September 2021
In this edition: Bridging the gap between PSLE and beyond, talking about exam results, and Bramble in the news!
Hello everyone, we hope that this email finds you in good health 😊
September was an eventful month for Bramble, as well as for parents and students throughout Singapore! While P6s prepared for PSLE, other primary school students faced the ups and downs of tightened restrictions, HBL, and exams being rescheduled.
In response to these difficult times, we’ve been trying to play our part by creating more helpful tips on social media! Do you follow us on Facebook and Instagram yet?
Highlights from our social media 🤳🏼
You might have caught our signature Bramble trees making their rounds over Whatsapp, in various parent group chats 😉 We were pleasantly surprised to see this post resonate with so many parents! (Click the image below to check out the full post)
We’ve also been posting daily tips to manage HBL on our stories:
… but we’re happy to hear that students will be able to return to their classrooms and be reunited with their friends soon! 🥳
Bramble in the news 📰👀
Aside from our own social media profiles, it’s been a great honour to share our message through national media channels too! Bern and Pin Xiu, who lead our product development, were interviewed and quoted in this Straits Times article:
"Your actions, more than your words, will remind [your kids] that there's more to life than exams."
You can also check out this MOE Press Release to learn more about the Youth Mental Well-being Network, which Bramble has been actively partnering with to launch and conduct parent workshops.
We have a couple more press features lined up in the next few weeks, including radio and newspaper interviews! Tune in on October 22, Friday, at 10.45am to hear Shao Yuan share about Bramble on 938 Live 😄
Talking about results 📝
Of course, beneath the news cycle and the buzz, we have been hard at work developing our app. This month, we worked on a new guided conversation: waiting for exam results 🥶
Our goal was to help parents and kids have a conversation about managing expectations, dealing with disappointment, and celebrating growth & progress no matter what! We deliberately shifted away from the typical questions of: How many marks did you lose? What secondary school can you go to?
Instead, we help parents and kids reflect on questions like: How do you feel while waiting for your exam results? What’s 1 thing you’re proud of yourself for this year? How shall we celebrate this milestone together?
We had 4 parent-child pairs try out this new guided conversation, with positive feedback and experiences! 🤩 Some key takeaways from our experiment:
The reason most parents stress about their children’s exam results is that they worry about their kids’ future prospects.
Some parents had never known what their children’s goals or priorities were, until they had this Bramble conversation! (E.g. what their target secondary school is, or what their dream CCA is)
Kids may have felt shy or hesitant to proclaim something they were proud of themselves for, but were all able to share one thing they used to find difficult but have grown in confidence in 🥰
With just a few more tweaks, this conversation will be ready to launch and pair with our next series of workshops: How to talk to your kids about their exam results!
Upcoming workshops 🍎
We want to support parents and kids at every step of their educational journey – not just in the lead-up to exams, but also when they receive results and figure out their next steps. Our hope is to help parents expand their conversation from grades to growth. 🌱
Through this 1.5h interactive Zoom session, we will help parents reflect on their own experiences and expectations when it comes to their children’s grades, as well as provide practical tips on how to begin a conversation with your kids about what their results mean to them.
Look out for the registration link, which will be made available on all our social media platforms, as well as in our next newsletter!
With that, we wish everyone a wonderful Children’s Day and a good weekend ahead! ☀️ Thank you for your continued and invaluable support ❤️