Helping Your Child or Teen Learn

While you may hope that schools offer clear and effective instruction, you should also test and verify. not all is certain, You also need to encourage the will to learn, or the aims and goals of your charges. Then your charges may keep trying in school and cooperate with teachers, without disrupting or opposing the education of themselves and others. Good luck.

The advice offered here for helping your child or teen learn is approximately correct, for some circumstances not all. See what works.

• Parents are the first and last teachers of their children. Where schools do not teach all, parents may intervene alone or with help to push or guide. Help your child workbooks for mathematics and other subjects may keep your child learning during school breaks and vacations, year round. Look for workbooks for math and other subjects in book shops or online.

• If you have a teen in difficulty in school, get the teen to master logic alone or with help, if you can. Also teach him or her to be more precise and careful in school and work, by verifying or requiring your teen to learn or demonstrate mastery of exact arithmetic methods for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers. Mastery of logic and exact arithmetic with decimals (fractions too) will show your teen that an error in one step of a calculation or argument, lack of care and precision, sloppiness in other words,  invalidates and makes wrong the further steps and the result.  Demand from your teens that they write out answers and solutions  so that what is written serves a full record of what they thought, because they may not remember what they thought later, and because teachers in giving marks cannot read their minds.
  

• Skill and knowledge mastery, perfection too, requires students to sit down and study carefully. No one else can do that for them. Encouragement or direction from parents and teachers will help.

• North American, Educational Horror Stories: (i) A senior high school student said to me:  I met fractions in primary school and I should not need them for my studies.  His firm opinion was that I should bring  all the current course on physical science to a level where mastery of fractions was not required. After spending half-hour telling him, the course you are in requires mastery of fractions and more,  I stopped trying. He did not want to listen.  So I could not help him.  There was a question of credibility. (ii)  Another college algebra student studying to a be policeman sat at the back of my classroom. He did very little outsides of class, and inside of class spoke to his two friends, also male. While confronting his lack of effort, he explained that his mother thought mathematics after arithmetic was a waste of time. I protested, but I could not change his mind.  (iii) While giving a college, remedial algebra class, I had a student who informed me that he was high school mathematics instructor giving an algebra course. So  he needed my course   good move, but oops. (iv)  ....

Section webpages

1. Speaking Skills suggests how to improve the speaking and listening skills of your child.
   
2. Reading & Writing offers ideas for the development of these skills. 
   
3. Preparing for science -Teaching a boy or girl to cook or to follow any multi-step method precisely, in a repeatable and reproducible manner, will help in science and all area of work and study.
   
4. Learning Takes Time and Effort: Four Things for a Student to Know. Quote in full of an article from Speaking of Learning that refers back to words at this site, no longer online.
   
5. Math Work Books for your child or young teen identifies mathematics material for your charge to use with your supervision.
   
6. Math Books and Websites for Teens & Adults - besides this one.
   
7. Readings for Parents -  results from a trip to a local bookstore. 
   
8. Patience Please. reflects the inductive idea that learning takes time. If you see a difficulty, you need to identify the source and retreat before it in order to practice skills that restore confidence and then to practice skills that remove the source of the difficulty. Teaching, tutoring or parenting takes time and patience. Good luck. Nothing is certain.
   
9. Who is in Charge? For better or worse, you the parent or guardian may be the first and longest term instructor of your child. Do your best
   
   Parents and teachers need to say no for small things of little consequence to build and maintain authority to say no for larger matters. Parental authority:  use it or lose it.
   
10. Student Motivation Here a discussion of the challenge. Not the solution. 
    
    Students with parents who say mathematics mastery is important, or education in general is important, will  often have more goals, more will and more staying power in school and college - no guarantees here -but is part of the solution.
    
11. Talk to Your Child or Teen. For many, those without learning difficulties, the will to learn is often more important than ability. Encourage the will.  That is part of the solution.
    
12. Primary and High School Mathematics  describes or lists the skills and ideas met primary school to the first year of high school, and points to a context for high school mathematics.  
    
    Ages 5 or 6 Ages 6 or 7 Ages 8 or 9 Ages 10 to 13 Ages 14 plus.
    
    Knowledge of them will allow you to judge the skills of your charge and the math and logic work books or reading for your charges. You will see where they are going. 
    
    Note: Site How-TOs for preparing teens and adults were posted online in August 2008. They complete or replace the foregoing advice for Ages 14 plus.   I will to rewrite this site area to consolidate ideas.
    
    If you are parent with a knowledge of calculus, check whether or not preparation for calculus is part of the agenda in high school mathematics.  If not, if the teachers of your son or daughter have mastered calculus, you will need to investigate paralleled instruction that follows site Tutor-Teacher How-TOs s as far as your son or daughter can go.  
    
13. Links for Kids and their Guides
    

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Help your Child 
or Teen Learn:

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Area Intro
1. Speaking Skills
2.  Reading & Writing
3. Preparing for Science
4. Learning Takes Time and Effort
5. Math Books: kids & teens
6. Math Books: teens & adults
7. Readings for  Parents
8. Patience Please
9. Who is in Charge
10. Motivation
11.  Will to Learn
12. Math K1-20
13. Links For Parents
14. JumpMath WorkBooks
15. Discipline in Schools
16. Problems in Education

Maths for Ages 5+

D What to do in School & Why  

E.How to Study Mathematics

To read, write and spell, your children need to learn and memorize the alphabet. Anything less would be absurd. That being said, learning and using mathematics demands that your children meet key skills and concepts, and not skip any. Where local schools do not provide the latter, you need to provide remedies.

Care and Precision: If your child  can learn to follow multi-step methods carefully and precisely in arithmetic, he or she may do so  in other subjects, as well. Get your child or teen, if you can, to sit down and study. Suggest he or she aim for skill and concept development and perfection for their own sake, not that of their teachers.

The will to learn is the key to success in school.  Parents do have to be educated to support or guide their children and teens. What matters more is support for the will to learn, for children and teens to be  told to try to learn and to ask teachers, their schools or classmates for help and more help, as needed. Teachers and parents need to push students, help them find the will to learn, teamwork helps.

The main reason and focus for high school mathematics is or should be preparation for calculus. That requires skill and knowledge perfection with fractions, algebra, geometry, trig and functions. Many high school programs do not provide this. Make sure alone or with help that your children and teens have a good command of fractions.

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