How To Help Your Child To Achieve Breakthroughs

Hi all,

It has been a while since my last blog post. Many things are happening and I am still adjusting to them.

In this video, I highlight the importance of small continuous improvement for your child and how it can make a big difference in your child's future.

Have fun!

How To Score An Additional 10 Marks In Exams

Many parents shared with me that their children are smart, but very careless in exams. I could not agree more.

This is one of the first things I tackle in my students. Believe it or not, eliminating careless mistakes can bag you at least another 10 marks in examinations.

That means, if your child is getting 80/100, eliminating careless mistakes will help your child score 90/100.

So, how can we do it?

First, we need to dig deep into the child's mindset. There are four main patterns.

-----------------------------------

1. Complacency - "I know my work. There is no need to check."

2. Avoid area of weakness - "I forgot to check Qs 18 (because it was too hard for me)."

3. Anxiety - "Oh no, Tom already finished. I must hurry."

4. Competition - "I am faster than John. Hence, I am smarter than him."

------------------------------------


Then, we need to come up with a system.


Step 1: Neat handwriting and clear working

This is the most important step. If the child has poor handwriting, he would have problems reviewing the working. This will discourage the child from checking. To counter this, train your child to write neatly first.


Step 2: Systematic checking
To check MCQ, show your child how to plug in all the options in the question to check the answer.

To check Math word problems, check that there are no mistakes in the working. Check that the models and steps are correct.

To check open-ended Science questions, check that the keywords are there.

To check the English paper, read and re-read and re-read and re-read. If it sounds strange, it means something is wrong. Check for full-stops too. 


Step 3: Manage the given time

Teach your child not to rush and not to dwell. If the question is too difficult, just move on to the next question first. Come back to the difficult question later.

By right, the time given in any exam paper is sufficient as long as the student does not dwell on certain questions.


Step 4: Show the impact of checking

This is the part where you sit down with your child and go through his past papers and ask him to check. Show him that if he checked, he would have scored more marks.


Lastly, we need to drill this into the child and make it into a habit. For me, I took the longer route. I will do the checking with the child for the first 5 papers. Then, he will show me how he does the checking for the next 5 papers. Monitor the child for a few sessions to see if he does his checking. If the habit did not stick, I will do the checking with him again. It is important that we do the checking with him and not for him.

The actual process is very long. Some students get it within 3 months. Some get it within 6 months. Some still do not get it after one year.

Unlearning a bad habit and starting a new habit is much more difficult than learning a right habit in the beginning.



I hope this little system will help your child bag another 10 marks in the upcoming exams.

Have fun and please share my post!

Stay tuned!

4 Core Skills Of A Good Parent Tutor

Mrs Tan (not her real name) is a stay-at-home mum. She does household chores and fetches her two kids from school everyday. Her older child is in P4 and her younger child is in P1 this year.

I met her at the playground and we started to talk about how difficult it is now to meet good private tutors. She already changed three tutors and she was thinking of teaching her children herself.

However, her children would not listen to her. They have difficulty focusing on their work.

She asked me if my children were like that.

-------------------------------------

Now, I post the question to you, "Are your children like that?"

-------------------------------------

I strongly believe that parents are the best teachers, provided that they know what they are doing. They need to upgrade their teaching skills accordingly.

When I first started teaching as a teacher, I observed countless lessons. I wanted to see what makes an excellent lesson. I wanted to learn the secrets of this trade.

My conclusion:

An excellent teacher delivers excellent lessons.

It may sound absurd but it is true. Normal people just could not deliver excellent lessons. A normal carpenter cannot produce exquisite furniture.

I have seen very good lesson plans carried out by normal teachers. The effect was not even 10% of the original lesson. The person doing the lesson is very important. So much so that the person is even more important than the lesson itself.

Hence, it is not a formula. You cannot walk into a bookstore, buy an assessment book, follow its steps and hope your child enjoy the lesson.

It is simply not so easy.

So now, the golden question:

What makes an excellent teacher?

