 'colours' and 'occupations.' For example, 'excited', 'pink' and 'pilot.' Once they have completed their lists, they will write sentences by combining 3 words in their lists. For example, "The pilot was excited because he saw a pink cloud."

In week 3 students will be searching The Word Bank for synonyms (words which are similar in meaning) of 'happy', 'big' and 'very.' Perhaps you can find some yourself!

The final exercise throughout week 4 will involve our students looking for words that begin with 'a', 'b' and 'c'. They will then practice writing sentences with those words in the past, present and future tenses.

The Word Bank is a large collection of grammar exercises, but designed to be done in a much more fun way than just going through page after page of workbook questions. Practicing English grammar can, and should, be a lot more fun and interesting!