Opinion 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…

20Sep 2022 by Principal

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…

10Sep 2021 by Principal

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…

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…

24Apr 2021 by Principal

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…

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…

25Mar 2021 by Principal

Training RGS Teachers for their School’s Learning Journey

Biology, Chemistry, Enrichment, Humanities, News, Opinion, Science

It has always been our stand that education should involve out-of-classroom activities. They expose the student to hands-on work and real life observations not possible to replicate in the classroom. The obvious choice to apply this principle is Science, with its branches of Biology, Chemistry and Physics. However, it can certainly apply to other subjects such as History, Geography, Social Studies and more. Raffles Girls' School (RGS) has brought this principle into practice by organising a series of Learning Journeys to MacRitchie Reservoir for its students. The Learning Journey is loosely based on the ABC Waters Learning Trail @ MacRitchie published by PUB (Public Utilities Board). It involves getting to know Singapore's Water Story, history of the reservoir, the story behind World War II hero, Lim Bo Seng, geography of…

04Dec 2020 by Principal

Parachuting Cats into the Borneo jungle – a cautionary tale for Science

Biology, Chemistry, Opinion, Science, Tuition

This is one of those stories that approach urban myth status. We have not found corroborating evidence to prove the veracity of the story. Interestingly, Singapore is briefly featured in the story. If you have not heard of it, here's a link to an online video. To avoid giving out any spoilers here, we will only touch on the barest of background information. Regardless of how historically correct the story is, we shall focus on the lessons for our readers and students. The story was set in 1950s Borneo where malaria ran rampant. Unfortunately, the solution was not as straightforward as planned and brought about many unforeseen consequences. 4 Lessons from the Story In Science, one of our favourite quotes is from Albert Einstein, "In theory, theory and practice are…

23Sep 2020 by Principal

Are our students out of touch with nature?

Biology, Opinion, Science

Here is our article published in The Straits Times Forum on 23 Sep 2020. Click on the link to continue reading. Over in iMatter, we believe in experiential learning and real life application of knowledge. For example, our Science tuition lessons are always enriched with real life examples, case studies and practical experiments. Read the posts in our News to find out more. The following science tuition programmes are available in our centre. Primary School ScienceLower Secondary School Science'O' Levels Chemistry'O' Levels Biology'O' Levels Physics'A' Levels Chemistry We also run enrichment programmes during the holidays. These include field trips and hands-on activities. (Due to COVID-19, out-of-classroom activities are minimised for the health and safety of our staff and students.) The ubiquitous coconut found in the tropics of which Singapore is…