Those who know me personally would know that I was in the sales line before. I was a good salesman. I discovered that my selling skills was directly linked to my teaching skills.


An excellent teacher possesses the following:

1. Deep content knowledge (Product Knowledge)
2. Good rapport building skills (Rapport)
3. Delivery skills (Presentation Skills)
4. Situational sensitivity (Situational Awareness)



Deep Content Knowledge

This is the first thing the child looks at when you start to teach him. If by standards, you are lower level than the child, the child will despise you. Without respect, it is impossible to deliver any lessons.

Let me give you an example.

Can you list the six characteristics of living things? 

If you can't, how are you going to convince your child to learn it from you (when you don't possess the knowledge in the first place?)

This is the first area you should master if you are serious in helping your child. Do his assessment books before you assign the work to him.


Good Rapport Skills

This is not the same as 'making your child like you'. Many parents establish the fact that if you are a friend to your child, it is more probable that he learns from you.

I beg to differ.

The position you should have is an expert co-learner. You are expert, but you are also learning with him.

To establish rapport, you have to empathise with your child. Let him share his feelings of fear of failure with you. Let him share his feelings of success with you. Let him share his struggles with you.

What you want is not to remove the obstacles, but to provide a real life example on how you have conquered your own obstacles in the past.

Share your past learning experiences in school with him. Share how you struggled with your studies. Share how you planned your revision.


Delivery Skills

This is the part where you make the lesson fun.

Convert the boring lesson into an activity. Look up the Internet for resources and ideas.

In short, change the pen and paper lesson into something more interesting.

However, not all lessons can be converted into activities. For some lessons, an introductory video should be sufficient to kickstart the work.

For this section, the Internet is your friend.


Situational Sensitivity

This is the part where effortless teaching occurs.

Your child looked at a plant dying. Seize the situation to teach 'All living things grow old and die."

He looked at a word 'cries'. Seize the situation to teach 'Verbs and Simple Present Tense."

He noticed that his mana decreased by 14 points when he cast a spell in a game. Seize the situation to teach 'Subtraction'.

This is intricately linked to Content Knowledge. Only when you have a very good grasp on the content, then you can seize the teachable moment.

All the small teachable moments add up to a big boost to your child's understanding. And more importantly, this is the missing link. 

It links what your child is learning to the world around him.

These are the four core skills you should have if you are teaching your own children.

We can only help our children excel when we achieve excellence first.

I hope you benefited from this blog post. Please SHARE!

What Is The Secret Behind Motivating Your Child?

Have you ever looked at your child and think "If only I can push one button to make him 'wake up' and do his work, that will be great."

The good news is: it is very possible and I have done it couple of times. The bad news is: each child has his own time span in achieving this. Some may be very fast. Some may be very slow.

In my day to day tuition classes, there are two things I want to achieve:

1. Help the child in his weaker areas
2. Push the child bit by bit towards the "I want to do my work properly without people nagging at me."

There are generally four stages a child will go through:

Level 1: I don't want to do it.
Level 2: I think I want to do it.
Level 3: I want to do it and I think I can do it.
Level 4: I want to do it because I can do it.

Apart from marking and analysing my students' work, I seek to upgrade the students' level of motivation during each tuition session.

I have a P6 student with me since she was end P4. She had low self-efficacy (meaning she thinks that she cannot do many things) and it was affecting her work. She just refused to try hard enough to achieve the breakthrough. She was borderline passing and failing in her exams then. In her recent Prelims, she got 2 'A's and 2 'B's. I am proud of her because she has improved a lot compared to Day 1.

I am going to use her as a case study for today's write up because I brought her from Level 1 to Level 3 within a span of two years. It was really hard work.


Level 1: I don't want to do it.

Betty (not her real name) came to me before her P4 final year exams and her parents engaged me to help her on Math and Science. She was very quiet and did not bother to ask any questions. The first few lessons were mostly me talking and she just sat there and doodled on the worksheets.

After the first few weeks, I found out that she had very low self-efficacy and refused to try any questions that was slightly beyond her capability. This is bad because she will never improve if she don't try on the slightly more difficult questions.

In my tuition logbook, her scores were always very low and that was scary because she had very little time before her PSLE. There was a lot of content to catch up for both Math and Science.

Transition to Level 2
To upgrade her to Level 2, I told her one success story each week. Each story is always about a child/animal who refuses to try and has big successes after the child/animal decided to try.

My logbook record: "Betty displays no response to the stories."

It was a very trying period to me. There was no visible results for at least 5 weeks.

Then, the breakthrough came.

One day, while I was explaining some science concepts to her. Suddenly, she asked me, "Do you think I can do it?"

That was the breakthrough I was looking for.

I said firmly, "I believe you can do it."

From then on, she tried a bit harder each time she hit a difficult question. Add that all up over a long period of time. Viola! A big jump in her perseverance and results. 

Transition to Level 3
To transit her to Level 3, I celebrated small successes with her. Every time she overcome a difficult question, I would praise her for her effort. Sometimes, it was a smile. Sometimes, it was just me beaming with pride in front of her.

After about 9 months, she finally asked me for more homework during one of the lessons.

That was a breakthrough because she had moved from 'not willing to try' to 'I want to do and practise more'.

This is her current stage now. Time is against us because she will be taking her PSLE this Thursday.

Transition to Level 4
If she stays in tuition with me, I will try this out with her: Setting goals and self-checking on the milestones.

This is the most time-consuming phrase. It takes a lot of coaching and guidance. It takes a lot of 'hands-off' and trust. It takes a lot of rapport built over the last few years. This is a shifu-disciple relationship.


Last thing before I end: Parents! You must strive on! Sometimes, it takes a long time of incubation before your child achieve a breakthrough. If motivation can be built overnight, we will not have so many unmotivated kids around us now.

Stay tuned!

Cheers!
Mr Danny Lim

5 Steps Of A Holiday Revision Program

Holidays are just around the corner! Do you have a plan to bridge all the learning gaps of your child? 

I recommend you to have a holiday revision program with your child. Rather than watching television programs or playing games everyday, it will give some structure and aim to his holidays.

There are 5 steps in coming up with a holiday program.


Step 1: Set a goal with the child

This is the most important step. Without the commitment of the child, it is almost pointless to do a holiday revision program. The way to start this discussion is to discuss the recent exam results with the child.

The two key questions to the child here is "How are you going to improve on your grades?" and "What are you going to give up for this improvement?".

Get the child's commitment and get him write it down on a Post-It note. Some examples might be:

"I will put in my best efforts to learn for 30 minutes a day for 20 days."

"I will complete a past year paper everyday for the next 10 days."

Paste it somewhere where the child will see everyday. Get your child to read it to himself everyday. Remember, you want the child to take over the ownership of this revision program.


Step 2: Teaching

The second step is to design the learning for the child. What type of gaps are you bridging? How are you going to teach the child? Some tools might be:

- textbooks
- guidebooks
- videos
- experiments (for Science)
- mini-projects
- mindmaps
- presentation slides

Do not skip this part. This is the visible input that your child will see from you. This is the portion that makes the holiday program a joint effort rather than an edict by a parent.

The key here is to have fun learning with your child.


Step 3: Deliberate Practice

After learning, we have to practice. For more information on deliberate practice, you can read my blog post at http://mrdannylim.blogspot.sg/2014/09/secret-art-deliberate-practice.html.

Some forms of practice are

- worksheets/assessment books/past-year papers
- online educational games
- process writing
- documenting an experiment (for Science)

Tell the child upfront that this is not going to be easy and it creates a chance to learn the character trait 'perseverance'. 

Encourage your child often that he is doing well and he is putting in effort. Some children require more encouragement at this stage.

Please don't praise your child. 'Well done!' and 'Excellent' mean very little to children.

Encourage them.

'You are almost there!'

'I can see that you are putting on your thinking hat here.'

'A lot of effort today. Giving up now means wasting all the effort you have put in. Come on! You can do it! Strive on!'

