When Parents Try To Help With Homework….

It’s exam season and most children in school are doing tests or exams. Almost every parent knows what it feels like to know that their child has a test the following morning and their child is not prepared. Just this last week, I have taken double the amount of calls I usually take to put worried parents’ minds at ease. Homework is a common cause of arguments in homes and we’ve all fallen into that trap where parents nag about homework and children ignore……

Does your child expect you to help them with homework? Have you ever done your child’s homework for them because you thought it was too hard? And how do you tread that fine line between helping your child with homework and interfering/doing the homework for them?

Homework has many purposes; the main one I think is to re-enforce what has been learnt in school. It teaches children how to work independently and finally it teaches them to be responsible.

At my centre, we give homework for all of the above reasons and our policy is to allow the children to do their homework without ANY intervention from parents. Parents are encouraged to check that the homework is done and that it is done to a suitable standard, but not to sit with their child while the homework is being done. If a parent has to intervene, then we ask them to highlight or mark the questions they helped with so that we are aware of any areas of difficulty.

Sometimes parents don’t even realise that they are helping. Take the following scenario for example:

Child: Mum I can’t do this question.

Mum: I can’t help you, but I will read out the question for you. The question says “Katie has 5 apples and Tom has 6 apples, how many apples is that altogether?”. So Katie has 5 apples, can you picture that in your brain?

Child: Yes.

Mum: Good. And Tom has 6 apples, can you picture that?

Child: Good. Now work out how much that is altogether.

Without even realising the parent had broken down this question into simpler words and steps.

When parents do help, then it can cause many problems:

1. The parents try to teach the child their way.

The way that you and I learnt how to do simple arithmetic is totally different to the way it is taught now. For example, the traditional method of adding up is to add in columns, but many schools use the “partitioning” method to teach addition. If your child has been taught partitioning and you are trying to teach them the traditional “column” method (maybe because you think it’s simpler), then you could end up confusing your child. Confusion can lead to mistakes, which can lead to loss of confidence. So ask your child how they work things out at school. Use the method they use at school first and if your child is confident with it, then you can teach your method.

2. The parents have to learn all about the topic first.

This takes time and it is difficult to know what the expectations are. In such cases, the parent’s anxiety can spread to the child. If you don’t know about the topic, then don’t use search engines to gather information so that you can help your child. It’s better to help your brainstorm what they know about the topic and start from there. Teach them how to look up information and develop their research skills instead so that they are the ones looking things up on search engines and not you.

3. The children start to rely on help from parents.

Some children are reluctant to ask their teacher for help at school so they will ask mum or dad because it’s much easier. So a shy child may not have understood what she was doing in class earlier that day, she didn’t ask for help from the teacher and therefore waited until she got home to get mum to explain it better. Encourage your child to ask for help from the teacher first. Be firm and resist the urge to help, and that way, if they don’t get help from you, they are more likely to ask in school.

In contrast, I think that teachers should only set homework that they know the child will be able to do. It mustn’t be too easy either. I have often changed the planned homework at the last minute because I knew that the child was not confident enough to do it by themselves at home.

4. The children learn that at the first sign of trouble, mum or dad will bail them out.

Children need to take responsibility for their own learning. The homework belongs to the child and should be completed by the child. Some children need re-assurance and there’s no harm in explaining how to do the homework so that the child can get started. One parent told me that when her daughter was doing her maths homework, she asked for help. The homework was on long multiplication which involves many steps and so, the mother sat down with her daughter and wrote down all the steps involved. She then sat there until the daughter worked out the second problem correctly. Then she decided to leave the room and within seconds, her daughter said “mum this is too hard, I’m stuck”! The mother still left the room and the daughter completed the rest by herself – CORRECTLY.

5. Parents end up nagging and bullying their children into doing homework.

This can lead to resentment and sets homework in a negative light.

Easy Ways To Help Your Child With Maths At Home

Easy Ways To Help Your Child With Maths

A solid maths foundation is vital for children to succeed. Without solid math skills, children will probably have a lot of trouble in school and afterwards.

I often get asked the question “how can i help my child with maths at home”?.  If your child is struggling with maths, there are many ways to help, but before you do that you need to know what the problem areas are.

Some of the traits that I see in children who are weak in maths are:

• They don’t understand the language used in maths like “less”, “more than”, “half of”, “share”, “total” and “difference”.
• They have difficulty retaining basic number facts.  They will take a long time to work out something in their head and often make careless mistakes.
• They often use long-winded ways to work out something on paper.  For example, I saw a child work out the sum 100 – 42 by drawing 100 dots and crossing out 42 of them.  I saw another child work out the sum 250 ÷ 5 by writing out the 5 times table.
• They cannot “translate” number word problems into maths calculations.  For example: if Sam, Tim and Emma each eat 4 sweets, how many is that altogether?  Children either don’t know that this is 3 x 4 or they may know that this but not know their 3 times tables.

Your child may not have such general difficulties; it could be a more specific problem like understanding fractions, or getting to grips with geometry.  The point is that you need to get to the root of the problem.  Fractions are related to division and multiplication.  Is it because your child hasn’t grasped the basics of these skills yet?  Difficulty with geometry could be just a simple matter of not learning the rules for working out angles in a triangle.  Whatever the cause, there are ways in which you can help your child fill in those gaps.

Help Them Learn Their Times Tables.

Times tables is the bricks and mortar of basic maths knowledge and it is crucial that your child has plenty of opportunities to learn them.  Don’t rely on school to the job for you, as many children will need a lot of exposure to learning times tables.

First get your child to write out the times tables, and then try to get them to learn “parrot-fashion”.  If it’s just not sticking then an easy way to help is to write them on your child’s fingertips or use stickers as shown in the pictures below.

 

Another place for great ideas is here.  I also get children to recite times tables going forwards and backwards, and sometimes I get them to recite from half way through the tables.  It just breaks up the monotony and introduces a new challenge.

Use a Multi-Sensory Approach.

It has been shown that children retain information better when they not only see it, but when they hear it and also when they can put it into practice.  Making maths practical and relevant to everyday life can get a child to use all of their senses and at the same time giving it a purpose.  Maths is all around us and we can use our surroundings to help our children with maths.

To teach measures:

• teach your child to use a ruler or a tape measure with accuracy.  If you are into gadgets then why not invest in an electronic tape measure (often used by estate agents).
• Point out quantities of things on food packets to show them the difference between grams and kilograms or litres and millilitres.
• Look at angles on objects around the room, see how many right angles your child can spot.
• Involve your child in cooking, getting them to read the scales when weighing out ingredients.
• If you are baking cup cakes and the recipe only makes 12 but you want 24, use this as an opportunity to teach about ratios and equivalents.
• Play with water using different sized containers, predict how many small cups can fill a large container and measure how much water the containers hold.

To teach place value and money:

• Show your child a till receipt and look at the quantities in pounds and pennies.
• Take your child shopping and equip them with a calculator.  As you shop they can work out the bill.
• Get your child used to handling money, recognising coins and working out if they have/don’t have enough money.
• To teach about tens and units, read our blog post here.
• Play Monopoly.

Talk Maths Language

Use mathematical words like “total” and “difference” when talking to our child.  Other words to use are “rotate”, “divide”, “more than/less than” and “fewer than”.

Here are some more ideas:

• Plant sunflower seeds and get your child involved in measuring how much water to give each day, measuring how tall the seedlings are growing and comparing the length of the seedlings.
• Make sandwiches and get your child to decide how many pieces of cucumber to put into each sandwich, how much cheese to weigh, or how many slices of bread to take.
• Get your child to help you with spring cleaning.  They can sort things into different groups for you, place objects in order of size, measure the amount of space they have made by clearing out the clutter and simply just counting all their possessions.
• Invest in a dart board to get children working out the totals, for younger children you can buy a simpler version of a dart board which uses Velcro darts.
• Use every opportunity to count things, whether it’s during a walk to the shops, or how many bounces on the ball or timing how long it takes to take a shower.

