Isaac Newton once said, “God created everything by number, weight, and measure.” Math is the language of the universe, a language that we need both to interpret and to fully enjoy the world around us.
Math is also, sometimes, the biggest struggle for a student and the biggest headache for a parent…leading to the question: “Why is math so hard? And what can we do to make it easier?”
Some kids absorb the rain of math concepts like a sponge while others deflect absorption like a Teflon umbrella. How do we get things to stick and sink in? While I don’t pretend to have all the answers, there are some tried-and-true educational truths that can definitely help.
Don’t do all the thinking for your kids.
Lessons are only learned when the student thinks the lesson into his own mind. The format we use for math lessons at Paideia is: I, We, You All, You.
I (the teacher) present the lesson.
We (as a class, with the teacher calling on various students) work through applications of the lesson.
You All (on your mini whiteboards, holding them up for the teacher) demonstrate that you understand the lesson.
You (individual students) gain fluency in the concept by doing workbook pages.
Now, sometimes a struggling student leaves a Monday math class without fully grasping the lesson that was taught. Or sometimes, she understood it at 9:00 a.m. and no longer understands it at 2:00 p.m. when it’s time to complete the rest of the workbook pages. This student needs help with her homework!
As a parent, you should try to move your student through these four steps again, with the goal that the child is completing at least some of the workbook problems without your help. You can explain the lesson again. You can solve a couple problems together. But you must move to the point where the child demonstrates she has thought the concept into her own mind.
If the child can only do the math problems with you sitting beside him and cueing him on the next step, he does not have mastery of the concept.
Use the resources available to you.
“Well, that’s unrealistic!” you may be saying to yourself. “How can I move my child to mastery when I don’t even understand the math lesson myself?” Educational backgrounds may vary, but for a significant portion of parents, math can get a little hairy right around Week 20 of 3rd Grade (double digit multiplication in expanded format!!!).
One of the new resources we’re making available this year are the Math-U-See videos. While our teachers don’t use these actual videos in class, the lessons they are presenting are very similar and the concepts are the same. They’re typically less than ten minutes long, and if you’re struggling to understand your child’s math homework or explain it to them, try watching the lesson video with your child:
https://digital.demmelearning.com/
Gamma (3rd Grade): USERNAME: paideia.gamma PASSWORD: Gamma2022
Delta (4th Grade): USERNAME: paideia.delta PASSWORD: Delta2022
Epsilon (5th Grade): USERNAME: paideia.epsilon PASSWORD: Epsilon2022
Zeta (6th Grade): USERNAME: paideia.zeta PASSWORD: Zeta2022
PreAlgebra: USERNAME: paideia.prealgebra PASSWORD: Prealgebra2022
Algebra 1: USERNAME: paideia.algebra1 PASSWORD: Algebra12022
Geometry: USERNAME: paideia.geometry PASSWORD: Geometry2022
Algebra 2: USERNAME: paideia.algebra2 PASSWORD: Algebra22022
PreCalculus: USERNAME: paideia.precalculus PASSWORD: Precalc2022
Do not grow weary of correcting mistakes.
One of the false aphorisms often repeated is that “practice makes perfect.” What really ought to be said is “practice makes permanent.” If a student repeatedly practices a concept wrong, then a wrong understanding and process becomes ingrained in the student’s mind.
In 3rd-5th grade, we ask parents to correct student work and have the student fix mistakes. Doing this daily will help your student practice the concept with accuracy and allow any misimpressions to be corrected before the Friday test.
In 6th grade and above, students learn how to correct their own math work and take responsibility for their own mastery. The goal is for the student to be able to self-identify what he does not understand and take steps toward achieving that understanding. This is an important life skill that goes beyond just mathematics.
Do not grow weary in memorizing math facts.
Last but not least, don’t give up on the very thing that will make mastery so much easier. When you’re slogging through an hour of math homework, it can be tempting to skip the five minutes of math facts practice you see on the HAS form.
DON’T.
90% of the time, it’s poor mastery of math facts that’s making the other math homework so hard and so time-consuming.
The prevailing wisdom of modern education is that math fact mastery is outdated drudgery. Why memorize when you can simply use a calculator or a multiplication table? After all, it’s the concept we’re after, not rote memory.
But, the philosophy of classical education is that imitation joined with reason leads to mastery. The imitative act of drilling math facts is necessary to have a full understanding of the concept.
This is still inherently understood in the area of sports and music. No basketball coach would ever suggest that you just need to understand the concept of a lay-up and that it’s unnecessary to practice it over and over again until it’s effortless. No piano teacher would ever suggest having a “cheat sheet” for the notes to look at each time you need to play the next chord in the piece of music. Instead, sports coaches and music teachers know that these things must be drilled and memorized, and only then can the skill be utilized with ease and beauty.
At the same time, strategy is sometimes called for. With a student who already has decent mastery of multiplication facts but just needs to increase speed, running the whole set of multiplication facts in five minutes is appropriate. But for the student who is highly emotional, easily frustrated, and knows less than half of their multiplication facts, targeted practice is essential. (“This week we are only running 6’s and 4’s. Let’s see how many we get right the first time and then work on the pile of wrong ones for a few minutes to get better.”)
While there is no “silver bullet” to magically make math easy for your child, using these teaching techniques and strategies can help set your child on the road to mastery. And while math for many students is indeed difficult, it is well worth the effort, both to understand the order of creation and to order ourselves rightly in the process.
