Is Tuition only about doing Worksheets? Or is there more to Tuition?

Is Tuition only about doing Worksheets? Or is there more to Tuition?

Cognitive skills, News, Opinion, Tuition
By Mr Kwok Recently, we have received many queries from parents about our teaching methods. Do we just give out worksheets to our students to complete, mark and return to them? How are our lessons structured? Do we give homework - how often and how much? Do we give our students a break in our lessons? Understandably, these are reasonable questions in the minds of parents before they sign their children up in any tuition centre. I will attempt to answer them in this post and in the process, provide a clearer picture to the reader of how we teach. (You may also check out Our Teaching Philosophy here.) Using Worksheets as a Complementary Tool in our Tuition Lessons We do not simply throw out worksheets to our students to…
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An Underrated Teaching Method that Few Teachers Talk About

An Underrated Teaching Method that Few Teachers Talk About

Cognitive skills, Opinion
By Mr Kwok Recently, I was engaged in some self-reflection on my professional journey from wayyy back till now. My entire career has been built on education in many different forms to a diverse variety of learners. As I was musing on my experiences, one question popped up, "If I am to choose a teaching method that gives the most bang for my buck, what will that be?" Thankfully, the answer did not take long to materialise. Mind Mapping as a Learning Tool I have discussed about mind mapping before in previous posts - Achieving a Powerful Memory (Part 1): A Method Excellent Teachers (and Students) use, The Most Functional Way to Remember School Stuff (REALLY) and others. In its typical application, the learner is supposed to make use of…
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The History of Water Quality in Singapore: Talking about Science from a Historical Perspective (or is it History from a Scientific Perspective)

The History of Water Quality in Singapore: Talking about Science from a Historical Perspective (or is it History from a Scientific Perspective)

Uncategorized
By Mr Kwok I recently had the privilege to be invited to provide a training session to the docents of the National Museum of Singapore. The topic was on the history of water quality in Singapore. Admittedly, history has never been my forte since my secondary school days. In fact, I used to thumb my nose at the subject. However, water quality is and it has always been my pleasure to share about this topic with all manner of audience and even from a historical perspective. Click here for the full video of the talk. Some Surprising Facts about Water Quality in the Past of Singapore Well water was used by the majority of the population in post-Raffles and pre-Independence Singapore. Contrary to the perception of well water being cleaned…
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The Good Student that You may not even know is there

The Good Student that You may not even know is there

Uncategorized
By Mr Kwok This post is a follow-up from the last, Why do students perform poorly in their studies: Getting to the heart of the matter. It acts as a positive counterfoil to the negative factors mentioned in that post. In contrast to a student who performs poorly due to a lack of heart, a student who performs well is simply the antithesis - someone putting heart into his work. Many times, we as educators feel exasperated when our students perform poorly despite our best intentions and efforts. Other times, we celebrate when other students perform spectacularly well, possibly exceeding our expectations. 2 Different Groups of Good Students For the latter group, how often do we see advertisements announcing their achievement of getting an A grade after initially failing in…
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Why do students perform poorly in their studies: Getting to the heart of the matter

Why do students perform poorly in their studies: Getting to the heart of the matter

News, Non-cognitive skills, Opinion, Tuition
By Mr Kwok This is a continuation of our earlier post, A Checklist of Reasons Why Students Perform Poorly – Are you looking at the right ones?. In it, we discussed the various reasons that could have led to a student's poor performance. They are all important reasons no doubt but the more we reflect upon them through the lens of our teaching experiences, the more convinced we are that a recurring reason stands out. As in Lord of the Rings, it is the one ring that controls the other Rings of Power. It is also our belief that when this single most important factor is rectified, all other issues will fall into place like a chain of dominoes. What is this all-important factor then? The heart of the matter…
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Live Webinar: Myopia – What You Need To Know (4 Jun 2022, Sat, 1000-1200)

Live Webinar: Myopia – What You Need To Know (4 Jun 2022, Sat, 1000-1200)

News
By Mr Kwok After talking to optometrists and parents in the past 2 years, anecdotal evidence points to a rising trend of myopia (shortsightedness) in our school going children. Perhaps this should not be so surprising given the wide use of home based learning during the various covid-19 episodes in the same period. The use of computers and mobile devices have been linked to myopia due to focusing the eyes for close work which is further exacerbated by the long duration of such work. In addition, both the circuit breaker and well meaning parents discourage children from unnecessary forays out of the house to avoid the dreaded infection. Unfortunately, this also limits their outdoor activities which are supposed to delay or even negate the onset of myopia. Is there still…
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Why Science is the Most Interesting Subject

Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Science, Tuition
"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."— Albert Einstein By Mr Kwok In Science, one of our favourite quotes is shown above. We always stress to our students that there are gaps between textbook knowledge and real life applications so it pays to get hands-on to have a firm grasp of the subject matter. Therein lies the reason why Science is the most interesting subject - hands-on work in Science engages the learner like no other subject can. How often do you get to apply the theories you learned at so many different levels - visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory and even taste (if you are working on Food Science)? Establishing these many connections among various centres in the brain can only enhance long term…
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Some Thoughts about Teaching on Teachers’ Day

Some Thoughts about Teaching on Teachers’ Day

COVID-19, Online Teaching & Learning, Opinion
By Mr Kwok Teachers' Day has come and passed. Like Christmas Day and New Year, this special day presents an opportunity for us to reflect on our actions as teachers and teaching as a profession. My reflections below are not exactly fresh insights. Others have written about similar ideas in the past while others will continue likewise in the future. Teaching as a profession will no doubt persist as long as civilisation exists but it is always a good thing to remind ourselves once in a while of what it means to be teachers. Those of us providing tuition services, whether as home tutors or tuition centres, are no more or no less teachers compared to our peers in mainstream schools. Despite differences in job scope, teaching with all its…
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The Most Functional Way to Remember School Stuff (REALLY)

The Most Functional Way to Remember School Stuff (REALLY)

Cognitive skills, Opinion, Revision, Science
By Mr Kwok It has been more than two years since I posted Achieving a Powerful Memory (Part 1): A Method Excellent Teachers (and Students) use. Till now, Part 2 has yet to be published and perhaps never will be. One of the reasons lies in the onslaught of unprecedented changes in the outside world forcing us to scrape what little time we have to make the necessary responses - in short, Covid-19 has happened. Just as importantly, I have reflected and researched a bit over the past two years about the issue of content retention i.e. memory. We have seen often enough how seemingly cognitively capable students fail miserably all because they could not regurgitate the correct content at the right time. On our end, we continually grapple with…
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A New Normal? Some Things in Education Never Change

A New Normal? Some Things in Education Never Change

Opinion, Tuition
The 8 “C”s of Teaching COVID-19 has been with us for more than a year. The term, New Normal, has been used over and over to tell us that we have entered a new era in which we have to adopt a new mindset (think online learning) as the old ways no longer work (say congregating together for a practical session in a packed laboratory). However, the more “New Normal” plays like an overused jingle in various media, the more I ponder on the things that do not change, especially in the field of education. These are the principles that endure the test of time, notwithstanding the technologies of time and place. I first came across The 8 “C”s from my mentor when I started out as an educator. These…
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