You may now need math to be successful in life, but you will benefit immensely as a student from good grades in the subject. “One way to understand math, if it constantly challenges, is by building a good attitude towards it and then creating practices that will help the rest of the way,” claims Jasper King, a math teacher who also works as a writer for PapersOwl. He also reminds you if you are thinking: “I will pay to do my math homework,” – it is okay, as long as you are trying to understand what has been done. Teachers have for years now been incorporating instructions that promise to help students understand the subject better, and they seem to be working.
Here are our top tips teachers can use to improve school math success among students.
Build Confidence
Most students lack the self-belief that makes anyone that is good at something really good, making the challenge problem personal. To build a good foundation of the subject, curriculum & instruction, a tutor will need to help them realize their true potential. There is this common belief amongst many that this subject is difficult and reserved for the smartest, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. To debunk this myth, parents have to lead by making math sound enjoyable and simple even before a child starts schooling. If they continually tell their children to develop positivity and approach mathematics like any other subject, half the battle is won.
Encourage Questioning and Make Space for Curiosity
A teacher who makes learning engaging by allowing questions, even the simplest of them all, sets themselves and their students up for the best. Learners become better when you allow the curious to ask away and encourage everyone to share their thoughts. They will enjoy the learning process and apply what they gain from queries they raise, which also builds their confidence for later stages in life. Since curves are different, it helps to go along with everyone’s level of understanding and even encourages learners to send their thoughts after class if they are uncomfortable asking questions in front of their peers. The things one person will learn in 2 hours, another will internalize in 3 lessons, or 1 week, and so forth.
Emphasize Conceptual Understanding Over Procedure
Mathematics involves working through formulas, and so part of tutoring has to involve the learners gaining knowledge of their application. Most people admit they memorize formulas as that is easier than fully grasping them, but that removes the part where they truly learn how to solve a problem. As a tutor, you want to emphasize these basic skills by letting them know they need to show their work in assignments or exams. When you spend time building skills, learners will be able to internalize this subject and its concepts fully. It behooves the tutor to remind them enough times that the answer is only good if you show how you arrived at it.
Provide Authentic Problems That Increase Students’ Drive to Engage with Mathematics
Most people grasp matters better when they can relate them to real-life events. An educator is able to gauge the engagement of those they are teaching after a few observations to know how they should proceed. As it is, most learners are not motivated to study mathematics because of its impracticality, and it takes an interested part to create math engagement strategies that humanize it and help to improve math. You can help your learners to improve math by making the seemingly hard topic easier with logical puzzles like Fibonacci Series and the Golden Ratio that most find relatable and much easier to internalize the theories involved. You can also group people in teams of, say, 4 to help each other with mathematical issues. As an educator, you want to reward sequential knowledge when one gets better at an area they were bad at instead of waiting until their overall score improves. This encourages them to keep rising in other areas as well.
Share Positive Attitudes About Math
You can make a student want to dedicate more of their study time to mathematics by speaking positively about the subject as much as possible. Parents, too, have to spread the good news about it instead of constantly calling it useless, especially if their job does not involve solving mathematical problems. That one time a person speaks negatively about something might be the one that changes a learner’s attitude, so you want to continually encourage them to give it their best shot. If any part of your job involves numbers as a parent, you may want to tell a demotivated child how your knowledge in the matter made your life easier.
Conclusion
Tutors are mandated to introduce mathematics in a way that their charges will enjoy so they can prosper as they progress. Even when one will not be taking a program that involves this subject later in their lives, they will still need to do well in it to prove they are all-round for colleges. How it is taught makes all the difference, so the learning process would benefit both tutor and pupil if simplified as much as possible. It all starts with everyone knowing they can solve complex mathematical problems if they believe enough in themselves, and the rest falls into place easily.