One of the biggest difficulty for my OG math students is: they have difficulties creating visual and/or mental math concepts. In school, they are pretty much trained to memorize concepts rather then to understand them visually. For example: asking my students what is 3 times 5, they will probably tell me quickly that it equals to 15. I ask them how they came up with that answer? most of the time they said it's because they remembered it. When I tutor, the 1st 10 mins is mostly reviewing all known and learned math concepts/terms....all concepts I teach is done using all senses - visual, tactile/kinesthetic, auditory. For math review I will usually put equations, vocab onto cue cards and ask them to tell me the answer or meaning. If they got the sum wrong, I will have them write the equation down onto the white board, then ask them to write the equation out 3 times differently (drawing pictures, using tables/graphs or word problems). This helps them visualize the equations and also improve in their mental math problem solving abilities. Having ongoing review will give you opportunities for the child to show you how much they learned and show you if your teaching strategy works for them. Be flexible, don't give up on the student, it doesn't always take one lesson for mastery of a concept..remember to keep your lessons multi-sensory..and make math meaningful!
AuthorDora Cheung - Certified OG Tutor, Masters of Educ. Admin., Early Childhood Education, +20 yrs of teaching experience. Married with 3 boys - 13 yrs, 11 yrs and 8 yrs old. Archives
December 2019
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