School Teachers Working as Tutors

[babycutie71]

snoopy:

We are quite similar !!! :lol: My \"study time\" with my boy is from 730-9pm daily! My tutor is from a neighbourhood school. I scream at my boy because he makes the same silly mistakes over and over again.... :x If I don't exert pressure on him, he doesn't bother to register it in his head! If your tutor is good, do recommend to me! I am actually looking for someone to coach my kid in eng, esp compo writing/creative writing & comprehension.

Ok. I will monitor the tutor and let u know if she is good.

[lostlostmom]

Hi babycutie71,


How’s the tutor? What is her approach in coaching your child for Compo and compre? Does she goes to your house?

[doratheexplorer]

i was going through this thread and thought of pouring my worries and concern for my son. I am a ftwm and once i come back home i got to prepare dinner for my family and by the time i wash up and settle their dinners its almost 9pm. My son is P1 morning session and has to wake up at 6.20am, not an ez task so i feel lost, when and where to start teaching him when i don even have the time to change my clothes or even sit down to drink or let alone talk to my kids abt their sch happenings. I feel awful that i have not been communicating to them already and i think my son's sch work and test results have not be even good to speak. :imdrowning: what do i do. now i am thinking of doing up a timetable like a project management sort. eg subtraction chap revise from feb 3 to feb 20. 21 feb test.....has any1 done this kind of timetable before, can help give me a sample to follow.

[autumni76]

It's the teaching style of teacher and learning style of child that is a major factor whether the teacher is suitable for the child.


For example, if a child learns best by visuals, matches with a tutor that teaches by auditory, then of course the amount the child can absorb is little.

It also depends on the stage that the child is in.
For instance, for Maths, we move from concrete to pictorial then to abstracts (numbers). The tutor needs to match the teaching methods to the stage the child is in to help him/her move forward.

Another factor is of course confidence level of the child.

Other skills like time-management, organisation skills all need to be taught (via daily life events) slowly to help the child improve in the studies.

When it comes to Maths for middle to fast learners, it is good to enrol into small group tuition. (4 in a group would be a good number).
For slow learner, it is better to engage individual tuition.

10% of knowledge is retained in the memory when knowledge is transferred via auditory.
20% by visual.
70% by kinesthetics. (That's why peer-tutoring under teacher's guidance is good for permanent memory input).

English has several components.
Honestly, an amount of about 20 mins of reading together with your child each day, helps to improve reading skills (which is the most basic foundation).
Then again, a child needs to see the same word at least 18 times to get some memory about the word (if it's new to them).
Kids with phonics background or able to decipher words easily will be able to remember the spelling faster.

There're many other factors affecting a child's learning. Sometimes, when a child is not ready to learn, he just won't. But once he's ready to learn, nothing stops his hunger for knowledge.

Finally, praise the child when he/she does something desirable. For example, he remembers to write something important.

[hdblue]

kiasu_mum75:

yes...school teachers are NOT allowed to teach in tuition centres because that is a form of \"outside employment\"... cannot be take $ for moe and take $ from tuition centre boss right? haha.

Thanks for sharing. I have got some my ideals.

Apart from that, you also can ref more resources at: http://keyperformanceindicators.info/teacher-kpi/

Best rgs.

[madmaths]

snoopy:

We are quite similar !!! :lol: My \"study time\" with my boy is from 730-9pm daily! My tutor is from a neighbourhood school. I scream at my boy because he makes the same silly mistakes over and over again.... :x If I don't exert pressure on him, he doesn't bother to register it in his head! If your tutor is good, do recommend to me! I am actually looking for someone to coach my kid in eng, esp compo writing/creative writing & comprehension.

pressure dont make us do the right thing, esspecially for kids, it makes them do the most natural thing, even if it is wrong. knowing certain grammar rules doesnt mean the child will naturally know what to do. it may seen so stupid to us to not learn such a simple thihng but in the child's perspective, he is also thinking why are you getting so upset over such a small thing?( like a spelling mistake) :scratchhead:

[jamestancx997]

The vast majority of tutors out there do not teach with a system in mind, and hence their tuition lacks direction and FOCUS.