5 Items Essential For Home Study

There are some things that I can’t do without, whether it’s at home or at work in the classroom.  These objects have either made my life much easier or have provided fun and inspirational ways of approaching learning.  All the items on my list have been tried and tested over the years.

A Decent Dictionary

For many years I used to have a tiny pocket dictionary in the house which was actually a free gift when I opened my first bank account.  It was well used and handy as it was small enough to carry around.  However, it was just a dictionary and not dictionary/thesaurus, the writing was too small and even after looking up the meaning of a word, I often found it difficult to comprehend.
Things have changed a bit since then.  I would definitely recommend getting a dictionary which is also a thesaurus.  The ones we use at our centre are by Collins and are available to buy here.

100 Square

We use these daily to help children who need help with number work. What I love about this one is that you can draw all over it with a dry wipe pen and wipe off again. Every home should have one if they have young children and every primary school should have one too.  There are hundreds of ways of using this as a teaching and learning tool.  Click here for ideas.

A World Atlas

With the development of “Google Earth”, atlases seem to be going into extinction.  But I think that nothing beats turning the pages in an atlas, and looking for places of interest.  At our centre, we have a map of the world on the wall, and both children and parents never tire of looking at it.  I have this one at home, and its simple and easy to use.

Pictionary Game

Pictionary is a board game where you have to draw a picture of a word shown on a card.  the other players have to guess what it is.  But I use it in a different way.  I use it to develop vocabulary and thinking skills.  Children have to tell me things about the object without saying what it is.  It’s not as easy as it sounds, but excellent for getting kids to think.  Try this word: engine.

Playing Cards

I use playing cards as a visual and kinesthetic stimulus for children doing maths.  Here are some great ideas on how to use playing cards to help your child with maths.

Early Entry GCSE Maths and Pass Rates

Schools used to pick the brightest pupils in the year and allow them to take their GCSE maths exam early.  This was called early entry and the pass rate was very good.  These students could then take on an additional maths GCSE like statistics.  Nowadays, the majority of pupils are sitting early entry GCSE maths whether they have a good chance of passing or not.

This article by the BBC and this paper by the department for education summarise the consequences of this practice.  But I want to tell you my story….

Last week, all the students who sat their GCSE Maths in November 2010, got their results.  Last week, I had many calls  from panicking parents whose year 11′s failed  to get that grade C.  These now have to re-take their exam in March or in May this year.  They will have to revise everything again but this time they will have other subjects to revise as well so the pressure will be much greater.

Having assessed these students, I’ve come to 2 conclusions:

1. that they should never have been entered for the exam in November in the first place.  I assessed  a student who got a “U” (ungraded) in the higher paper suggesting that at best he was a low “D” grade at the time of the exam and that he could have done worse because of exam day nerves.  The grades possible in the higher paper are “A*” to “D”.  If a student gets lower than the pass mark for a “D” then they fail.
2. that the students have already forgotten some of the maths they studied for the exam.  In the majority of cases, the students who told me they got a “D” in the exam for example, got an “E” in my assessment.  The student who got a “C” in the exam got a “D” in my assessment.

These students are cramming for exams and are being taught to pass exams and not to learn skills which can be applied to real life or in further education.  A good friend of mine who teaches A level Maths at College says that the students who pass the early entry exam, struggle with A level Maths because they have forgotten everything they learnt by the time they start college.  He has to spend the first 2 weeks of the A level course going through basic maths skills to make sure that the children are able to cope with A level standard work.  I teach A level Chemistry which needs a good foundation in maths.  I find that I have to teach skills like being able to work out ratios, re-arranging an algebraic formula and using a calculator.  And the same goes for english skills, like comprehension and being able to answer a question so that it makes sense.

It’s an old argument and one that will always exist as long as exams exist.  Students take pride in getting their GCSE’s early and they pride themselves in getting more GCSE’s.  Schools have a reputation to keep, and league to tables to worry about.  Many teachers view pass rates as a reflection of their own teaching.  We all have our own agenda.  I just wish that parents didn’t have to get dragged into all this!

