Maths Tuition In Devon

Making Maths Add Up

Love it or loathe it – there’s no denying its worthy place in the national curriculum.  An integral part of education, it is a subject that will test the grey matter in a way no other subject could.  Filled with perplexing puzzles and patterns, logical brain-teasers, basic arithmetic and challenging calculations; maths enables a child to gain a true understanding of numbers.

Many children are able to grasp the concept of maths with seemingly little effort yet others, despite their best attempts struggle with numbers and patterns. As a result many parents try to offer extra maths assistance to their child from the comfort of their own home. This may sound like an ideal set up, however it can pose its own problems; for example, with long multiplication, children are usually taught in one of two ways, the grid method and the vertical method, yet many parents are only familiar with the vertical or ‘column’ method they were taught when they were at school so feel unqualified to teach their child an unfamiliar method.

Helping your child with maths

To help your child with maths you may wish in the first instance to talk to your child’s teacher who will be able to advise you of the best resources and tools available to use at home.  The teacher will be able to instruct you on what is being taught in school at any one particular time and will be able to advise you on ways you can offer relevant support and guidance on these topics at the right time.  Your child’s teacher may also be able to recommend specific supplementary material to assist the learning process or you may wish to use a web based ‘maths school’ resource instead. There are many websites that provide online maths tuition designed to support primary school aged children, at a pace which is right for them. Online maths resources often include lessons, tricks and tips, quality tutoring, interactive games and rewards. Many sites also offer explanations to parents who want to learn the maths themselves in order to be able to help their children.

Aside from traditional methods there are more fun and practical ways a parent can teach maths and build it into everyday life. You can ask your child to work out simple sums based on items seen in the supermarket and let them handle money and work out how much things cost.

Also as maths is very visual, one of the easiest ways to understand it is to try to see a pattern in the sum. A good idea to help a child see a pattern is to display posters of the time tables in your child’s bedroom or you can stick some magnetic numbers to your fridge and persuade your child to play with them to make their own patterns! After a while a child will be able to view maths as a language and start to identify patterns for themselves.

What can I do to help make the maths learning process easier?

Nourish the learning process by creating a quiet and clear work environment to make it easier for a child to establish a regular habit and undertake say, 10 to 20 minutes of maths homework, ideally straight after school.  This approach is in favour of an arduous stretch of learning once in a while which may be too stressful and may be counter-productive in the long term.  At such a young age, a child’s concentration levels may not stretch for much longer than 20 minutes.  Research has shown that children are more receptive to learn the fundamentals of maths in small chunks. And the trick is simply to have plenty of practice!

Knowing how to teach maths to a child is an exemplary skill that few possess so, many parents seek extra tuition from private tutors and education centres to supplement their learning at school.  A good place to start looking for providers of out of school tuition is on the Primary Times pages. Or why not visit www.primarytimes.net for more ideas?

Some (or should it be ‘sum’?) useful websites

World Maths Day

The 7th of March is World Maths Day, and it’s when children may wish to enter a global online maths competition to show off their numeracy skills.  School aged children are able to register and participate on a free website making it a great way to improve numeracy and mental arithmetic skills whilst having fun in the process. For more details about World Maths Day go to www.worldmathsday.com.

BBC Bitesize

The Bitesize pages on the BBC website are informative, fun and free!  The individual maths subjects are broken down into ‘bitesizes’ and are supportive of the curriculum.  They are aimed at different age groups and offer games, puzzles and small tutorial sections. For more details go to www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/maths

The Maths Factor

Carol Vorderman’s The Maths Factor offers a cost effective form of tutoring and follows a colourful, lively and easy-to-use format that takes roughly 15 minutes to complete.  As an online system it offers flexibility allowing children to access and complete each stage at a time when it is suitable for them.  For more details go to www.themathsfactor.com