Our Curriculum

Our Curriculum: The MindChamps Writing Toolbox

One of the key highlights of our writing programme is the MindChamps Writing Toolbox, which helps to develop your child’s passion and confidence in writing. This comprehensive set of writing ‘tools’, which consists of six key skills covering 21 elements, is set to give your child a strong foundation in writing and empower him/her to ace even the most demanding writing exercises throughout his/her school years.

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1. Syntax Construction Tools

Comprising some of the most basic writing skills, syntax construction tools demonstrate your child’s ability to structure sentences and communicate his/her ideas clearly.

Your child will master the following elements that affect syntax construction:

  • Constructing sentences
  • Punctuation
  • Verbs and agreement
  • Grammar
  • Paragraphing
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2. Language Enhancement Tools

To help your child bring his/her writing to the next level, this set of tools helps to support the basic framework of writing through the following areas:

Adding Details

Through observation and description games, your child will be encouraged to use ‘generative’ questions to create detail when describing objects and actions.

Emotive Writing

Characters in stories have feelings that draw out empathy and awareness of social issues. Your child will learn to put himself/herself in the characters’ shoes and bring the emotions of the characters to life.

Use of ‘Feeling’ Words

Branching out from emotive writing, your child will learn to write and express how a character feels in different situations. This will help your child to convey feelings and give life to his/her characters.

Write to Show, Not to Tell

Your child will go from merely telling the story to showing what really takes place, which works wonders to immerse readers into his/her story. Lesson highlights include learning to write descriptions in different ways while drafting his/her story.

Figurative Language

Explorations with figurative language will develop your child’s powers of written expression. Through games and activities, you child will be introduced to similes, common metaphors, idioms and proverbs as models for creating figurative language in his/her own writing.

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3. Planning and Structuring Tools

As every written piece comes with a goal, your child needs to learn how to make meaningful context and relate this to high-interest stimulus situations when he/she writes.

This is done through:

Genre Writing

Your child will learn about different writing genres such as narrative, poetry, instructional/informational, descriptive and opinion pieces. He/she will discover and understand the different elements that make up each form of writing.

Organisation and Story Structuring

An important part of story writing is knowing how to organise the ideas in a structured way. This typically involves brainstorming and asking the right questions before laying them out in the most effective form.  Your child will learn how to structure the events of his/her stories through games, activities and group writing exercises.

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4. Story Building Tools

Your child will learn to create imaginary characters by adopting the perspective of one! By going through the strategies to create interesting and engaging characters in his/her stories, your child will learn how to write from the perspective of another person, animal or inanimate object. He/she will also explore writing from the first- and third-person perspectives.

To add life to his/her stories and characters, your child will learn to write dialogues, use speech in writing and how speech differs from prose.

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5. Polishing Tools

Polishing tools help your child to follow the structure of his/her story and learn to edit his/her work. This covers areas such as drafting and editing his/her story to putting down ideas and shaping them to communicate intention. Once the story is completed, your child will learn to proofread to look out for mistakes in grammar, spelling, punctuation and expression.

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6. Higher- Order Thinking Tools

Throughout the story creation process, your child will need to apply higher-order thinking skills to refine how his/her stories turn out. This includes the ability to think critically, discern what to include and what to leave out, and question a character’s motivations and wisdom behind their decisions.

Your child also needs to apply analytical thinking as he/she learns to plan, research and draft stories. This is done through self-reflection, peer feedback and rewriting from different perspectives.

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Programme Details

Developed to complement the MOE curriculum, our writing programme helps your child to understand the craft of writing and its creative aspects. Using an experiential and imaginative approach to learning, your child will work on developing key language skills, written expression and creative thinking.

Each level of our writing programme focuses on different areas of writing, all of which are covered in the primary school English syllabus.

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Kindergarten 2

  • Learn the various components that make up a sentence, i.e. verbs and adjectives
  • Explore different perspectives in writing stories
  • Plan a story line and write stories based on own ideas
  • Write short descriptive paragraphs and explore different ways of starting a story
  • Try out different types of writing: poems, riddles and social media posts

Primary 2

  • Learn to write descriptively and persuasively
  • Explore different perspectives in writing stories
  • Rewrite stories with own ideas and bring out the emotions of characters
  • Use rhyming words to write poems
  • Tap on various stimuli to plan stories
  • Identify cause-and-effect in stories

Primary 4

  • Describe subjects and characters with emotions
  • Write a journal to document thoughts and emotions
  • Write simple first- and third-person beginnings to stories
  • Use senses as a stimulus to write
  • Create new story ideas by asking open-ended questions
  • Add twists to make stories engaging and extend story ideas by writing a persuasive speech
  • Learn to polish, edit and refine written works

Primary 1

  • Learn to use descriptive words in writing
  • Use verbs and adjectives in the right context
  • Explore different perspectives in writing stories
  • Write stories based on own experiences
  • Organise the various parts of a story and rewrite based on peer feedback
  • Create storyboards to highlight parts of a story

Primary 3

  • Use playful language and emotions when describing characters and write simple emotion poems
  • Pick up the basics of first- and third-person narratives
  • Write sentences that describe the senses
  • Learn how to make stories stand out when writing under pressure
  • Explore the possible ways of ending a story