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How to...Improve Your Child's Maths
Even if the 11+ is not the goal for your child, maths holds a very important place in the life of a child and continues to be a vital cog right from early primary school until higher education and even plays a deciding factor in the choice of profession. Having said that, not every one can be a maths expert, but one can try to be maths literate at least. So, you could follow some simple steps to help improve your child’s numeracy:
- Make concepts clear: The subject of maths survives on ‘concepts’. If your child has mastered the concepts of mathematics, nobody could stop him from excelling in the subject. Hence you should make sure that your child is thoroughly grounded in all the concepts and you should patiently go over the fundamentals if he gets stuck at any point. Face-to-face teaching allows your child ample opportunity to ask questions, allows for you to clear up any misconceptions and to observe your child's body language as he tackles problems.
- Constant practice: It is a proven fact that maths cannot be mastered without proper and adequate practice. You need to make your child sit with the subject for some time everyday in order to improve her mathematical skills. The more she practises the subject, the clearer the concepts would be, and she would become more sure and confident about the application of those concepts. Face-to-face teaching should be followed up by daily practice. Daily practice with masses of worksheets can be very tedious and demoralizing for a child. Daily practice via an online maths programme allows fun, colourful, and interactive practice, and is available to the student 24/7. Online practice certainly saves on a few trees!
- Involve kids in the calculation of shopping expenditure: You should make it a habit to involve your child in the calculation of shopping expenditure so as to help him become comfortable with digits, numbers and sums right from an early age. The parents can give the child a paper and pen and get him to calculate the true value of any discounts, compare prices and total up the expenditure.
- Play maths and number games: You can ignite an interest inyour child for maths by teaching it a fun way. Playing games such as chess, card games, checkers, monopoly and sudoku improves and develops a love of strategic and analytical thinking in the child.
- Get the child to attempt the maths examples first: You should see to it that, before tackling a problem independently, your child goes through with you an example of a similar kind. Once she understands the example and the way the problem is to be approached, it becomes much easier for her to solve similar problems independently.
- Teach kids maths tricks and shortcuts: Some maths topics involve long calculations and it could become a bit frustrating for your child to solve the problem. So, to help prevent him from losing interest and to make problems a little easier to handle, you could show him certain maths tricks and shortcuts which can save him a large portion of the calculations. A good 11+ maths course, and even a decent Year 4 course, should include such items as using checks of divisibility and rounding to speed up long division calculations, should incorporate Vedic maths methods and use basic algebra to work out answers to puzzle-type questions instead of relying on trial and error.
“Mathematics is not a careful march down a well cleared highway, but a journey into a strange wilderness, where the explorers often get lost” said W.S Anglin. Maths is poetry of logical ideas and the tantalizing and compelling pursuit of mathematical problems requires immense mental absorption and skill, which is why ‘Maths’ remains the most troublesome subject for children.
Some children are born with an innate ability and flair in maths and hence enjoy practising it, while a majority often see the subject as their biggest foe and want to get rid of it at the earliest opportunity. But to the disappointment of such kids, no one who intends to be successful in life can run away from maths because it is a vital skill and one has to deal with its applications throughout life.
Updated: 23/03/11
Maths
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Comment by: Denisha
submitted on: 24/04/11