A day at Agora Student Care

A day at Agora Student Care

Meet Chloe, a Primary 3 student at Cantonment Primary School. Chloe and Aiden, her Primary 1 student in the same school, look forward to attending Agora Student Care daily.

Transport straight from school

Right after the school bell rings, Chloe and Aiden meet their dedicated driver, Ahmad, to grab a ride to Agora Student Care. Ahmad is Agora Student Care’s designated driver and ensures that children are picked up punctually daily and arrives right at Agora’s doorstep!

Today, Teacher Rie greets them at check-in. “How are you feeling today?” “Awesome!”. The children cheerfully chatter away about their day. Teacher Rie checks them in, and shortly after, parents receive a message confirming their safe arrival and check-in.

Lunch

As soon as they are inside the Agora, there is nothing to worry about: their needs are taken care of. They freshen up and change out of their uniforms, before sitting at the big communal table to share a meal with their student care friends. It’s a good time to catch up, and discuss plans for later in the day. “How did compo go yesterday?” Chloe asks her friend Sarah.

Healthy and balanced meals at Agora comes from a central kitchen, which puts a lot of care into ensuring that it’s just right for their taste buds. “Spaghetti bolognese today… yum.” says Aiden.

Homework

After lunch, the first order of the day for the children is to take care of homework. Agora Student Care offers supervised homework, with an emphasis on gaining independence. This means being a self-starter and completer of one’s homework. Chloe and Aiden have been attending Agora for over three months, they no longer need to be reminded about their duties, and take homework work in their stride!

Chloe takes care of her school homework, while Aiden practices maths worksheets. Agora offers a daily supplement of academic practice, to encourage children to consolidate their knowledge and exercise their skills beyond school-assigned homework.

Agora’s approach in driving self-discipline is to develop children’s intrinsic motivation - to do well - and also to leverage their extrinsic motivation to be rewarded. This approach is condensed in the C-A-R model.

Cue: The teacher provides guide rails to facilitate the execution of tasks by the child

Action: the completion of the required task which merits a positive response

Reward: Over time, children become increasingly autonomous in their actions, and both the cueing and rewarding become unnecessary.

Using an AI-based adaptive learning programme, teachers are able to analyse students’ learning profiles and needs to ensure they are exposed to relevant content and exercises that stretch them.

Sports and Play

After completing homework and academic practice, children move to their next station, Sports and Play. Today Chloe is learning to play floor hockey. She’s a good shot already! Aiden is practising free shots at the basketball hoops. Thankfully the hoops are child-size, it’s difficult as it is! But he’s getting better at it.

Agora teachers conduct physical activities, outdoors and indoors to encourage physical activity and develop important skills such as agility, balance and teamwork. Activities vary daily, from ball sports to playing tag and zumba, and they always include a focus on gross motor skills (stamina and strength), fine motor skills (agility and balance) and skills (cooperation, sportsmanship, teamwork).

Project based learning

Once children have blown off steam, they move to the next activity. This week’s theme is Insects. Aiden learned about what makes an insect an insect, and drew examples of wasps, bees, and ants. Meanwhile Chloe studied different orders of insects, and started researching on taxonomy. She’s thinking, “Maybe I could one day become a biologist?”

Agora Student Care seeks to develop a growth mindset, with research and creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking being critical elements of a well-rounded mind. Children conduct research on weekly themes, such as Mammals, the Human Body, or Water, and conduct activities (presentations, arts and crafts) to summarise and showcase their learning. Children take part in activities individually and in groups. In the process, they learn about analysis and evaluation of information, interdisciplinary thinking, and the understanding of the whole. They learn to better express their thoughts, verbally, in writing, as well as visually.

Additional tuition

Today, Chloe had Chinese class woven into her timetable. She needs to practice her composition skills, so mummy signed her up for weekly Chinese class in addition to her daily activities. It’s so convenient! She doesn’t need to travel for tuition classes: instead she just steps into her classroom, and goes back to her friends as soon as she’s done.

Free play

The children’s day at Agora is nearing its end. From 6pm, Chloe and Aiden engage in student-led activities. Aiden and his friends Joshua and Aileen decide to play Monopoly - it’s fun to discover familiar-sounding street names with the Singapore version of Monopoly. Chloe decided that reading a book would be a good ending to a busy day. She goes to the library, picks up one of the 6,000 books available and climbs onto the mezzanine to make herself comfortable. She feels on top of the world.

Children are encouraged to initiate and organise free play, board games, reading, or work on projects of their own. The goal is to help them show initiative, and give them a sense of earned autonomy. They develop interpersonal skills and learn to make genuine connections with other children.

Pickup

Today, the children’s mummy picks them up at 7:15pm. She has a late meeting, but she doesn’t feel she needs to rush. The children are happy and well taken care of. A little bit of haggling to get them back from having fun in the mezzanine, and they’re on their way home, free of care. Tomorrow, daddy’s picking them up. He can only come at 7:45pm, but that’s ok, he will take the children out to eat in their favourite restaurant!