IN - Speak Up Reflections! 2026 by SHPS Padlet

Sentence Starters

shpspad — 2025-08-20 06:47:10 UTC

Focus Article

shpspad — 2025-09-19 10:08:45 UTC

ACTS Questions

shpspad — 2025-09-19 10:11:26 UTC

Zhou Xiao (5/6 Faith)

2026-05-13 07:06:13 UTC

This article is about different uses of assistance dogs. They can help people with a range of disabilities including visual impairment, hearing impairment, mobility issues and autism. In Singapore, only guide dogs for the visually impaired, sometimes called seeing-eye dogs, have full access to public spaces. Assistance dogs are needed to do more than just helping the visually impaired as there are many other people who need assistance dogs. A challenge K9Assistance and GDS face are that some people are not willing to accept guide dogs. I think the public should view assistance dogs as helpers and not something not nice. The next time I see an assistance dog, I will not laugh at it or harm it but just walk away.

Matthew Leow Enyi, 6/5 Truth

nicknacks891 — 2026-05-14 12:15:00 UTC

This article teaches us about the importance of dogs in our lives. Whether it's helping the blind, the autistic, or the deaf, these canines are there to help. GDS and K9Assistance have taken the first step in pairing these helpful animals with people. Even though the going was rough at the start, these organisations kept pushing for dogs. Displaying our school values of live humbly and strive resiliently, we can all learn from them.

Tay Jia Ying Karylle P6/3PEACE

tay_jia_ying_karylle — 2026-05-14 13:52:54 UTC

This article covers guide dogs who are trained to help people with a range of disabilities, such as the visual impairment, hearing impairment, mobility issues and autism. Other than helping the visually impaired people in the community they also help the people with mobility issues by retrieving dropped items, opening doors and pressing lift buttons. There are also hearing dogs that are trained to alert people who are deaf or hard of hearing to important sounds such as doorbells, alarms or someone calling their name. Autism assistance dogs that support autistic individuals by providing grounding, reducing of anxiety, supporting emotional regulation, and assisting with safety in public environments. Although K9Assistance advocates for the use of wider range of assistance dogs, its community partnerships and communications executive Jeslinder Kaur said it was not yet paired other types of assistance dogs. This is because there is a lack of formal recognition for the other types of assistance dogs that would allow them to work in public spaces. I think assistance dogs should be treated with care and not to be touched when they are in action as it may distract the assistance dogs and put the handlers at risk. The public should welcome assistance dogs and accept them as they are doing their duty. The next time i see a assistance dog i would not pet them or talk to them to avoid them getting my attention and getting distracted. I would also warn the people around me not to pet or touch these assistance dogs as it may distract them.

In conclusion, i think that these canine companions are helpful to the people with special needs. In my opinion, i like the dedications of these animal to help those people with special needs.

Caius Yap Kai Yi (5/8 Grace)

caius_yap_kai_yi — 2026-05-15 10:29:04 UTC

As the saying goes:" Dogs are man's best friend." I watched a video about the smartest dog in the world. It is able to remember the names of 1000 toys! It also knows the difference between a noun and a verb. Scientists say that it has the same IQ as a 2 year old child, which is impressive for a dog.

Chen Zhiheng, P6/7 Hope

2026-05-25 11:12:04 UTC

This article talks about the importance of guide dogs to some people with disabilities, like visual impairment, mobility issues, hearing impairment, and/or autism, and that more awareness about them is needed.

I think that assistance dogs also help people other than the visually impaired. For example, apart from helping people with visual impairment, they help people with mobility issues, hearing impairment, and autism too. Guide dogs help people with mobility issues by retrieving dropped items, opening doors, and pressing lift buttons. They also help people with hearing impairment by alerting the aurally impaired to important sounds such as doorbells, alarms, or someone calling the aurally impaired’s name. Guide dogs also help people with autism, by providing grounding, reducing anxiety, supporting emotional regulation, and assisting with safety in public environemnts.

Organisations like K9Assistance and GDS do face challenges when seeking to introduce more assitance dogs into the community. For instance, the formal recognition of other types of guide dogs has yet to develop, and as the process of choosing, training, and finally matching a guide dog takes a long time and is quite extensive (and expensive, for that matter), it is not easy to introduce an assistance dog for the visually impaired, let alone an assistance dog for other purposes.

I personally feell that assistance dogs should be treated with at least basic respect by the public. We should also not make things harder for the people that are being assisted by the guide dogs. This means that we should not distract the guide dogs by calling to them or by their names, petting them, feeding them, or attempting to handle them. The next time I meet an assistance dog, I will not distract it, and if I really have to do something to it or offer help, I will speak to their handlers first and get permission.

In a nutshell, this article was about guide dogs, and we need to respect and not distract guide dogs. Organisations like K9Assistance and GDS face challenges, and I feel that there is a need for assistance dogs to do more than just helping the viually impaired in our community.