My New Blog

Dear all,

This blog is officially closed. Please visit my new blog at http://mrdannylim.blogspot.sg/ for more tips in motivating your child to learn.

Cheers!
Mr Danny Lim

The Real Reason Behind My Resignation

Hi all,

By today, all of you should know that I am no longer with the school. It has been a meaningful journey and I enjoyed being a teacher in 1 Honesty.

It has been really tough. Not because of the students. Not because of my own children. Not because of the workload. It is because I strived to be a good teacher. Sir Ken Robinson puts across 2 points on being a good educator.

Diversity in students
First of all, a good teacher must recognise that all children are different. I have three children on my own and all of them are as different as iron is different from glass. Each has their own unique characteristics. Some of you might have seen me scribbling in my little notebook before. I have a notebook which has 30 pages with a name on each page. I will record my conversations with the student and the conversations I had with the parent. I will do character analysis and try to inspire the child in my day-to-day engagement with him/her. However, the curriculum has a one-size-fit-all approach. Everyone in the class does the same thing and hear the same teaching from the teacher. I tried my best to be as differentiated as possible, but it was a very big struggle to juggle to complete the syllabus.

Many other teachers envy me and thought I have the 'charisma' that appeal to young children. They did not know the work behind the stage. All my conversations with the kids are thought way before I see them in the day. The stories I tell, the things I say to them when they did something wrong, the way I helped them when they got into trouble. It all boils down to how much I know the children and how much I want to inspire them. And, a child will not learn effectively from someone he/she doesn't like.

I think I have done this well as my students love me and at the same time, very afraid of the fierce me.

Learn and not teach
Secondly, a good teacher leads the child to learn. I guess it is very easy for teachers to fall into the trap to just teach and leave the autonomy of learning to the children. This is totally no cool at all. If a lesson is boring and the child cannot learn, the responsibility is not the child's alone.

Teaching is very easy. Making the child learn is very very difficult.

I am very fortunate that I did sales before I joined the profession. I am able to differentiate between selling and making people buy. They are totally two different things. The same is for teaching and making the child learn. It is very possible that a teacher is teaching and the child is totally not learning at all.

I have tried my best to make the lessons as interesting and fun as possible. My P4 students will have a taste of unconventional learning as I make links between the Science experiments and the real world. A student truly learns only when he/she can make generalisations and apply these new rules to the real world.



Currently, I am giving part time tuition. I am sorry that I have to reject many of you as my time-slots were taken up rather quickly and I want to thank you for having that confidence in me. You were the first group I broke the news to. But news spread very fast. There were parents who knew about my departure from other parents and booked me rather quickly.

My advice for you is to practise essay writing with your kid. You have to build structure into the essay and also build vocabulary into it. I recommend my writing program to almost all my tuition students as I find it the most difficult to learn as the student gets older.

My writing program adopts a two-pronged approach by practising two different types of essay writing. One focuses on writing narratives and recounts. The other focuses on building the words they need to produce a good piece of writing.

If any one of you are very interested, you may want to form groups of 5 students and then contact me. I can do a 10-session course for your kids. The group can either come to my house or I can travel to one of the students house for tuition. Writing is one skill that will follow them throughout their lives.

It is just a suggestion.

I miss all of you and I know you all are capable to making difference in this world.

All the best!!!

English Today

Hi all,

We have used some words very frequently this week. Do you still remember how to use them?

- as
- help
- please
- think
- watch

Happy learning!

English Today

Hi all,

We learned about past tense today. Let's go through some of the words again.

- waddled
- watched
- worked
- prowled
- scratched
- scraped
- ran
- told
- said
- kept
- went
- were
- saw

Cheers!

English Today

Hi all,

Let's go through what we have learned in class today: the 'scr-' sound and the '-tch' sound. Some examples would include:

- scribble
- watch
- match
- witch
- screw
- screen
- scrapbook
- catch
- stretch

Happy learning!

English Today

Hi all,

Let's revise the words that we have learned today.

- prowled
- hoes
- farmyard
- thistles
- scratched

Happy learning!

Zoo Pics

As promised, here it is!!