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 43 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

How To Help Your Child With Place Value and Counting

Knowing how to “count on” in maths is a fundamental skill. This skill is also used when children are working out the next number in a sequence and place value.  Counting is easier when the numbers are written on a number line so start with a number line if you are doing this for the first time with your child.  You can purchase number lines and 100 squares from most good school supplies shops.  Alternatively write out a number line for your child.  Just as important as seeing the numbers is hearing the numbers, so children need to say the numbers as they use them.  In particular this helps children when tackling bigger numbers and fractions. If your child is old enough then you can also get them to write out the number in words.

Counting in Ones

Age 4-5 – choose a number between 10 and 20.  Ask your child to count on from that number.  For example if your child chooses 12, then ask them to count on another 2 numbers.

12, 13,  What are then next 2 numbers?

16, 15, What are the next 2 numbers?

If your child cannot remember the next number, then allow them to use a number line or to write out the numbers.

Age 5-6 –choose a number between 20 and 99.  Repeat as above.  The difficult numbers to count on from are 29, 39, 49, 59, etc

28, 29, What are the next 2 numbers?

58, 59, what are the next 2 numbers?

31, 30, what are the next 2 numbers?

Age 7-8 – choose a number between 100 and 999.  Repeat as above.  The difficult numbers to count on from are 109, 119, etc and 199, 299, 399 etc.

108, 109 what are the next 2 numbers?

398, 399, what are the next 2 numbers?

998, 999, what are the next 2 numbers?

401, 400, what are the next 2 numbers?

Age 9-10 – choose a number between 1000 and 9000.

Age 10-11 – choose any number between 10,000 and 1,000,000

Counting in Multiples

Counting on in multiples of 2 for example can re-enforce times tables and odd and even numbers.  Ask your child to count forward and backward in 2’s from any random number (must be age and ability appropriate so refer to previous paragraph).

Try counting forward and backwards in multiples of 5, 10, 100 and 1000.

Counting in Fractions

Counting can help to address the gap in understanding fractions as numbers in their own right.

Activity 1

Use fractions as a natural part of your vocabulary.  For example you could ask your child to give you 2 halves of an apple.

Activity 2

Cut an apple (or similar) real or drawn into quarters.  Ask your child how many quarters are in the apple.  Count the pieces one quarter, two quarters, three quarters, four quarters and ask your child to write down the fractions. 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/ 4 .  Cut a second apple and ask your child to keep counting the quarters 5/4, 6/4, 7/4, 8/4 and to continue to write the list of fractions.

• Ask them what is another name for 4 quarters? (1)
• what is another name for 8 quarters?(2)
• what is another name for 6 quarters ?(1 2/4 or 1 1/2)

Encourage them to use the apples or drawings to find the answer.

Help your child to draw circles (two or three) on paper and mark them in thirds.

• Ask them to count in thirds and to write the sequence.
• Ask them what is another name for 3 thirds? (1)
• what is another name for 6 thirds?(2)
• what is another name for 5 thirds? (1 2/3)

Activity 3

First teach your child that:

2 halves = 2/2 = 1 whole

3 thirds = 3/3 = 1 whole

4 quarters = 4/4 = 1 whole

5 fifths = 5/5 = 1 whole

Then we move onto counting.

½, 2/2, 3/2, 4/2,

This says 1 half, 2 halves, 3 halves, four halves.

OR

½, 1, 1½, 2,

Half, 1, one and a half, two.

Once your child can count backwards and forwards in halves then try other fractions.

Visualisation is essential so encourage the use of real things to chop up into fractions and drawings.

Time to Spring Clean – Your Child’s Brain!

We are all familiar with the feeling of satisfaction that we get after spring cleaning our houses.  We may do that for our homes, our offices, but do we do that for our minds or our children’s minds? Research on learning has shown that “clearing out the junk” that is filling our brains can help us to be better learners and this is more important for children.

At this time of year, children have had a term to settle into chool and have had time to take in all they have learnt in lessons so far.  However, the chances are that there will be some gaps in their learning; they will naturally have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others.  It is these areas of weakness that can give children the feeling of their brain being “full”, so that they don’t have the mental processing powers to learn more.  So what should we do to help our children de-clutter their brains?

