MOE 2015 syllabus- developing a 21st Century Singaporean child (Part 2)

This is eduKate Singapore Tuition Centre’s Child Development Technology for our English, Maths and Science tutorial classes for primary and secondary tutorial classes.

In line with the MOE’s 2015 English Syllabus, we have been developing new structures to teach students to develop them into 21st Century individuals that are gregarious, intelligent and exceptional.

Below is a list that we keep in mind when we teach our students, and also for all parents that are looking to teach a child to be a successful Singaporean in the 21st Century.

Interpersonal Skills

To Interact, Being a Leader and Team Player gets the work done.

  • culturally aware of multi cultural Singapore
  • sensitive to society/political correctness
  • integrate with society
  • take responsibility
  • acknowledge one’s mistakes
  • ability to solve problems of all kinds
  • participate in a team as team member
  • conduct meetings
  • commitment to a promise
  • loyalty to family, friends, company and country
  • form a team and engage effectively
  • be a leader, motivate and give instructions
  • give/receive/appreciate criticism
  • manage time, objectives and resources
  •  negotiate and persuade effectively
  • compromise and agree on best options
  • speak clearly, concisely and logically

Time Management Skills

Studying for the PSLE Syllabus? GCE O’ levels? IGCSE? IB IP Programme? Just had a talk with an MOE officer the other day and an interesting topic came up regarding time management skills of students. She said that in general, the most improved students came from those that instilled some skills on prioritising their work and studying time before attempting their exams. It is an essential studying skill that once inculcated into a habit, will improve grades and in general, the work efficiency of the student.

That brings me to write this article. Managing time effectively helps you to get your studies in order and into sharp focus. So here’s some tips and tricks that you can employ to great effect.

eduKate Tuition Class PSLE Syllabus Primary 6 English Tuition at Tampines
eduKate Tuition Class PSLE Syllabus Primary 6 English Tuition at Tampines

Prioritise: 

What is important to you? Sit down, have a good think, write it down. Rate it in importance.

Do the most important work first. That lowers your stress levels and a chance of Murphy’s Law.

Procrastination:

Don’t do it.

That might sound easy to do, but takes a lot to get rid of from your system. “Hang on, let me finish this game” or “Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.” Guilty? As charged!

How do we know we are procrastinating?

Catching yourself doing this:

  • Doing something less important and thinking that it is still work done anyways. Swapping out your top priorities into doing something useless makes you tired before you actually do what is important to you.
  • Saying that you will do it tomorrow.
  • Switching your work midway. Doing a sum and suddenly think you need to call your friend to check if she is home safe. Then walk into the kitchen to try to make yourself a hot drink. Then suddenly realise it is time to shower. No, the latest episode on TV is showing. What was I supposed to do again?
  • Doing a lot of planning and a week later, you are still in the planning stage.
  • Writing a lot of notes, neatly, color it, highlighting it. Making sure all your points are inside. Before you know it, exams starts tomorrow. Where did all the time go? Into making pretty notes… Yikes.
  • Saying I need to study more. I will do better, I am going to get an A1. All these sentences makes for a recipe for procrastination. Wishing you will do something about it gives you a false sense of doing something without doing it.

So how do we start on the journey of lesser procrastination? Fill your planner up. Stick to it. That is one reason why teachers gives you homework. They are trying to fill your schedule up, just like if you are working and your boss inundates you with work. They are trying to get you to start down the road of efficient time management. It is a microcosm of what you will end up handling when you start working. So don’t blame your teachers for giving you so much work, its training grounds for you to be able to handle the big bad world.

Secondary School Math tuition class eduKate Singapore
Secondary School Math tuition class eduKate Singapore

So here’s some tips on stopping the procrastination wolf from blowing your world down:

Get a routine 

Morning to school, Afternoon back home. A good lunch and down to the books. Get in 3 solid study hours. A nice shower and keep yourself fresh. Nice dinner, an hour of YOU time. Then finish off your assignments. Off to sleep and repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

That is just an example. For yourself, tailor a routine that you are comfortable with and get used to it. Make small changes to make it more efficient and constantly evolve to make the routine relevant to your workload. That helps you in a few ways.

