All About Getting Help for Students Weak in Math

[JohnYeo]

Green-apple:

Dear All,


My DS is P1 now. He is very forgetful and made careless mistakes on his maths; I did not outsource his math because he is just P1. May i know if i should start finding him a tutor?

Hi Green Apple,

I'm wondering when you say \"careless mistakes\" made by Primary school kids, what do you really mean?

In my opinion, the \"careless mistakes\" that almost everyone is saying can be further broken down into a few types.

1. copy the wrong number
2. calculate wrongly
3. copy the answer wrongly
4. write the wrong units
5. read the questions wrongly

Every of this \"careless mistake\" is caused by different reasons.

1. copy the wrong number - could he be rushing through the paper? and if yes, why? is he worried that he has not enough time? or is he simply told that he has to work on the questions fast (without practicing on checking on the working while solving the problems)

2. calculate wrongly - what kind of calculations? is it plus or minus? which exact step is he unclear about?

3. copy the answer wrongly - reasons can be similar to #1

4. write the wrong units - what kind of units? could he have misread the units? could he have remembered wrongly then (during that moment while sitting for the test? and if yes, what has caused it? anxiety? stress?)

5. read the questions wrongly - could this be linked to his ability to comprehend the words? or could this be related to him not able to understand what kind of answer is required?

My 2 cents.

John

[JohnYeo]

go go learning:

My girl is not doing very well in Math and her grades are slipping. :shock: recommendations? tuition? Assessment books?

Hi Go go learning, tuition and assessment books are simply tools. I'm more concerned about the causes that led to the dropping in grades.

Could it be emotion-related as well? Emotion related meaning that stress and anxiety caused by various reasons.

Various reasons include not being able to catch up as the diffculty level increases. Or the teaching method by teacher or tutor does not fit your child.

We will even want to explore if there is any negative stress caused such as put down from adults. Even words phrase in a negative manner but with good intent give negative stress on the child which will cause the drop in grades.

John

[JohnYeo]

protutor:

If you cannot learn it well, it means that the teaching style of your school teacher is hard for you to absorb. Math talks about practice and application of the right techniques. If you need, you have to find the right tutor to guide you through this process.

I think it takes two hands to clap. While the child may be clueless of how to improve, I feel a good teacher or tutor will be able to use creative ways to connect math to the child.

For instance, I 'm helping a child who is very poor in math. Well, he already has a tutor who is teaching him the math techniques. But at a deeper level, I realise that when he sees Math, he sees himself already failing. It means that he is already seeing himself as a failure even before he attempts to do any question.

I know if I start introducing him my way of learning math, I will be hitting a closed door. So first, connection must be made.

I realised he likes to draw on his plastic file using his black marker. He told me that he was scolded for drawing on his file. However, his drawing was pretty nice and I praised him for his artwork (not drawing on his file) He felt someone finally appreciates his artwork and he started to speak up and shared with me what else he drew.

So I used many color markers to write and draw the concepts out. For every line of workings, I use a different color. Yes, more effort but it is worth it. This arty way of explaining math with different colors bridged that connection between him to math.

Now, he likes math more...and yes, he is slowly improving...and what matter most, math makes sense to him now...

now, when he sees math, he only sees colors and the drawings I did with him...this really changes his perception...

so sometimes, for the benefit of the child, we, at times, will have to let go of what we have prepared and quickly develop (on the spot) what the child really needs...it's all about being child-centric...and isn't education supposed to be child-centric too?

so a good teacher will find all means to connect math to the child using a unique way which makes sense to the child...

My two cents.

John

[JohnYeo]

SengkangMum:

Hi All,




Oh dear ! My gals seems to be having the same problem in understanding the maths questions. And so far cant find a good home tutor to tackle this. I am starting to get a bit panic as next year she will be in P3.if this year she not going to make it for maths, will be tough for her in P3 :slapshead:

Hi SengkangMum,

Sounds like it's not easy to get your gals to understand the math questions.

I'm just wondering if we can be more specific in pin-pointing what is it your girls can't understand or how is it they can't understand.

Could it be they are more visual learners? Meaning they prefer colors and pictures and the word problems are all wordy with black text and it makes learning math even more boring.

Could it be they don't understand the statements? Math questions are like mini paragraphs of words and to solve them, one need to really understand what the chunk of words are saying.

Could it be because they don't know how to start? Being able to read is one thing. But what about knowing where to start? Aiyo, so many numbers and the names (identities), which one to use...\"confused.

Could it be because they know how to start but don't know how to continue from the first line they write? Meaning they don't understand the concept well. It's best that they know how to identify the type of word problems so they know roughly how the solution should look like. Not knowing the type of word problems and diving in straight can only lead to more confusion.

Could it because they know how to continue but they don't how to end and solve it? Maybe they are not confident of their workings. Some children doubt their capabilities to solve the questions and still say that their workings are wrong (though we know it's right.) Well, many thoughts go in their mind and these lead to more confusion if they lack the confidence even to say \"My answer is right.\"

So to address the problem, we got to really find the root. Most of the time from my experience, it is not the technical instructions such as how to solve this and that. The problems that the children are facing, I feel, are really emotional related.

