All About Getting Help for Students Weak in Math

[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...

[jollydazzle]

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...

Her math starts to decline when she was in Pr 3 (Pr 1 and 2 she can still score abt 80 marks and above) she have huge problem in problem sums ( which i think she hate to think!) weak in fractions . But there again looking at her marks I don't think is just her problem sums have problems, i am curious for a girl like her ( which is Not interested in Math, can she still be able to 'like' math ? and do well??

[jkids]

hi I really need help!


can you recommend an enrichment centre? he is weak in maths, others subjects like eng and mother tongue r ok. recently he failed his maths, got 27/70 his 1st fail! he is only in p2 and its juz a neighbour sch. but I think the math std is not easy but still, some of his classmates can do better, like scoring 50/70.

he seems to have prob understanding the math q or concept, esp prob sums. what goes wrong, I really duno. we need to explain a few times, but sometime he still dun get it. he only has eng tuition but we intend to withdraw him fr eng class and enrol him for math class. we cant afford 2 tution in more than 1 subject.

can you recommend? I saw a few like cma , mind matter, mind stretcher...but dun really noe which is a better one... really need testimonial from you parents!