  1. It lowers the need for you to figure out what to do next.
  2. It makes you really good at what you do as you repeat it all day. Every day. Experience counts.
  3. It makes you realise where the dead spaces are where you do nothing and plug those holes with work.
  4. It helps you to organise your planner as you know how much you can do in a day in turn schedule your future plans effectively.
  5. Makes you eek out small scraps of time that you didn’t know existed, like when you are brushing your teeth, spending too much time eating, etc.

Have a plan

Strategy wins a war. Take time to plan your winning strategy and know that you are the winner at the end. That helps you to put tangible milestones to your schedule. You know how far you are from achieving your aims. Clarity of aim gives you a perspective of the landscape you are traveling through. It also helps you to avoid putting things off. It has to be done by a certain time frame and you know when you are off track and needs a kick to get you going again.

Planners:

Have a planner and plan your time. Priorities that you want to achieve should be organised and work your way backwards. For example, if it takes you 6 weeks to complete your work, set a date you want to achieve it and count backwards 6 weeks. Put a start date to it. And have a countdown. Stick to the schedule and monitor your progress on the planner. If you are on track, put a tick. Getting slow on the planner, then put some exclamation marks on the planner to make you work harder to get you back on track.

Advantages:

  • this helps you in your work career learning how to meet deadlines.
  • avoid double booking yourself and end up too much to chew in too little a time.
  • spreading your workload into smaller bites and have a smoother climb up the skills ladder.
  • gain confidence with every success that you can do it and have the means to do it.
eduKate Singapore Tampines Tuition Centre Student doing Secondary Math
eduKate Singapore Tampines Tuition Centre Student doing Secondary Math

Make 24 hours turn into 25 hours a day. 

This section is when you find that you have not much time left to your exams and you start seeing warning bells going off. Emergency tricks to make more time that we have not considered. Yes, there are things we do every day that we have not included into studying time. Like time travelling to and from school can be used to run through your notes. Gains you an hour just right there. Sitting on the potty. Showering. Brushing teeth and have some sticky notes on the mirror. Having a meal and gobble down a chapter of Physics as well. Multi tasking is the in thing. Replace low level tasks with study. Like dressing up, or even going to cut your hair when its really near your exams.

So there you go. A good effective time planning gives everyone a fair chance of achieving excellence. Like a mentor of mine said last time, Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

cropped-fullsizerender-131.jpgcropped-edukate3.jpgPunggol English Science Math Primary Tuition Tutor

edukate Punggol Tuition English Math Science Creative Writing
Punggol Tuition Centre for English Math and Science

 

Rubik’s Cube Class in eduKate

Hello students, from our classes, I have compiled all the materials for Rubik’s cube here. Do read through it again and make sure you get to understand why mathematics and science is combined to bring about the solution for Rubik’s cube.

Aim of lesson

  1. To learn how to solve a problem through algorithm programming
  2. To improve hand-eye coordination
  3. To improve focus
  4. To learn tenacity
  5. To understand that every mathematical problem can be solved using a series of repeated steps
  6. To compete within rules and achieve objectives

Competition:

The competition are as follows:

1st prize SGD$50.00 goes to the first student that can solve an eduKate randomised Rubik’s Cube within 15 seconds.

2nd prize SGD$30.00 goes to the first student that can solve an eduKate randomised Rubik’s Cube within 40 seconds.

3rd prize SGD$20.00 goes to the first student that can solve an eduKate randomised Rubik’s Cube within 60 seconds.

This also means that one student can actually win all three prizes, and all winners will have their names posted in this blog with the dates and times achieved. All competitors are to solve the cube in the presence of eduKate’s tutors and must be timed using a sport stacker timing device. Also, a video will be taken during this attempt to officiate its occurrence.