1.  Ensure that your child gets plenty of sleep. 

Children need a full night’s sleep to stay mentally alert throughout the school day. All too often, kids are too wired to sleep – they’ve been consuming E numbers, watching TV, playing video games right up to bedtime. There’s so much excitement in the house, that they want to be part of it.  So it’s important to establish a pattern or ritual in the evening that will help them quiet down and go to sleep. Have an established bedtime and stick to it, including during weekends.”

2.  Review your child’s learning. 

Testing your child’s learning will help you to identify problem areas and most importantly – where to start.  It is better to concentrate on specific topics rather than teach everything with the hope that it will make some difference.  If there was a hole in a wall, would you rebuild the whole wall or just patch up the hole?   Just patching up the hole saves time, money and energy if done properly, so apply the same principle to your child’s learning.

You can buy books with test papers in them specific to your child’s age or download resources off the internet.  Discuss the results with your child so that your child knows exactly what they can and cannot do.  Next write out some tragets for your child to aim for.  Once you’ve identified weaknesses, focus on those but only covering up to 3 topics at a time.  This repetition and re-inforcement will give your child confidence.

3.  Break down and classify the information your child needs to learn.

When we de-clutter our houses, we have to break down the task into smaller manageable chunks.  Like tackling one room at a time or sorting out the toys first.  The same goes for de-cluttering information in children’s brains.

• tackle one subject at a time
• if the subject is too big, then one topic at a time, for example just “writing” in english or just “arithmetic” in maths.
• break down what your child needs to know into either “know really well”, “confused” and “don’t know”.

The topics that fall into the “don’t know” category are the ones that will need the most attention.  The aim is to review the list periodically so that topics move from this category into one of the others.

We use this strategy at work and hone in on those weaknesses, we fill in those gaps and help the children to build firm foundations for their learning.

Case Study 2- Perseverance Always Pays Off in The End

I have been fortunate enough to work with many youngsters over the past few years. Many have been academically able and highly motivated and have achieved outstanding results at school. Many have lacked self-belief and have needed encouragement and backing, in order to progress to levels they would not have believed possible. So today, I am going to tell you about a student who we shall call Alan (this is not his real name and is used to protect his identity).

When Alan’s mother brought him to me for an assessment, he was 14 years old and had a reading age of 7 years and 5 months.  His spellings were also poor and he thought that punctuating sentences wasn’t important.  At school he was not getting any timetabled extra support.

I urged her to speak to the school again and to get him properly assessed for learning difficulties and specifically dyslexia.  Alan definitely had dyslexic tendencies, so I decided that he needed to concentrate on improving his reading.  This problem with reading held him back in other subjects.  I put him on our reading programme which consists of a series of reading booklets, accompanied by audio CD’s, computer programmes and workbooks specifically designed to tackle reading strategies.

The reading scheme would:

1. Teach him how to break down a word into syllables
2. Help him to learn the sounds made by different letter combinations
3. Make him become more fluent by recognising sight words.  Sight words are the most commonly used words in the English language and must be learnt by rote.  An example of a sight word is the word “the”, which cannot be worked out by the sounds of each letter in the word.
4. Free up some more working memory when he is reading so that his reading comprehension improves.

Alan has recently been diagnosed as having “mild dyslexia” by a professional and it is now acknowledged at his school. The school are now giving him extra one-to-one support in reading and spelling and he will be given extra time in exams.  We re-assessed his reading this week and found that his reading age had gone up by 11 months in just 6 months.  His attitude to learning has changed and he now “takes pride in his work” says his teacher.  When I shared this good news with his mum, she said that at the last school parent’s evening he got an “outstanding” whereas previously he was getting “satisfactory”.

Children like Alan can easily slip through the net and learning difficulties like dyslexia can go undetected throughout a child’s schooling.  But once it is diagnosed, then it is fairly easy to rectify.  In Alan’s case, he had to read and do certain reading drills 2 or 3 times a week each lasting at least 30 minutes and he had to attend the centre twice a week.  I remember at times we nearly gave up because the progress just didn’t seem to come.  So it was a big commitment and it paid off.   And I think I’ll end with an appropriate quote …

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” By Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) American writer and philanthropist.

