"Is your child an F1 racer or a normal car driver?"

Actually, it does not matter.

If you are a F1 racer, do you step on the gas from the beginning to the end? Or logically, you will brake at certain times for certain bends and go full throttle on straight roads?

For normal car driving, all the more you will not travel at 100km/hr all the way to your destination. You will need to stop due to traffic lights, slow down when taking turns, stop for pedestrians, etc.

What I am trying to illustrate here is, if you can drive your car according to the various conditions given to you, don't you think that learning also has to adapt to the various conditions of education?

For non-exam periods, you will want a faster pace of learning. This is the same as straight roads. Drive through all the way. The logic behind this is that your child's brain is not stressed by timelines of exams. Hence, the higher effectiveness in learning and transferring knowledge to longer memory.

For exam periods, you will want a slower pace of learning for your child. This is akin to sharp bends. High stress levels, time pressures and peer pressure give your child less edge to learn more. Hence, if he has gone 'full throttle' at the non-exam periods, the exam periods should be reviewing and reflective learning.

This might be going against the norm of 'cramming during exams', but if this works, I don't see any reason of not adopting this approach to learning. At least, this is what I tell all my private tuition students. To be able to cruise through exam periods is the biggest incentive for any child to learn more now.

No matter if your child is a F1 racer or a normal car driver, you will need to help him formulate the right strategies for the right road conditions.

(^_^)

"Does Your Child Have A Fishing Rod?"

I have heard so many times that education is about teaching someone to fish instead of giving that someone fish to eat.

But, somehow the statement is not complete. For my students, I coach them not only to fish, but also coach them to make better fishing rods to catch bigger fish. And, I encourage them to go beyond rods for catching fish. If they are more proficient with nets, then use nets. If they are more proficient with fishing boats, then use fishing boats. There are so many ways of catching fish....

And, even beyond all these. I encourage them to think beyond fishing. Maybe selling some extra fish? Maybe keeping the extra fishes and built a fishfarm? Maybe going into other products that is related to fish? There are so many other things to do with fishes other than to eat them....

What I am illustrating here is that students do not have only one way of learning. Some learn better by reading articles. Some learn better by listening. Some will be by pictures. And many more.

In addition, learning should not be contained in one form only. When they learn about geography, they can learn about physics too. When they learn about literature, they can learn about history too. Learning should be inter-connected and not segregated.

Is your child using his most effective methods of catching fish?

If not, let me know if I can help. My email is thelightbulbeffect@gmail.com

New Time Slots Open!!!

To all parents and students out there, I have new time-slots available for private tuitioning! As final exams are nearing, I have freed up more time slots to help students run this final lap. But, still there are limited time-slots. Hence, please email me at thelightbulbeffect@gmail.com to avoid missing out on this.

Let create The Light Bulb Effect for your child......

^_^

"Can You Fill Your Child With A Lot Of Information?"

"The mind is not a vessel to be filled in, but a fire to be ignited. - Plutarch"

The above quote has always been one of my principles in creating the light bulb effect in any of my students. Spoon-feeding is always bad. It saves time. But, it is not good for both the teacher and the student.

Imagine a butterfly breaking out of its cocoon. If we help to break the cocoon, the butterfly can come out in a matter of seconds. But, the butterfly will be unable to fly forever. This is because the process of breaking out of the cocoon forces blood to its wings and caused its wings to have strength. When we 'help' to break the cocoon, what we are going to have is a crawling butterfly.

The same is for the student. If we spoon-feed the student, he can absorb very fast. But, he will be robbed of the skill to gather meaningful information for himself. He will have to rely on all his future teachers to spoon-feed him. If not, his mind cannot absorb. And it will cause him to be very reliant on ready information in his future endeavors. Not very good for the child, ya?

I think our job is not to fill up the child's mind, but creating the interest in him to acquire knowledge and application of that knowledge.

Think about it.

Don't 'help' the butterfly to break out of its cocoon.

(^_^)

"But my Teacher is no good. She don't know how to teach me."

Funnily, I heard my student telling me this before. He shifted the whole responsibility of learning to the teacher. Kids nowadays are not stupid, you know? They learned how to shift responsibility at a very young age.

When the student told me this, I agreed with him. And, I kept quiet for a while to let my stand sinked into his brain. He looked exasperated. I gave him the 'i totally know what you mean' look.

Then he said, "So, I am not to blame for my poor results."

I kept quiet again and looked at him.

A few minutes after the silence:

Me: "Is the whole class getting poor results?"
Him: "Yes. Mostly."
Me: "Then it is good."

I kept quiet again.

Him: "Good?"
Me: "Yes, i think it is good."
Him: "How come?"
Me: "This is the time where a mature student will stand out in the crowd and get very good grades. Do you think you are a mature student?" (This student always think that he is very mature.)
Him: "Of course. I am mature for my age."
Me: "Then you are going to score for your exam this year."
Him: "Er. How? I am having a bad teacher here."
Me: "Everyone in your class shares the same teacher, isn't it? So, they will all be taught poorly and get poor results. Imagine now, you just work a little harder to understand the subject better and bingo, you are way ahead of your class. You have something that they don't have."
Him: "What?"
Me: "Maturity."

It is not easy to cover the curriculum outside school hours, but a motivated student can learn at astonishing rates.

Is your child motivated to learn EVEN if he/she has a bad teacher?

(Although I am not taking in anymore students currently, feel free to email me at thelightbulbeffect@gmail.com to discuss about anything. ^_^)

"Does Your Child Practise Selective Learning?"

A few years back, I was tutoring this kid. My first impressions of him was good. He was fairly bright and quick to learn.

However, his grades were no good.

I took a while to notice his problem. His problem was that he did not know what are the important facts to remember in an exam or test. His teacher emphasized on everything in the textbook. Emphasis on EVERYTHING means NOTHING was emphasized at all. To help him, I re-taught him the lessons with the correct emphasis. This was especially important for him in Science and English. Soon, his grades began to improve.

(My other methods of teaching him were very different from conventional teaching. You can find an article on it here.)

To teach a child effectively, there must be focus. When I tutor any kid, I ALWAYS asked him/her to summarize one lesson into a sentence. That sentence is the minimal that the child should learn. All other information will be building blocks on that basic unit of information. In this way, your child can recall information easier by just knowing a centre piece of info.

And out of all the information in the textbook, there must be some that are more important and more applicable than the rest. And, my job as a tutor is to identify those important ones and imprint them in my students.

Is your child practising selective learn?

It surely beats memorizing the whole textbook.

For more information on private tutoring lessons, please email me at thelightbulbeffect@gmail.com.

"Is Your Child Being Speed Taught?"

Everyone hears of speed reading, speed learning, speed memorizing, etc. Has anyone heard of speed teaching before? It is a very important aspect of teaching. It enables your child to learn in a faster and more efficient manner.

The keyword again: PREPARATION.

Only by preparing your teaching materials beforehand can enable full power of Speed Teaching. And to different children, different materials are needed. But overall, the following are some of the materials that I use:

1. Picture and graphics
2. Speech and sounds
3. Mini Interactive Computer Programs
4. Mindmapping (whenever applicable)
5. Reflective Learning (useful for converting short-term memory into long-term learning)

There are more, but I think the above have painted quite a clear picture already. In essence, the above tools are providing a ‘bridge’ to learning. The tools provide another perspective on learning to the child: "Studying IS interesting".

Education nowadays is expensive. But, are you paying for the right quality?

For prices on private tutoring, kindly email me at thelightbulbeffect@gmail.com. Currently, I have really limited time-slots and will take up assignments in Lor Ah Soo and Hougang area only.