May21

Just saying Yes or really understanding?

by EzyMath on May 21st, 2012 at 6:19 am
Posted In: Primary Tutoring, Senior High School Tutoring, Tutoring Issues, Tutoring Methods

I guess i could use some advice regarding how to gauge whether a student is taking on information. Yes I can write questions and ask for answers, but I feel sometimes I just get a smile and nod.

It can be challenging, especially with younger students to make sure they truly understand what’s going on. Sometimes students are too shy to ask questions (even in a tutoring scenario) and sometimes they are not even aware when they do not truly understand a concept. Sometimes a student will get most questions correct and this often leads to the assumption that the maths is understood. However, this is not necessarily the case, especially when student answers questions using the technique of “mindless repetition”. This kind of approach is common with algebra and arithmetic when there are lots of questions laid out in exactly the same format. Student’s often rush through them, mindlessly following the process which yields a correct solution without thinking twice about how it works.

Here are a few suggestions to gauge if your student really understands the maths:

  • Ask them to explain it back to you, as if they are the teacher and you are the student. This is engaging and can be quite fun while giving you insight into the student’s thought process so that you can see if/where they are lacking knowledge. What should they be saying as part of the explanation that they are not saying?

 

  • When they explain questions to you or when they are just doing a question, interrupt them and ask what they are doing and why. You should constantly be asking the student to explain his/her reasoning. They should always be able to justify what they are doing – if they can’t explain themselves then there must be a hole on comprehension. Also, encourage them to ask you the same question: “why?” This question engages the thought process and is central to learning maths.

 

  • When they are practicing questions, mix it up. Don’t allow the student to do 5 questions in a row which are done the exact same way (besides when first teaching the concept). Prevent the possibility that the answers are coming from mindless repetition by making consecutive questions different in style. See if you can trick the student into incorrectly following a rule instead of thinking first and recognizing how the rule would apply differently in your question.

 

  • Test her each tutoring session on the previous lesson’s content. Do they recall it? Understand it still? Sometimes wait until the end of the tutorial and test the student on content you learned at the beginning of that session – can they still answer the questions?

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May16

Tutoring Ineffective – Discontinue?

by EzyMath on May 16th, 2012 at 4:27 am
Posted In: Managing tutorials, Mentoring Relationship, Tutoring Issues

I am still finding it difficult to tutor the year 7 student. He gets too distracted and doesn’t enjoy the topics. I have spoken to his parents about it and they tell me he tends to lose concentration. He rarely does his homework to the best of his ability. Should I maybe talk to his parents again and tell them? I think he may need a new tutor as I don’t feel he is responding well to me. We have made okay progress but it’s far from excellent.

There are a few questions you should consider:

  • Have you exhausted all suitable approaches with this student?

 

  • Is there perhaps a difference in your personalities that is preventing the kind of positive response you are accustomed to? Why is this problem happening?

 

  • Are you sure you have adequately attempted this challenge?

 

  • Is it a suitable time in the year and in the student’s best interests for you to pass this student onto another tutor?

Some students are just difficult to work with and are likely to challenge any tutor; at least until they “see the light”. You want to make sure if you stop tutoring this student it is because you specifically are not suited to them NOT because you cannot handle the challenge. Otherwise the next tutor is likely to have the same trouble as you but the student will needlessly have to acclimatize to a new tutor.

If you don’t feel that you are adding value then talk to the parents. It probably shouldn’t be in the form of “I’m not suited to work with your son” though. Rather it should be a consultation to answer the following two questions:

  • Why is he not responding and what can be done about it?

 

  • Is it perhaps best if another tutor takes over, are you the problem?

Discuss:

  • What they think can be done about the concentration issue and lack of effort?
  • Can part of the problem be resolved by the parents – for example by enforcing homework habits?
  • What do they hope you will accomplish? Do you think you can do that?
  • What feedback has the student given about you?
  • You don’t feel like you are helping him enough and maybe somebody else would be better suited? What do they think about that? How do they think the tuition is going? Etc

Although the situation is not a positive one, parents will typically appreciate the honesty and professionalism in such a situation. At the end of such a conversation there should be a clear decision, based on what is best for the student, either:

  • You will continue with the student for now BUT specific new approaches will be used to improve the situation.

