When people look at my blog, most are tempted to engage my services. I received many queries everyday and most of them are valid concerns. Here are the top 3 most commonly-asked questions about my tuition class:
How can you guarantee results?
The truth is ‘I can’t’.
There are too many factors involved. To tell the truth, I used to naively think I can. However, after six months into giving tuition, I realised that I can’t.
I can raise the motivation of your child. I can teach him all the orthodox methods in learning. I can even set up homework systems to ensure he completes his tuition homework.
However, I am not with the child 24/7. I can only influence the child during the two-hour session. The fact is that the child forms most of his habits and values at home. I cannot change that.
I can promise you that your child will enjoy my tuition. I can promise that I can make learning fun for your child. I can promise that your child will see learning in a different light when he attends my tuition.
You can expect regular updates from me and how your child is doing according to my analysis. You can expect recommended strategies to apply at home for your child.
On your side, you need to grow values like resilience, self-control and integrity in your child. Only with these values, my tuition will be life-changing to your child.
Along the same line, some parents were concerned that they are going to pay a few hundred dollars per month in exchange for a service that is not guaranteed.
For your benefit, I am just telling the plain truth up front. I will try my best to motivate your child and grow self-discipline in your child, but I cannot guarantee that your child will be transformed overnight.
The younger your child starts tuition with me, the easier I can mould the child. When a child is younger, his values are not firmly formed yet and it is easier to influence the growth of his values.
Let me ask you a question. What is the worst case scenario if I should fail to meet your expectations?
It would be just one month of tuition fee.
But, what if I can influence your child and you let go of such an opportunity?
It would be the loss of the service of a good private tutor to help your child reach greater heights.
Weigh them and you will see which one is a bigger loss.
My son is not motivated, will he change after he attends your lessons?
I get this question a lot too. To jump start a cold engine, you need to warm it up first. The beginning is definitely difficult and tedious. I use mainly extrinsic rewards to jump start the motivation in the beginning. Then I transit into intrinsic rewards down the road.
To get to the intrinsic motivation part, it is a very long process.
In my tuition classes, I have not failed to motivate any student before. However, their motivation growth are not the same. Some have grown to become very motivated and self-directed in a very short period of time. Some are growing at a slower pace, but they are getting there. Improving even by a bit is also a victory, isn’t it?
My motivation strategy basically works in three dimensions:
- autonomy on their revision
- visual feedback on their level of mastery of the subject
- learning with a purpose
What differentiates you from your competitors?
If you are reading my blog, you will instinctively know how good I am.
How many private tutors maintain a blog and share their methods?
I share nearly all my techniques in my blog and all my resources in my newsletter. However, it is very not easy to copy what I do exactly.
This is my calling and this is my meaning in life. I teach not because I can. I teach because I must.
If you know me personally, you will know that I had my success in the corporate world. However, that was not my calling.
My calling is to help children love learning.
In my free time, I read about
- child psychology (how children think)
- game theory (what makes gaming addictive)
- children's motivation
- learning and pedagogy
- habits/values creation
- deliberate practice
I incorporate some of the above into my tuition class to make learning more systematic and effective. My lessons are created at a macro level with a final goal and then are translated into individual lessons for each tuition session.
It is time consuming and a lot of work. But, my students love my lessons and they are very reluctant to miss my tuition class.
Lastly, the greatest differentiating factor and your child will feel it:
I teach from my heart.
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(Sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/WDj6j for monthly tips on how to motivate your child to study. A free ebook on writing is included in the newsletter.)
Note: My Saturday slots are all taken up and there are only 2 available slots on Tuesday left. Drop me an email if you are interested about the Tuesday slot. Cheers!
The year is ending soon and those born in 2008 will be going to Primary 1 next year. Have you prepared your child for P1?
Some parents may still believe that there is no need to prepare for P1. However, I beg to differ. P1 is a big change from preschool. Without proper preparation, your child will need to handle both culture shock and academic expectations.
My eldest child formally started his P1 Prep with me in September this year. He is going to P1 next year. There are mainly three key subjects and two non-academic skills I focused on.
The subjects are:
- English
- Math
- Chinese
The skills are:
- buying food at the canteen
- taking down notes in his handbook
English Prep
Basic reading skills are expected at P1. (Read that again.)
We are no longer in the era where the first few difficult words are 'one', 'two', 'three' and 'four'. Nowadays, they learn words like 'croak', 'scream' and 'paddled' in P1. If your child does not have basic reading skills, he is in for a shock. Many words will be difficult for him.
To help the child, I will recommend the following:
- basic phonic skills
- read with the child to boost his reading skills
- make spelling a common thing at home by giving surprise spelling (like in the lift or car)
- watch good children programs which teaches English words to boost his vocabulary (I recommend Alphablocks and Super Why. Search Youtube for them.)
Math Prep
Basic arithmetic skills are expected at P1. Counting to 10 is a very small topic in P1 and it is covered in one or two lessons.
Your child is also expected to learn basic addition and subtraction quickly in the first semester. So, preparing them will help to relieve some stress when they are going through this topic.
To help your child, you can do this:
- use base-10 cubes to introduce counting and addition
- model adding by counting forward
- model subtracting by counting backwards
- make sure your child know what is the meaning of 'sum' and 'difference'
- other important keywords include 'altogether', 'more than' and 'fewer than'
Chinese Prep
For this I am not an expert, but I am very sure that learning Hanyu Pinyin before P1 is very beneficial to the child. So, prepare your child in Hanyu Pinyin for Chinese.
Canteen Skills
A small story here. When I was a teacher, I saw some children struggle to buy food at the canteen. They did not know what is the price of some food and insisted that they have enough money for it at the stalls. Or some were simply too scared to buy food.
Help your child in this by simulating a canteen at home. Prepare paper plates and bowls with cornflakes or biscuits. Put up some prices and give the child some money to buy the food. Do this a few times and your child will be ready to 'attack' the canteen in school.
Note-taking Skills
In my opinion, this was the most neglected skills I saw in P1 students during my teaching days. Most of the children were not able to take down notes from the whiteboard or require a long time to take down the notes.
Help your child by:
- giving him some instructions to copy into a small book everyday (Some examples are "Throw away the used toothpaste tube tomorrow." "Buy a present for Grandma on 30 October." "Bring socks to KidsAmaze on 20 October.")
- giving one-sentence dictation at home
P1 preparation is important and it will help your child tremendously to adapt to the primary school environment.
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(Sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/WDj6j for monthly tips on how to motivate your child to study. A free ebook on writing is included in the newsletter.)
Hi all,
I am finally going to open another slot for tuition. It will be on Saturdays, 10am to 12pm. Location is my house at Toa Payoh Central. Group size is 5 students.
Tuition rates can be found at http://mrdannylim.blogspot.sg/p/tuition-rates.html.
You can contact me at http://mrdannylim.blogspot.sg/p/contact-me.html to book a slot today.
My tuition is customised to your child's needs and it is structured in such a way that it is fun to your child. I incorporated some character-building elements in the program to help your child know that studying is not all about studying.
Remember to email me at http://mrdannylim.blogspot.sg/p/contact-me.html if you are interested.
There are only 3 slots left now!
Cheers!
Mr Danny Lim
Before I start on the topic, I want to share a story with you.
Last week, I was chatting with a friend on Whatsapp. He was lamenting that his son was scoring very low marks for the English written paper. He did not understand because his son loves reading. Basically, apart from watching the television programmes, his son spends most of his time reading in his room.
This was not the first case I came across.
The love for reading is very important. I ignited this love for all my children when they were very young. However, reading can be active and it can be passive too.
Many children read passively because the art of active reading was not taught in school. Grammar and Vocabulary were easy to teach. The skill of active reading requires a lot of time and a lot of effort on the mentor and the students.
I model active reading almost every week in my tuition and I will show you what active reading is in the cloze passage below and it is closely related to all the components of the English Language.
In schools, we break the English Language down into 6 major components:
- Reading
- Writing
- Listening
- Speaking
- Grammar
- Vocabulary
To improve your child's mastery of the language, he MUST practice all the 6 aspects of it. It is like growing a plant. The roots, leaves, flowers and stem all grow together. It is not good to have very big leaves and very small roots.