A lot of them are also, frankly, unable to teach the subject properly.

Seriously, parents, I know the kind of people teaching your kids right now in schools. I know many of them personally. Just because someone is MOE or ex-MOE does not necessarily mean he or she is going to be a good tutor for your child. I know the good ones who were my peers before, and I can count them on the fingers of one hand, compared to the ones who seriously are incompetent.

A moment’s thought will make this clear: if MOE/NIE training is so credible, then why is Singapore a tuition nation? Why are the students having trouble in school in the first place with various subjects? Who are the people who are actually teaching in MOE right now?

I will now share my very frank answer to all that, because this is something people really need to know. I have a 1st Class Honours degree. I also have a track record of pulling up students’ failing grades to As in record time. So I have the knowledge, and I have the teaching ability. Most – not all! – but most of the people that MOE has been accepting all this time are the ones who get Cs in university where I get As. They pass with a normal degree, and some in fact don’t even have a degree. When they come out into the schools to teach, is it any wonder their teaching is substandard?

So, I just want to ask, why do you parents still think that being MOE-trained is still necessarily a marker of credibility? Also, some parents I have encountered clearly overestimate their ability to judge the merit of the tutor.

It’s worked to my favour before, but I would still always get a slightly bad taste in my mouth, when the tutor I replace is denigrated a bit unfairly by the parent. Honestly, parents, tutors do not claim to be experts in your own fields, so when you engage them, why do you claim to be able to judge if they are "any good"? Unless of course your own background is in education, but a parent who uses only the Singlish patois is clearly not in such a position.

[pixiedust]

jamestancx997:

..So, I just want to ask, why do you parents still think that being MOE-trained is still necessarily a marker of credibility?...

I speak for myself : because I expect a MOE-trained aka NIE-graduate teacher, to have knowledge of CURRENT PSLE syllabus and marking guidelines. Period. This, to me, is especially important for LANGUAGE componets eg. EL and CL compos.

[jamestancx997]

Hi pixiedust,


That is considerably less important than one might think for Language components at the PSLE level. It would be extremely relevant for topics such as GP, or other humanities subjects where the focus undergoes a sea-change from time to time, e.g. History, Social Studies, etc.

The exam requirements for languages, however, take considerably longer to change in a significant way, because language itself takes very long to evolve. If someone is good at English, he or she will score well, regardless of whether the exam is taken in 1990, 2000 or 2010. The minor alterations to the marking scheme are completely negligible, even for GP. If you knew of someone who took the exam in 2001 and won an Angus Ross prize, do you suppose that if today he or she were to write another GP essay, it would not be of a similarly high standard?

This "time-sensitive" component is very much overrated, especially when weighed against the reality that firstly, MOE teachers are generally harassed and overworked, and thus unlikely to prove the best tutors one could find for the money; and secondly, that in many cases, the MOE system is the cause of the problem in the first place.

I was very lucky. I came under the tutelage of perhaps the single best GP tutor in the whole of Singapore. My other schoolmates in JC were not so lucky. Whenever I compared my notes to theirs, I would feel a strong pang of sympathy, that was how bad some of that "official" teaching material could get.

[Chenonceau]

I beg to differ on 2 points.


(1) Compos are marked according to some very rigid criteria that one must know. Not all good writing consistent with the slow changing rules of the language will score well. Many parents are handicapped in not knowing these rigid marking criteria.

(2) Whilst language takes time to evolve, exam boards can ratchet up expectations very quickly. It is still the same language, but fast changing expectations.

Having 2 kids go through the system, I can't help but note that PSLE standards are as dynamic as the Dow Jones, with the difference that the Dow Jones often drops but the PSLE standards don't.

But I do agree that MOE teachers dunno how to teach writing. I am not an MOE teacher but I am able to teach writing. I just need to know the marking criteria and that is not difficult to find if you keep bugging the school. My son's English Teacher write sentences like \"I hope XXXXX fairs better next time.\"