 

  • You will pass the student onto another tutor, with sufficient feedback that the tutor can prepare and tackle the situation adequately.
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May08

Tutor Student Relationship – Friend or Foe?

by EzyMath on May 8th, 2012 at 6:24 am
Posted In: Managing tutorials, Mentoring Relationship, Teacher - Tutor

I’m wondering how stern I should be upon the student when their concentration is waning. Should I be the friend who ushers and assists them through questions or should I be the stern teacher and push him through questions?

 

Stern or Friendly is up to you. However, it isn’t advisable to take either of the approaches mentioned. Neither a stern teacher nor a friend is the role of the tutor. The important question is which way would serve your student better?

As a friend you will ultimately lose credibility and the expert status you are bestowed as a tutor. The student will not take you seriously enough to do what you say. On the other hand, as a stern teacher the student may do more of what you ask but will inevitably develop a resentment or dislike toward you. Parents would not tolerate this for long; they tend to place a high value on the student enjoying the learning process or at least having positive feedback for their tutor.

A one-on-one tutoring situation is very different to traditional teaching roles. You WILL NOT succeed in tutoring a student unless it is as a team. You must enlist their support, both of you must be playing for the same team otherwise your efforts will be counterproductive. The way you achieve this is by establishing yourself as their mentor/tutor. A mentor is a “trusted counsellor or guide”, what you can do is counsel the student about mathematics. Be friendly and nice enough that they “trust” you but be stern and professional enough that they view you as a “maths counsellor”.

This means being nice and friendly but still exercising your authority to an extent – only do it in a consultative fashion rather than “stern”. If you need to be stern because the student isn’t implementing your suggestions try to involve the student in your cause. Explain what is wrong and why. Ask if student agrees with you? Have a conversation about the problem as a mentor (not stern, not friendly – just sincere and nice). You can literally say “Sam, this isn’t working as well as it should. I think it’s because of X, Y and Z which I’m not sure you agree with. Tutoring is a process and the quality of tutorials will depend on me knowing how best to work with you, so we should probably talk about this. What are your thoughts?”

Then, TOGETHER with the student decide on a course of action. Ask what he thinks is a suitable solution? Including the student in decision making will increase his commitment to the decision!

Obviously such a direct approach will work better with high school students but a softer version of this is still useful for primary math students.

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May02

Developing Problem Solving Skills

by EzyMath on May 2nd, 2012 at 10:27 pm
Posted In: Senior High School Tutoring, Tutoring Issues, Tutoring Methods

Do you have any more suggestions as to how I can help my year 12 student to get into good problem-solving habits, he does not like the self-questioning process?

It is hard to answer your question because of the lack of specificity. What specifically is wrong with his problem solving skills? Is it that he simply doesn’t get what to do a lot of the time and gets stuck? Or does it seem to you that he has the right knowledge and could have answered most of the problem questions but for some reason he left them to go through with you?

Problem solving ability can for our purposes be looked at as two general pillars:

  • The skill part
  • The psychological part

THE SKILL of problem solving is really all about globalising a problem and then breaking it down. Go through this process again and again when you get stuck in the problem until you arrive at a solution. A student must learn to:

 

1.    Decipher the meaning of the question and understand what the problem wants (chunk up)
2.    Break it down and decide on at least the next step by putting pen to paper and doing some working out (chunk down)
3.    Realign with the meaning of the question to understand where they are up to in the process and then continue once again (chunk up then chunk down)

 

 

This is the general gist of the problem solving process. Strong problem solvers do this naturally. Consciously or not, problem solvers go through their own version of the Self Questioning process:

 

 

1.    What does the question want?
2.    What am I given?
3.    What do I know about this?
4.    What haven’t I used yet?
5.    What else do I need to do? Anything? Let me at least back-check first…. etc

While your student may be reluctant to consciously go through this process because it is “lame” or whatever, he must already do this to some extent with the questions that he gets correct. You should explain this process to him and see if you can find some common ground. Try to find how he naturally does this and point it out when you see it – hopefully this will connect some dots. At the very least – when he gets stuck with problems probe him with these questions rather than giving him the answer.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PART: Has your student ever left a question for you to help him with but upon looking at it you knew that the question was not even close to beyond his skill? This is a really common experience, especially with students who are accustomed to being “bad at math”. As a student improves in maths they must break through or at least stretch various psychological barriers if they are to improve further. One such barrier is learning when to give up and when not to give up.

