The Learning Success Blog

After 20 years as a maths teacher and tutor, Dr Dion Khlentzos, has a clear view of what's necessary for building students' maths skills.

His top five keys to maths success include building on students' prior knowledge, relating maths to their everyday life and strengthening their motivation and belief in their own maths abilities.  

He discussed the five keys in an interview on The Learning Capacity Podcast where he commented on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), and whether artificial intelligence will reduce the need for many people to understand maths. 

Dr Khlentzos also commented on how technology like Zoom and Skype has enabled maths tutoring to be delivered to students who find it hard to attend face to face sessions with a tutor.

For many students, maths is no fun. And it may not have been a pleasant experience at school for their parents either.

Do you have students or a child who doesn’t like maths?

According to Dr Judy Willis, author of “Learning to Love Maths”, there are ways you can help make maths fun for your child. And you don’t need to be a maths “wiz” to help your son or daughter.

Dr Willis has written a great article for Psychology Today about our attitudes towards maths - maths negativity and maths positivity. In it she listed some common myths about maths:

Maths is not fun......

Most of us easily and naturally use language, but when it comes to maths many people struggle, and find it is not so “natural” to work in numbers or maths concepts. Why is that?

Do we have brains that are wired for language from birth, but not for maths? Or is there such a thing as a “maths brain”? Do some of us have it while some don't, and if we don’t, how do we activate it?

Dr Martha Burns, expert in the neuroscience of learning, author of over 100 journal articles and three books, and Director of Neuroscience Education at Scientific Learning Corporation answered these questions in a conversation on The Learning Capacity Podcast.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

She explains: “One way to think of it is that maths is a different language. It involves a different symbol system.

Teachers do much more than just teach - they build student brains. 

This is the message from Dr Martha Burns, professor of communication sciences and disorders at Northwestern University, in a podcast episode on The Learning Capacity Podcast.

Dr Burns discusses the new science of learning, and how it involves educational neuroscience and understanding individual differences in children. 

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

“The single biggest thing that a parent can give their child is the encouragement to do better, and not give them limiting beliefs about their ability or what they could achieve”.

This is an opinion expressed by David Stanley, former math teacher and now Director of Learning Ecosystems Growth at Learn Fast Australia, in a wide ranging two part interview on the Learning Capacity Podcast.

 In the first part David discussed rote learning of maths tables, how this can improve a student’s learning capacity, the role of parents in helping students set goals, and the educational power of celebrating success.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Recently, educator Colin Klupiec recorded our conversation where he teased out my understanding of how memorising maths tables can help students build learning capacity and the importance of the role played by parents. It is recorded in two parts on the Learning Capacity Podcast with the key points summarised below.

We discussed some findings from the neuroscientists around brain plasticity - the cognitive neuroscience and how it relates to what some people may think is a bit old-fashioned – rote learning, or learning by repetition.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

Elliot’s mum, Elaine had been concerned about his learning ever since he started school. Elliott is now aged 10 and in Year 5 at school.

He did not seem to be making progress with learning to read in Year 1, and by Year 3 he was having trouble with literacy concepts, particularly with comprehension. He also struggled to understand maths concepts. He found it difficult to make sense of the relationships between mathematical symbols and what he was meant to do with them.

As a primary school teacher, Elaine saw a discrepancy between her very energetic, able, motivated, and clever-in-many-different-areas little boy, and his lack of learning progress at school. He needed a lot of help to grasp simple concepts in reading and maths.

Listen to Elaine tell the story in her own words:

The two largest challenges parents may have helping their child with maths homework are:

1. Dealing with their own memories of doing maths at school - or not.
2. A sense of urgency: wanting the child to be better, too quickly.

The parent has an essential role in their child’s learning as the parent’s attitude towards numeracy often rubs off on the student. If the parent did not enjoy or is not interested in numeracy, we often find the child has a similar disinterest. It would be beneficial if parents would focus on thinking about how they communicate maths with their child and changing to a positive conversation around numeracy.

People often ask why the 11 & 12 times tables are included in the LearnFast Maths Skills Booster when our number system is based on 10?

This is a good question and the answer has several components: neuroscience influence, practicality, legacy issues, and also some curious factors. 

Over the past few months, over 2,000 subscribers have downloaded the LearnFast Maths Skill Booster to help with maths and the feedback has been very positive. 

Students and parents have found it a light time load - only 10 minutes a day – but especially liked the excitement of plotting progress and regular rewards for improvement that has really helped engage many students.

A pleasing and unexpected result was reported by one parent who noticed that her daughter now does other things, not just maths, faster – she gets the concept of “fast”.

Should they start with the standard or jumbled form?