Hi All,
I am not a parent myself, rather, an ex teacher who has turned into a full time tutor. Not here to sell my service but to share my thoughts with parents who are worried and perhaps helpless to help them ease their minds.
As a teacher, I have a fair share of experience teaching children from all ability levels and I'd like to share my thoughts and findings from teaching children who seem like they cannot grasp mathematical concepts.
It is heartening to see children achieve a jump in grades after a month to a term help and of course, I'd also experienced confusion and anxiety when my students do not show an increase in their scores on their exam papers.
We are all born unique in our own ways with strengths and weaknesses. It may not be the child's strength in Math and they may take longer than those who can understand it on the first explanation. Our education system and assessment is not a fair one. In fact, it is one that aims to fit all. I recall seeing a picture with a man sitting behind a table and saying 'The test for all of you is to climb the tree behind' to a seal, monkey, leopard, goldfish and elephant. We are all like the animals. Not all of us may do well in this system.
Yes we still need to work hard hoping to achieve better results. Yet I'd always believe to first improve the child's efficacy in order to take a greater leap to obtaining better results.
Improving child's efficacy is to give him/her tasks s/he can do easily before giving him/her greater challenge. This boosts his/her self-esteem and builds morale.
Patience is definitely the key to seeing your child make improvement. Do not only focus on the overall result. Focus on the ability to solve questions s/he wasn't able to solve before and celebrate (I don't mean to throw a party) small winning like this by praising and positive gestures. All these are baby steps to doing better.
With all these said, we cannot deny the biological factor at work. We may grow physically. Yet, certain parts of our brain may not develop at the same speed as other parts. There are certain parts in our brain which help us to perform better linguistically, mathematically, musically etc. The child may be a late-bloomer due to his/her development in the brain which we have no way to tell visually.
Learning is a lifelong journey. I got only a B for PSLE Math but A1 for my Maths for O level and tertiary education. My mentor when I was teaching in school was a U grader for Math in primary school. She is now a Senior Teacher who won Pedagogy Award for teaching Mathematics in the cluster. :rahrah: