The kids are back with their final year exam results. The two older kids did well enough, we set out targets earlier on in the year and they both pretty much got the grades that were expected of them. Sara didn't. She did extremely well for her language papers but did not pass her math exams. Sigh.
I thought she might just scrape through, but failing maths at primary 1 is like a slap on the face. Mine, I mean. She was visibly upset when she told me, so at least she knew the repercussion of not passing her exam. But she got over it quickly and was on to the next thing that caught her attention. And so, I do what I do best. I analyse (ok, the husband said unhealthily over-analysing at the most micro-level, but hey, I can't help it).
While I have been trying (and the key word here is *try*) to teach Sara mathematical concepts (that I was once bewildered with and subsequently hated with all my heart and soul), I have also been painfully aware that I was losing her interest. All the drills we were going through, I was questioning if they were helping. And on the day she came home with her result, I got my answer, loud and crystal clear.
I know I have to change my teaching style and I have been having conversations with her tutor and Kumon instructor, too. Sara is better at languages because the words describe a story to her. A story that she can act out in her head and she is free to use her active imagination and different words to describe what's going on in the theatre that exists in her mind.
I *need* to make Maths appeal to her that way. I need to make it fun for her. She's a kinesthetic learner and while she can sit down and do math drills for a little while, she is doing it because she is an obedient child, not because she thinks she's learning anything new. In other words, she is not engaged.
So this school holiday that's coming up, in addition to her Kumon worksheets (which is helping her with speed and accuracy) and tuition, we are to:
- bake cookies and cupcakes; so that she learns mass/weight and after baking we can learn division concepts
- sing songs about multiplication tables (*do not laugh* but I have bought a teaching aid which I think might just do the trick)
- walk to the park so that we may collect different types of leaves and learn division concepts and ordinal numbers from our leaf collection
- cook noodles and spaghetti, before which we study lengths
- play shopping so that we can learn counting money
- play teacher, where she will teach me maths :)
I'm hoping these would go someway into making her understand and more importantly, interested, in maths. I want to make sure she is starting primary two on the right footing, despite her primary 1 maths grade. Insha Allah. So please send me your du'a, prayers or magic dust.
6 comments:
I really do sympathize with the math score; I too had my fair share of trouble with math, all the way up through the 11th grade, when I failed advanced algebra (and retook that class in the 12th grade... and had to try three times before passing calculus in college). Go figure, then, that I should spend most of my work career using numbers, in accounting and financial analysis.
One of the most important things I was ever told in an accounting class was, "Every number tells a story." This is difficult to apply in classes like arithmetic when most equations are of the "2 + 2 = 4" variety. But your thoughts about using leaves, spaghetti, etc., will work very well in this regard.
One other suggestion (and I had Milady do this when she taught primary math a few years ago), show only one way to do a problem. Of course many problems can be solved in different ways. Don't do that. Pick the best (if not easiest) way to solve a type of problem and have Sara always use that method. Creativity in solving math problems is fine for adult minds; with kids it only causes confusion.
That is so true re sticking to one way of solving a type of problem and I will remember that. Because I often try to make her think of different ways to do so, since my logic was that it would be easier if she knew of different ways. But the result is only confusion
:(
wow! amazed at the great lengh u're going to help sara grasp math.
my mom used to just copy the questions on the workbook onto excercise cos we're too poor to get assessment books,
and dad would explain formulas and equations in malay...
well they managed to help me all the way to p6 but cudnt cont on to sec school, cos they ended their education prematurely @ pri education only.huhuhu
Hello and thanks for dropping a comment, hanoi. The running theme here is that parents naturally want their children to be successful and so they try their darnest to help to the best of their abilities just as your parents did :)
YOu will do great with all that creative and interesting ideas!!! Though i'm not a parent yet, but i can see that you are making lots of efforts.
May Allah swt assist you both in your 'Mathematics Journey'...amin..
Ameen! Thanks for dropping by and for the encouragement :)
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