Guess what the most secretly feared thing in school days for most grown up men & women.
Yes, you guessed it right it was fear of maths.
As a parent you would have experienced it or would have witnessed it in your family relative circle during your school days. I am sure you would never like your child to fear from mathematics. And this is our objective too when we decide to write about how to improve maths skills in your child.
It is not that difficult for your child to improve math skills. It is the subject everyone is “scared” of. The supposed villain of a child’s education.
Mathematics Spelt backwards, it reads SCITAMEHTAM, and legends say that if you say it 20 times in quick succession, you’ll get a knot in your tongue.
Not only students, but also teachers, quake at the sheer mention of its name. Statistics suggest that it is the most hated subject in the world. But if you ask us, it isn’t really all that bad, honestly.
Mathematics is, in fact, the backbone of our civilization. It is the one subject that broadens our horizons and develops the strong power of reasoning. It is a subject that helps bring order to our chaotic lives. But for some, this same subject is the cause of chaos.
“It is a subject in which the problems start off really simple, get extremely ugly in the middle and come out with a reasonably simple end”, a wise man once said. “Only if there were some tricks to understand this monstrous subject easily”. Fear not, read on to learn some simple tricks that help your child to improve math skills. The supposed villain of children’s education will soon become your best friend.
Focus on basic maths skills
To help your child to improve Math skills. Focus on the basic maths skills. And by basics, we mean, Arithmetic skills.
Getting better at basic arithmetic skills is the perfect way to build your base. Learn the intricacies of the number system and try to identify how every number is related to each other. This may seem like an obvious thing to do but what most people fail to realise is the fact that having a weak base comes to bite you in the shoe in the long run.
Not focusing on basic arithmetic skills in the early years and simply glossing it over to advance onto the more challenging concepts of the subject is not a wise choice.
An experienced motorcyclist knows that riding a bike fast isn’t an indicator of your skill. Being able to skilfully manoeuvre your heavy bike through traffic at extremely low speeds is the real indicator of your skill.
To improve your arithmetic skills, solve basic arithmetic problems. Once you feel comfortable enough, move onto more challenging mental maths problems.
Learning maths is like learning a new language. You cannot speak it unless you know its grammar and like every language, it requires regular practice.
Patience is the key for how to learn maths the right way
Have patience. It is a gradual process to improve math skills. Only with daily practice will you see some change. Similarly, it is impossible for your child to improve math skills in a single day.
At the same time, instructors, teachers & Parents should also understand that every child has its own learning speed. Some learn quickly and some may take time. Sometimes, children may ask the same question multiple times.
It is at these moments that the parent or teacher must not lose their cool. It is quite normal for child to take up a lot of time to understand various mathematical concepts. A strict teacher or parent who regularly scolds their child for not learning quickly is not beneficial to a child’s growth.
A child’s simple brain will start associating the fear that it has for its teacher with the subject itself. This is one of the things that leads to children developing phobias towards a certain subject from very young ages and Math phobia is quite omnipresent.
The instructor be it teacher or parent should be patient, and must answer the students’ questions calmly.
Interactive approach to mathematics learning
Peer-tutoring. A concept that has emerged in the western universities as of late, the concept of peer-tutoring is allowing students to study together in a way, where the instructor is also a student from the same batch and role of the instructor is to facilitate the learning.
While this concept is not that new, this is the same concept that is used by martial arts teachers. Pairing two students to spar together leads to the growth of both the students. Both learn about their respective strengths and weaknesses.
In addition, try teaching mathematics in a more interactive way. Start using interactive math tools that will not only make learning math fun way , but will also help your child to improve math skills at a faster rate. Using colourful graphs and charts aid in memorising.
All in all, these are some basic tips that will help improve a child’s math skills. To further improve their skills and interest in the subject, the teachers should try to make the subject more interactive.
The biggest challenge to learning mathematics is, according to many students from around the globe, is the fact that Maths is boring and it is a bit too dull. Learning Arithmetic skills is all well and good but students don’t really find numbers all that interesting. One simple solution to this is to make the subject more “relatable”.
Mathematics is a field that everyone uses in their daily lives. Acquainting children with this simple fact is the key to this problem. Show your children how maths application in real life scenarios works.. Next time you go grocery shopping, take your kid along and show them how math in real-life, like in totalling groceries.
Conclusion :
To conclude, Mathematics is not the monster that children make it out to be. Instead, it is a simple concept that our ancestors developed to make our daily lives bit easier. Once Mathematics was discovered, it became a powerful tool to help solving many challenge and many mysteries of our world. The progressive course humanity has charted, in this chaotic sea of time, is all thanks to it.
You can also look at at other article “how to teach maths in an interesting way“