1st Prize Winner: ________________

2nd Prize Winner:________________

3rd Prize Winner:________________

What is the history of Rubik’s cube?

http://www.rubiks.com/history

Beginner’s algorithm:

http://ruwix.com/the-rubiks-cube/how-to-solve-the-rubiks-cube-beginners-method/

http://www.wikihow.com/Solve-a-Rubik’s-Cube-(Easy-Move-Notation)

Research by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Advanced Mathematics and Scientific Research into Rubik’s Cube algorithm on MIT News http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2011/rubiks-cube-0629

Speedcuber teaching 

What is an algorithm:

An algorithm (pronounced AL-go-rith-um) is a procedure or formula for solving a problem. The word derives from the name of the mathematician, Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, who was part of the royal court in Baghdad and who lived from about 780 to 850. Al-Khwarizmi’s work is the likely source for the word algebra as well. A computer program can be viewed as an elaborate algorithm.

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm usually means a small procedure that solves a recurrent problem.

from (http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/algorithm)

2014 Rubik’s Cube Competition

New Year, New Resolutions, New Aspirations

Welcome to 2015 and we wish you an awesome year ahead. So the new year is upon us and its that time where most of us reflect on what is important that needs some work on and making sure we do whatever we can to make our dreams come true, or to some of us, not to do something that we have done in our previous years and break that habit of ours.

What kinds of resolutions?

Basically, there are two types of resolutions that we categorise all this into: what we want to achieve in 2015, and: what we don’t want to repeat ever again. So a good way is to catalog your resolutions into these two sections.

An example of what we want to achieve: Get into School of Medicine.

An example of what we don’t want to repeat again: Stop procrastinating.

Start putting these points down and then move to the next stage.

How do we do this?

  1. The first step is to get a piece of paper and write down what you would like to do in 2015.
  2. Next, what you don’t want to do in 2015.
  3. Prioritise all the points and simplify it all.
  4. Plan how we can do achieve all these and be practical about it.
  5. Email this list to yourself and label it “Resolution 2015” for you to check it now and then
  6. Execute.

Next stage:

The first thing about new year resolutions is that we tend to forget we made them and slowly, our spots never change and we continue being the same person that we were last year. That’s when we need to make sure that we do remember to make this resolution into a checklist. So make sure that it is in a prominent place that you can remind yourself often enough of that resolution and check it off once you have achieved it.

Be reasonable with your schedules and make a plan that you can follow. I was a musician when I was much younger and we had to practice these musical passages that had an impossible amount of notes played at an impossible fast beat. There was no way we could have played it right off the first time round sight reading it. So what did we do?

We played it slow, like really slow, and started playing those phrases, note for note, beat for beat, but really really slow. Do it a hundred times. And then we took the speed up, like 5 beats per minute faster. It is an almost imperceptible change to the previous speed, and do that 100 times again. Because its hardly any faster, we don’t feel strained by it. Then another 5 beats per minute faster. Commit to it. It will slowly reach a speed where it is fast, a bit too fast for us to handle, and that was it for that day. And we came back again to it the next day, but we start at the next faster speed. Again, bringing it up to the next 5 beats per minute faster. After a few days of this slow imperceptible increases, guess what, we are now at that impossible fast speed that we needed to be to get the music right. Note for note, beat for beat. It was impossible at first, but it is not impossible anymore for us right at this moment. It is how we trick our brains and body into learning something that we thought we could never do that makes us one of the best learning machines in the world.

Why am I saying all this? Because something is impossible only if we let it be impossible. No one was born to this world running, or flying, but we have achieved all of this, and more. It just takes time, that very first step and keep on moving up the ante till we get where we want to be. So that bring us back to our resolutions.

Want to be a pilot in 2015? Yeah sure, why not? Take that first step, no matter how baby that step is. Make sure those steps gets stronger, faster, braver and slowly, with tenacity, you will reach there.

Aspire to be someone great, someone that is truly what you want to be. Write it down. Now! And let’s all make our 2015 the best year ever.

Happy New Year! And good luck on your new resolutions.