Hope this helps.

My 2 cents,
John

[jollydazzle]

My P4 gals just have a SA1 math results, she failed! the reason.? she don’t even able to finish her exam paper!! her whole Section C, five questions she did not even 'touch it!! i am devastated… can anyone give me advise ? i am really at the lost of how to help her to improve? she have a tutor, been teaching her since Jan this year.should i change a tutor or anyone out there can help me??

[JohnYeo]

jollydazzle:

My P4 gals just have a SA1 math results, she failed! the reason.? she don't even able to finish her exam paper!! her whole Section C, five questions she did not even 'touch it!! i am devastated.. can anyone give me advise ? i am really at the lost of how to help her to improve? she have a tutor, been teaching her since Jan this year.should i change a tutor or anyone out there can help me??

Hi jollydazzle,

Sounds frustrating and thanks for sharing...Hmmm...im just wondering what's the real reason for not finishing the section C questions...

Some of the reasons I could think of is anxiety due to not be able to understand the topics at all, or panic because of not good experience in the past when she didnt do well, or blank because she has no idea what the question is asking though she may know her content...or simply she ran out of time and this is probably caused by poor foundation such that she needed alot of time to answer the other questions.

If I were you, I would want to hear from the tutor what s/he thinks about the reason she fails or not being able to do the questions...

Let us know what the tutor tells you and then we can explore other possible ways.

My 2 cents,
John

[mathtuition88]

jollydazzle:

My P4 gals just have a SA1 math results, she failed! the reason.? she don't even able to finish her exam paper!! her whole Section C, five questions she did not even 'touch it!! i am devastated.. can anyone give me advise ? i am really at the lost of how to help her to improve? she have a tutor, been teaching her since Jan this year.should i change a tutor or anyone out there can help me??

Hi, I fully empathise with your daughter. Time management is a common problem for maths, along with careless mistakes.

For Exam Time management, you may suggest to your daughter the following tips:
1) If stuck at a question for some time, it is better to skip it and go back to it later, rather than spend too much time on it. I recall for PSLE one year, there was a question about adding 1+2+...+100 early in the paper, and some children unfortunately spent a lot of time adding it manually.
2) Use a exam half-time strategy. At the half-time mark of the exam, one should finish at least half of the paper. If no, then need to speed up and skip hard questions if necessary.

To improve speed:
1) Practice. It is really important to practice as practice increases speed and accuracy.
2) Learn the faster methods for each type of question. For example, guess and check is considered a slower method, as most questions are designed to make guess and check difficult.

Sincerely hope it helps.
For dealing with careless mistakes (more for O and A levels), you may visit my website at http://mathtuition88.com/2013/05/05/how-to-avoid-careless-mistakes-for-maths/

[JohnYeo]

mathtuition88:

jollydazzle:

My P4 gals just have a SA1 math results, she failed! the reason.? she don't even able to finish her exam paper!! her whole Section C, five questions she did not even 'touch it!! i am devastated.. can anyone give me advise ? i am really at the lost of how to help her to improve? she have a tutor, been teaching her since Jan this year.should i change a tutor or anyone out there can help me??

Hi, I fully empathise with your daughter. Time management is a common problem for maths, along with careless mistakes.

For Exam Time management, you may suggest to your daughter the following tips:
1) If stuck at a question for some time, it is better to skip it and go back to it later, rather than spend too much time on it. I recall for PSLE one year, there was a question about adding 1+2+...+100 early in the paper, and some children unfortunately spent a lot of time adding it manually.
2) Use a exam half-time strategy. At the half-time mark of the exam, one should finish at least half of the paper. If no, then need to speed up and skip hard questions if necessary.

To improve speed:
1) Practice. It is really important to practice as practice increases speed and accuracy.
2) Learn the faster methods for each type of question. For example, guess and check is considered a slower method, as most questions are designed to make guess and check difficult.

Sincerely hope it helps.
For dealing with careless mistakes (more for O and A levels), you may visit my website at http://mathtuition88.com/2013/05/05/how-to-avoid-careless-mistakes-for-maths/

I have a different opinion...this is based on the assumption that the problem lies in Time Management...but what caused time mismanagement...

what causes the hesistation in continuing to get the right answer...
what causes the break in momentum when answering the questions...
what causes the holdup in being smooth...

what causes her to get stuck and run out of time?

Yes, it is a common problem but every child's challenge is unique...so the first thing i would do is to find the real cause...

[jollydazzle]

i have to say , my girl is not interested in math! but she told me she want to do better but how? .. I want to help her but am lost too and end up i am giving her more pressure

[JohnYeo]

jollydazzle:

i have to say , my girl is not interested in math! but she told me she want to do better but how? .. I want to help her but am lost too and end up i am giving her more pressure

Sounds frustrating...it is really not easy...just curious, do you know the reasons your child is not interested in math? let's see how we can explore from there...