Be vigilant here. If the worksheet is too difficult for the child, the child will give up. Incremental difficulty is the key here. Read my blog post on deliberate practice for more information.


Step 4: Testing

Set a way to test your child after the revision program. It should be like a mini-test with marks. This is to measure the result of the program and to provide concrete feedback on how the child is doing.

Some ideas might be:

- past-year paper
- a writing test

Whether your child has done well or not, praise him on his effort. This is positive reinforcement and will set the pace for the next revision program.


Step 5: Reflection

At the end of the program, have a reflection discussion with your child to analyse it. Some questions might be:

- Did we get the results we wanted?
- What went wrong?
- What were the right things that we did?

- Was the length of study too long?
- Was the environment distracting?
- Were the worksheets too difficult?

If you want to guide the child to have a consistent study program during normal school days, ask the following questions:

- Was this revision program useful?
- Do we need to do this only during the holidays?
- Shall we have a plan for 'keeping up' rather than 'catching up'?

Explicitly tell your child that learning can be fun, but deliberate practice to level up can be hard work sometimes.


I will say this again. The success of the revision program hinges on the level of commitment you can get from the child in Step 1.

This incremental improvement can be addictive. If you can get your child to do this consistently, it will become a habit to him and self-regulated learning can be very near!

Have fun learning and enjoy your holidays!

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.)

Self-Discipline: How To Help Your Child Practise It (Part 1)

Today, I will be sharing on self-discipline. If your child has self-discipline, he will be able to make many good decisions. In addition, this trait of self-discipline is beneficial to him even after he grows up.

During my stint as a teacher a year ago, the children who did very well (top 3 positions in the level) were the ones who had a very high level of self-discipline. 

Self-discipline is directly proportional to achievement.

If this is the case, we need to understand what is self-discipline and how we can help our children cultivate it.


What is Self-Discipline

Truthfully, I read many books/blogs on self-discipline. Many did not define self-discipline properly and offers very hazy tips on how to build self-discipline.

In this blog post, I am going to define it very clearly to you and suggest 3 things you can do today to help your child instil self-discipline immediately.

Self-discipline starts with self-awareness. Then, it blossoms into self-control. From self-control, you will have self-management.

To be self-aware, you can try asking your child
- What are you doing?
- How much time have you spent on it?
- Why are you spending so much time on it?

To practise self-control, you can ask your child
- Is this the right thing to do now?
- What should we be doing now?
- How can I help you to start doing the right thing?

To practise self-management, ask your child
- How should we plan the revision for your exam?
- How much time should be spent on playing and studying?
- What are the results you are aiming for?

You have to ask yourself which stage your child is in now and then help him progress from there.

Before we move on, I need to clarify. Self-discipline is not obedience. To obey parents' instructions is an act of obedience and it is not self-discipline. Self-discipline is a higher level than that. The child does the right thing without being instructed to.



Biggest enemy today

The biggest enemy to self-discipline in today's world is instant gratification.

We are too used to having what we want immediately. This short term thinking is very permeated in our society that many people have forgotten long term planning.

This is very dangerous. It is always easy for the child to choose the path of least resistance. Without guidance, the child will continuously choose the easy way. And this will become a habit. Then, it will be very difficult to unlearn this habit.

Short-term gain can cause long-term pain.

To help your child face this enemy, I suggest 3 things you can do today.


3 things you can do now

1. Visual feedback
- take two empty jars
- ask your child to put one red bean in one jar for each minute spent on playing and one green bean in another jar for each minute spent on working
- you can count the beans before giving them to your child
- compare the jars everyday and ask your child what his thoughts are on the number of red beans and green beans

2. Plan and commit
- plan your child's revision/work with him (not for him)
- offer constructive advice (like a consultant)
- revisit the plan weekly to give feedback on what is working and what is not
- short bursts of work here is more advisable than long periods of studying

3. Tell a story
- tell a story on choosing the right thing to do, even when you did not like it
- Grasshopper and The Ant
- The one-legged football player
(http://elitedaily.com/sports/this-one-legged-soccer-players-story-proves-hard-work-and-perseverance-make-anything-possible-video/)
- The little red hen 
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smspKuKqt5c)
- Ask questions like
      - What was the right thing to do
      - Was it easy to do the right thing?
      - What will you do if you are him?
      - How can we apply this to our life right now?