Helping Your Child To Improve Their Vocabulary

The inspiration from this post came from a comprehension exercise that I was doing with one of my students.  The word “harmless” came up and I had to try more than one way of explaining it to her.  I learned that later she used the word “harmless” to describe herself and “harmful” to describe her little sister in a conversation with her mum.

Vocabulary building is a fundamental skill in english, as it improves reading comprehension, spoken english and written expression.  Learning vocabulary is not just a matter of looking up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, but a more complex skill that is learnt through seeing and using the word in a variety of ways.  So here’s my take on teaching vocabulary:

Using Visual Props

Draw a picture to show the meaning of the word, make flash cards and download and print pictures or photos of the word.  Talk through these with your child.  If the word is an object, then you can point it out to your child when you see it.

Acting Out

You can mime out the word, use facial expressions or mimic the action.  I have a cuddly teddy in my classroom because the word “affection” is on our vocabulary list.  So to illustrate “affection”, I cuddle the toy.

Traditional Methods

Look up the word in a dictionary, find synonyms in a thesaurus, use the word in a sentence, describe the word in a sentence, find the opposite of the word and explaining the meaning of the word.

Multiple Exposure

When you see the word in a story, on a poster, in a magazine or on flashcards, ask your child to tell you the meaning of the word.  Then use the word in a conversation if possible and on different occasions so that your child sees how you use the word.

Practice and Use

Provide opportunities for your child to use new words and to practice using them in games like crosswords.  Also, use the words in a conversation with your child and try variations of the word, like adding a prefix or suffix to it.

Finally I will leave you with a website recommendation called “Visual Thesaurus” which is an excellent resource for vocab building.  That’s all for now, please try and let me know how you get on.

How to Teach Halving

HALVING SHAPES

Before teaching a child to halve a number, make sure that they can halve a shape.   Most children find it easy to halve a shape and don’t realise that halving means the same as splitting into 2 equal parts. So before teaching your child how to halve a number, please make sure that they have understood the following common misconceptions:

1.  When you half a shape, you must make sure that it is split in the middle.  This teaches the child that halving must be fair and that both halves must look the same.

2.  There is more than one way to half a shape.  Ask your child to halve a rectangle or square in as many ways as possible.  This should include diagonally as well.

3.  Draw and inaccurately half some shapes so that some are split unequally, some are split into three or more peices.  then ask your child to find out if they have been halved.

HALVING NUMBERS

There are many ways to explain the term of “half of”; sharing equally between 2 people, counting in 2′s, dividing by 2, opposite of doubling and splitting down the middle.  Therefore, there are avariety of ways of teaching halving.  Choose a method that your child finds easy, and stick to it.  Once they are confident with that method, try to teach a different way of halving.

I always start off teaching a child how to share equally.  I usually use counters and draw 2 smiley faces on a whiteboard or peice of paper representing me and the child.  The child has to share the counters between the smiley faces.  Sometimes you have to teach a child “one for you, one for me” and once they have learnt this they find it quite easy.  Make sure that once all the counters have been shared between the 2 smiley faces, that they have been shared equally.  the child needs to check every time. ”How many do you have and how many do I have” seems to work well.  What if the counters have not been shared equally?  The child can repeat again or if they have caught on, they will be able to move some counters around to make the distrbution fair.  I use this method for up to 24 counters.

For numbers larger than 24, using counters can be time consuming and often ends up with the child miscounting.  By now the child should know half of 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 without working them out. So I break down larger numbers into manageable chunks, and then ask the child to share equally between 2 smiley faces.

Example 1:  Darw 2 smiley faces.  Half of 30 = 10+10+10 Draw three 10′s in circles at the side as in diagram below.

How to half 30

Then share as in the diagram below, the smiley faces will get 10 each and then, there will be 1o left which will have to be split into 5′s.  So each person gets 15.

How to halve 30

The same method can be used for bigger numbers and it’s easy and simple.

half of 34 = 10+10+10+4

half of 50 = 10+10+10+10+10

Do try this with your children and let me know if it works.