A Short Guide for Any Parent at Wit’s End with Math Homework
How long has it been since you took High School math? Could you describe the grade 10 math curriculum that you were taught? How do you think it has changed since you took it? Dreading the day a child comes home with a math problem that you can’t solve can be anxiety inducing.
Just Like The First Time Around, Staying On Top Of It
The most effective strategy for always being able to help with math is to keep up to date with your child’s progress in the course, and where they are with respect to the curriculum. However, life can easily get in the way of this strategy with all the commitments we often find ourselves in. At the very least, a quick review of the upcoming semester either using the Ministry of Education’s website (Click Here for Ontario) or course outlines provided in class can help provide some insight to the content they will be covering. Reviewing content at the beginning of a semester may even remind you of problem areas that you once had, and may be able to motivate you to preemptively brush up on it before being caught off guard by your child’s questions.
The Power Of Teaching The Teacher
As the saying goes, you’ve never truly mastered something until you can explain it to someone else. Utilizing this concept, having your child explain what they are doing to you, even starting a few lessons back, can accomplish two things:
Get you caught up to where they are. Whether it’s to jog your memory, or to actually teach you the material, having your child explain as much as they can, helps you help them.
Having them slow down and think about how they are explaining something can make a task more clear in their mind. Have your child explain the concept in as many ways as they can, using examples that they have created. Flexing their teaching chops can do wonders for their absorption of the material and their confidence with it.
Try having them mark a few questions you’ve done. Maybe even put a few mistakes in there on purpose (or let nature take it’s course). Having them go through your work step by step will really have them thinking about how a particular type of question looks when a teacher is marking it, and how they might put that to their advantage when formatting their own work.
Free Online Resources
The Internet can be a wonderful place. From kindergarten fundamentals to differential equations, the Khan Academy offers a seemly endless supply of video lessons and practice questions. The only downside is not having someone there to answer any questions when the choice of explanation doesn’t quite mesh with your child.
Youtube can be another great resource. From Crash Course (one of our director’s favourites) for wonderfully animated and interestingly presented general knowledge videos to the exploration of more advanced concepts by Youtubers like 3Blue1Brown, finding the proper video for a specific mathematical hiccup can be as much art as it is science. However, discovering a resource that provides the insight needed to make a subject sink in, or maybe even pique an interest that a child didn’t know they had, can make the wade into the realm of digital learning well worth it.
When To Call In Backup
The test is on Thursday and after a few hours working together on the weekend things still just aren’t clicking? It might be time to give us a call. We are no strangers to tight deadline tutoring and almost always have tutors available for last minute sessions, either in person, or online.
Most Importantly
Not knowing a specific subject that your child is working through can be a great opportunity for teachable moments, in more than just the obvious. To a child, learning that adults don’t know everything can be a good thing, and learning how they can work with a parent to achieve an academic goal can be an important milestone in their academic development.
Brainstorm Academy offers tutoring, credit courses and online learning grounded in real life context and the interests of our students. To learn more about our approach, click here.