For my tuition class, I teach all the six components but focus mainly on Reading, Writing and Grammar. They are the most lacking in today's classroom.
To score well in the Cloze Passage section, I recommend the SAP technique.
- Skim through the passage
- Apply Active Reading Skill
- Proofread
Take a look at the following passage. It is taken from a P5 SA2 paper. Skim through it first without filling in the blanks.
The passage is about sea turtles. Some possible words that will come into your mind are
- lay
- tough time
- sea
- many eggs
- digging
- flippers
- crawl for long distances
- every year
At this stage, we are not looking for the right answer. We are activating the background knowledge. This will help to prepare the brain to 'connect the dots' and get ready to fill in the blanks.
Then, we go on to the crucial stage: Apply Active Reading Skill.
Active Reading Skill is the skill to identify the most suitable word class for the sentence before determining the word for the blank.
For beginners, I recommend identifying the are 6 main types of words first.
- Nouns
- Verbs
- Adjectives
- Adverbs
- Conjunctions
- Prepositions
The first blank:
I was walking along the moonlit beach looking for nesting turtles. Having to complete a project on it, I had to observe and record their habits and behaviours over a __________ of three months.
The clue here is 'three months' and we are looking for a noun to talk about the duration here. Hence, the word is 'period'. A period of three months.
Second blank:
I was watching the shore intently when my eyes suddenly __________ sight of one of these gentle giants emerging slowly from the water.
The clues here are 'watching' and 'sight'. What is the phrase that is similar to watching and has the word sight in it. The blank is most probably a verb phrase.
The phrase is 'catch sight of'. The passage is in the past tense and hence the correct form of the phrase should be 'caught sight of'.
Third and fourth blank:
I had accidentally startled one of them __________ my previous trip there and the sea turtle smashed some of its own eggs by __________.
The clue is the relationship between the action 'startled one of them' and 'my previous trip there'. Here, we need a preposition. The answer should be on my previous trip there.
Then we look at the the fourth blank. The author is trying to describe how the turtle smashed its own eggs. That means we are looking for something to describe the action, which is an adverb. By accident would be most appropriate here.
Last two blanks:
This time, I was cautious when moving towards the sea turtle so as not to scare it away. As I inched __________, I realised that its rear flippers had been completely torn off! __________ them, it would be painful for the sea turtles to dig its nest.
Next, we look at the fifth blank. The author is trying to describe the action of inching, which means, it should be an adverb. The other clue is the phrase 'moving towards' in the previous sentence. Combine both clues and you will most probably be looking at inching closer.
Finally, we look at the last blank. First, we look at the word 'them'. What is the author referring to? They were referring to the rear flippers in the previous sentence and there had been torn off. If the flippers are gone, that means the turtle would not have any flippers. Hence, the word here should be a preposition. The word without would be most suitable here.
Then, we apply the P in SAP: Proofread the passage. This will confirm the suitability of all words and help the student check his work.
After making notes, the passage should look like this.
By now, you will have a rough idea what Active Reading is. It is actually actively seeking out the relationships between the words and sentences. It is uncovering of the big picture before drilling into the details.
You can see from here that Cloze Passage is not about just filling in the blanks or doing a lot of worksheets. It is really about Grammar and Vocabulary. It is really about skill.
Linking back to my story at the beginning of this blog post, I told my friend that a child can read passively without thinking about the relationships of the words. Hence, it is not the quantity of reading that we should look at. It is the quality of reading that we should emphasise on.
However, Active Reading is a very time-consuming skill to teach and it requires the teacher to be first adept in the skill. Therefore, I won't be surprise if you have never heard about it until now.
Before I end, I leave you with a thought: Will Active Reading also help in Writing and Open-Ended Comprehension?
I will write more on it in my future blog posts. Stay tuned!
I hope this post has been helpful to you. Please click on SHARE on Facebook to share this post with your friends.
(Sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/WDj6j for monthly tips on how to motivate your child to study. A free ebook on writing is included in the newsletter.)