 

The nature of problem solving (real problem solving – not easy questions in the guise of challenge) is that a student is not supposed to know how to do it straight away. They are supposed to figure it out by “playing” with the maths. It is this very “playing” that stretches problem solving capacity.

 

Not only must students feel that It’s OK To Be Wrong, but that it’s ok to be wrong again and again until you figure it out. This is where lots of developing students fall short. They don’t really appreciate this truth and come to believe that a question is beyond them when it is not.

 

If this happens with your student, start to break the pattern. Sometimes, you may even blatantly refuse to answer a question – especially if it was a really easy one. Instead probe him through it using self questioning techniques to demonstrate to him that he was capable of answering it on his own. Over time the goal is to stretch his expectations of himself and condition him to “play” with the math when he gets stuck.

Ezy Math Tutoring

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Apr24

Student memorizing maths

by EzyMath on April 24th, 2012 at 9:31 am
Posted In: Mentoring Relationship, Senior High School Tutoring, tutoring, Tutoring Issues

The advice given to me last month was really helpful. Samuel believes that in order to succeed in Maths is only possible if you are a ‘genius’ and this may be due to the fact that I had tried to simplify things too much during class and assumed he had understood certain concepts which he in fact is still unclear about. I still find it difficult to convince him why understanding concepts would make it easier for students to work through a question, I have tried all my best but he simply still cannot see the reason behind this. Samuel really does seem to be stressed from school, but he simply does not act upon it and expects others to fix his problems.

There are a few issues in what you have described above. Probably the most important thing to focus on immediately is demonstrating that rule dependency does not work for maths, so let’s focus on that.

Unfortunately you can’t tell a student this simple truth and expect them believe it – sometimes they will but most of the time a conversation alone will not be enough to change their behaviour. Fortunately your student is in year 11 maths and mature enough that you can speak directly. Regular conversations must take place within tutorials to push the concept of Seeking Understanding. This should not be done as preaching or a speech on your part but rather a consultative conversation. Always get his feedback:

  • What do you think?
  • Do you agree? Why? Why not? How do you know?

An effective approach is to demonstrate the truth of what you are suggesting in practical terms rather than just preaching:

  • “The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results” – Einstein said these wise words; explore this with your student. He has been working hard at his maths but yet, real success seems to elude him, why does he think this is happening? Obviously he is doing something wrong in his approach? Many students have gone from failure to extreme success in maths – many of them probably did not work much harder than your student? How can this happen? It’s all in the approach. Either way, if he is not getting results using the current approach it makes sense to try something else? Point this out.

 

  • Here is a useful proverb for your student: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”. Maths is the same, once he understands a concept in depth he will always know it. Otherwise revision will be necessary in extreme quantities. Certainly there must be some concepts that he really does comprehend? Take questions from those topics and ask him to do a few; then contrast this by asking him to try questions from a previous topic where he just memorized the rules. Point out how much easier it is when he understood the content.

 

  • Find out why he thinks you can only succeed in math by being a genius? Why does he believe that his only choice is to memorize rules? Where did these ideas come from? Probably from some friends of his who must also struggle with maths if they give such advice. Ask him if he would go to a dentist to fix his car? He would probably go to a mechanic, not a teeth expert. Same goes for maths. Explain that to fix his maths he must listen to those who succeed in maths (such as a maths tutor).

The goal is to get him to question his faith in rule dependency. With enough of these demonstrations, gradually, he will inevitably be forced to confront his own false beliefs about rule dependency. Then it should be easier to get him on-side.

The ultimate purpose here is to change the student’s focus such they when they look at a question or your explanation their internal dialogue is saying:

  • “What does this mean? How can I figure this out? What is this about? How does this make sense? What haven’t I tried yet? Which concept is this related to?”

Their internal dialogue should NOT be saying:

  • “What was the rule for this? This was done in class – what was written on the board again? What’s the answer? How can I remember this rule/process?”.
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