The Learning Success Blog

“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.

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?

A great old maths learning tool......

It's interesting to think about how educators, sports coaches, music teachers and other teachers have always instinctively incorporated the principles of brain training in their teaching activities, without necessarily being aware of them.

The principles of brain training described by neuroscientists from their brain research over the last few decades are: