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Tutoring emphasizes two components of math education: concept development and algorithm development. First, for a learner to successfully learn
life-long math skills, he or she must understand
it. This seems obvious enough, but that is not necessarily how your child has been taught over the years. For example, a student may learn when adding 37 + 56 that you regroup, write down the three and carry the one, but may have no comprehension of why and how this happens. Without this understanding, a student is more prone to making errors, reversing numbers (especially if prone to reversals), and just plain old forgetting how to do it. By first building concepts of place value, trading, and regrouping outside the context of a "math problem," then the algorithm (the steps to computation) come naturally. The second element is algorithm development. Some students may understand the concepts, but get mixed up in the process of doing it on paper. Tutoring will provide systematic instruction of strategies to deal with processes such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and rounding, to name only a few. In teaching math, the same instructional principles are employed as with language arts: students are
explicitly taught concepts and processes; these processes are broken down
into manageable steps. One thing I always ingrain in my students is—if you can do the individual steps, then you can do the whole thing. Students often see tasks that seem difficult and shut down
emotionally. Their frustration and fear take over. By teaching students the strategies to break a task into parts, they see it as "doable." They then will be taught to develop their own
strategies to handle new or difficult learning task, no matter what the material. This crucial skill will ensure life-long learning. |
