Cognitive skills Archives - iMatter Learning Centre. Tuition Centre in Yishun. Small class size

08Feb 2024 by Principal

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…

15Sep 2023 by Principal

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…

20Aug 2021 by Principal

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…

31Mar 2021 by Principal

A Checklist of Reasons Why Students Perform Poorly – Are you looking at the right ones?

Cognitive skills, English, Non-cognitive skills, Opinion, Tuition

Over here in iMatter, we make use of this simple checklist to evaluate our students against their performance in school. Through discussions with our students about their learning, It enables us to at least have a grasp of the possible issues they are grappling with. Though this post is aimed at students performing poorly, it can very well be used as a checklist to explain why students excel in school by reversing the viewpoints below. (We have a longer and more descriptive version of this checklist guest posted at Singapore's Finest website. It includes several suggestions on how some of these reasons can be managed.) A Caveat Many factors/reasons tend to overlap one another and determining the underlying cause(s) may not be easy as the obvious reason may not be…

08Nov 2019 by Principal

Join our Enrichment Programmes in Nov/Dec School Holidays!

Cognitive skills, English, Enrichment, Math, News, Non-cognitive skills, Revision, Science

Our Enrichment Programmes are designed for students to be away from their studies and learn new knowledge and skills, both academic and non-academic. They are open to both our centre’s regular students and any other students of the right academic level. The following programmes are scheduled to run on the given dates. Click on each of them for fees and further information. Call or WhatsApp us at 8768 6497 or Email us at info@imatter.com.sg to register. English Creative Writing for Upper Primary Students (23-24 Nov)Secrets of Studying Smart for Secondary Students(11 Dec)Design Thinking for Solving Problems in Real Life for Secondary Students (2 Dec)Water Quality Monitoring Field Trip for Secondary Students (12 Dec)Biodiversity Survey Field Trip for Upper Primary Students (11 Dec) Primary 6 PSLE Math Preparatory Course (17-19 Dec)…

23Sep 2018 by Principal

Education Minister: Going for more fun and passion but also critical thinking and soft skills

Cognitive skills, Enrichment, News, Non-cognitive skills

Education Minister: Going for more fun and passion but also critical thinking and soft skills Bloomberg: … “A transformation towards an economy that is more innovation-driven, that is more productivity-driven.” Ong’s chief responsibility -- the local education system -- is a key to Singapore’s labor needs and economic transformation. “We need to use an inquiry-based approach to teach students how to exercise critical thinking,” he said. “It used to be ‘knowledge is power.’ Now, power is knowing what knowledge to ignore, and what to take in, and decide for yourself.” Updated on 28/9/18: I still believe that content should be trimmed down in MOE curricula to allow time and space for critical thinking and other higher order skills e.g. dreaming. At the end of the day, how much content do…

11Sep 2018 by Principal

Cognitive vs. non-cognitive skills for the student

Cognitive skills, Non-cognitive skills

How important are cognitive vs. non-cognitive skills for the student? "Enough research has been done to let us know what makes some students more successful than others. Surprisingly, it isn’t in-born intelligence or a high IQ. Sure, those things make learning easier, but they don’t guarantee success. Instead, it’s the students who have non-cognitive skills like perseverance, self-control, and grit who are most likely to succeed, whether online or offline." Students, take heart, especially those who feel that you are not intellectually endowed, no matter how true that really is. Work on your perseverance, self-control and grit. These can enable you to go far not just in your studies but in life. All the best!