5                     In Bukit Timah Primary School, students watch the Tamil news daily, jotting down words that are new to them.  They then share these words with their classmates, taking care to relate the words to the situation in which they have been used.  Through this daily activity, the students’ vocabulary improves as does their grasp of current affairs.  Beatty Secondary School teachers have been using drama to teach Tamil.  Teachers create scenarios, which students then act out, creating their own lines and preparing simple props for dramatisation.  Students thus have the opportunity to write, speak and act out scenes in Tamil, which helps build their confidence in the language.  Students are very receptive to such techniques.  Just yesterday, I had the opportunity to catch some Juying Secondary School students performing a skit during an English lesson that was aimed at understanding English idioms.  They later told me that they found these “show and tell” activities a very effective way of learning.  Such activities make lessons more interesting and enjoyable, and as one of them put it to me, help them retain what they have learnt better.  The lesson for us as educators is to find ways to relate to our students, understand what ticks for them, and tailor our lessons accordingly.  These innovations in the classroom make a real difference to how well students learn.