Instilling self-discipline is not easy and it is a very long-term thing. However, it will help your child a lot in his life next time if he has this self-discipline in him.

I talk about self-discipline whenever I can with my tuition students. I share stories and hope they will be inspired to strive for excellence.

I believe all children want to seek out the best in himself. It is how we nurture and guide them to do it that is most lacking these days.



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.)

How To Motivate Your Child When He/She Is Totally Not Motivated - Part 1

My children doing their work

Scenario: You have a kid. He plays the iPad and watches cartoons all day. When you ask him to do his homework, he gives you a disgusted look and procrastinates. Five minutes later, you ask him again and he procrastinates again. You nag and nag until he complies. He does his work quickly (with a lot of careless mistakes) and goes back to his iPad or cartoons.

Question: How motivated is this child?

Answer: This child is super motivated, not in doing the homework of course, but in playing iPad and watching the cartoons.

You have to understand that the child's actions were totally logical to him. His choices were made without restrictions or consequences. No matter what he chooses, life still gets on.

Imagine if you have a choice between work and play. No matter which choice you make, your salary will still be paid into your bank account. 

Very few normal people will choose work. 

I work, there will be money. I play, there will be money too. Why should I choose work?

These are the thought processes in your child's head when he chooses iPad and cartoons.

If your child is exactly what I have described above, you have a very serious problem at hand. The nearer your child is to PSLE, the more urgent the problem.

There are 3 steps that I implement in my tuition to break this mindset and motivate the child in the right things. It is a mixture of methods I learned from various books.

1. Vision Casting to give an overall goal
2. Small Steps to provide a pathway to the overall goal
3. Visual Feedback to provide a view on the current status


1. Vision Casting
The question to ask your child is "Why do you think you need to learn?"

You will be surprised that most of the kids will answer that it is because their parents asked them to. The child has no ownership to learning at all. They are just doing what they are being told to do.

This is the most crucial step and builds the driver for motivation. This is the 'why' in the things that the child does.

- Why did you choose to play iPad?

- Why did you choose to do the worksheets?

It is important to guide the child to give the right answer and not just provide model answer to him. (If not, he is still doing what you tell him to do.)

I use mainly the Socratic Method of asking questions at this point. (The 'why' in the 'why'.) Some questions include:

- Why is playing the iPad enjoyable?
- How is homework different from this enjoyment?
- Why is it that you don't enjoy doing homework?
- Is there a way to make homework enjoyable to you?
- How can we make this better for both of us?
- Why do you avoid hard work?
- Why do you think it is important to have hard work?
- Tell me a story about hard work.
- What will happen if we avoid hard work constantly?

The list goes on and it is really dependent on the child's answer to each question. It can take quite a long time to go through this. I have to emphasise that this is a very important step and it provides the very foundation of the motivation driver. Spend as much time as you need and it should be reinforced from time to time.


2. Very Small Steps

After vision casting, the child will not be magically transformed into a motivated learner. You will need to help the child in the transformation.

In my tuition class, it takes about 6 to 9 months before any results are seen. Some children take longer.

Fix a timing for work. Agree on the timing and get your child's commitment to put in maximum effort during that time slot.

For example, both of you agree that the timing is 7pm. Start in very small time slots. Say five minutes. Before starting, remind your child that he has promised to put in maximum effort during this five minutes.

Praise your child on his effort for focusing. Reflect it in the time chart.

After a week, increase to ten minutes and after a month, increase to twenty minutes. Soon you will have your child doing his work in thirty-minute slots.

But, you have to remember to start very very small. If your child is overwhelmed and give up at this point, all will be lost.



3. Make It Visual

This is very useful because it is a constant reminder that the child's decision has a direct impact on his future.

Set up a big time chart and paste it somewhere where the child will see everyday. It might look something like that:

Set it at 10-minute interval. Track his time spent on various activities for a week. Then, transfer this to a journal after each week. Entries might look something like:

----------------------------------------------------------------
18 to 24 August

Time spent on iPad = 7 hours
Time spent on learning = 1 hour
Time spent on playing toys = 5 hours
Time spent on cartoons = 7 hours
----------------------------------------------------------------

Match this to his exam results and illustrate to him that the amount of time put into his learning directly impacts his results. And his results impact his future.

(At around this point, I would usually spend some time telling stories on the effective use of time.)

Some of the parents might think that this is too much hard work. However, don't you think the effort is totally worth it when your child is motivated on the right stuff?



Some of my friends commented that I am very lucky that my kids are all very self-motivated and self-directed. I can only smile. Now now, what is the probability that ALL my kids are born self-motivated. Who are you kidding? This is not chance. It is all hard work.

It is so easy for children to get motivated in the wrong stuff (iPad/cartoons/games) these days and we really need to set their internal compass correct while we can. It is the least we can do as parents.



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.)

Routine: The Secret To Productivity In Children - Part 1

If I could go back in time to change one thing when I first have Zenith (my eldest son), it would be setting routines earlier than I did. Routines would have smoothened many conflicts between Zenith and me.

I was at one end of the spectrum and my style was army style. I say this and you will do this. I say that and you will do that. You will not argue because I am your parent. How Zenith had suffered when I just started out as a father...


"I say this and you will do this. I say that and you will do that. You will not argue because I am your parent."


The other end of the spectrum is the 'give in to your child in everything' style. If the child wants a biscuit, give it to him/her. If the child wants the iPad, give it to him/her. If the child wants to watch television, turn it on for him/her.

Both extremes are bad. 

The first one will raise a child who will not know how to make decisions and will wait for the parent for EVERY SINGLE THING. The second one will raise a child who is spoilt and self-centred, thinking the whole world will give in to him/her.

To have a routine will eliminate the disadvantages of both the approaches. Routines will help the child understand and predict what is going to happen. Routines will help the child understand that it is not always about them.


"To have a routine will eliminate the disadvantages of both the approaches."



What is a routine?

Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines it as: 

a regular way of doing things in a particular order


It is important to know that a routine is not a timetable. It is the order of tasks that is familiar to the child. Timetable adds stress to the child because the child will need to learn to read the time properly and remember the task tied to the specific timing. 

You will not want your child's attention to be divided when you first introduce a routine. 

Routine is comfortable because the sequence is fixed regardless of the specific time.


Example: Evening Routine

My children are very familiar with the evening routine. They come home, wash their hands, wash their legs and then get ready for dinner. Then, they bathe and they have their playtime. After playtime is reading time or worksheet time. Finally, they get ready for their final beverage (milk) before they go to bed.

We can reach home at 8pm or 10pm. The routine is always the same. The time for each task might be different, but the structure is nearly always the same.


"The time for each task might be different, but the structure is nearly always the same."


Routines are good for your child

1. Routines mean security to the child. The younger the child, the more he/she is afraid of changes.

2. Routines allow the children to be responsible for themselves and their environment. They know they are expected to keep the toys before moving on to the next task. They know they are expected to be ready for shower time after playtime.

3. Routines let the children know what is upcoming and they will mentally prepare themselves for the next task.

4. Routines give the parent a chance to teach time management to the child.

5. Routines free up time for the parent to do other household chores. My children becomes 'automatic' after a while and the routine becomes a natural occurrence. They will do the next task naturally and this helps me to handle other chores like washing the clothes or taking out the trash.


If your child still do not have a routine, I highly encourage you to set one now.

If your child has a routine, what is the routine? Can you share with the rest of us here?

Next blog post: How to set up a proper routine for your child.


(Sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/WDj6j for monthly tips on how to motivate your child to study. A free ebook is included in the newsletter.)