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posted by mrpg on Saturday May 13 2017, @04:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the 2x²+x+64 dept.

If you've ever had to help your child with math homework, you really appreciate their teachers, who do it every day. "Math anxiety" isn't something only kids experience.

Maybe you haven't seen an algebra formula in years, and weren't that comfortable with them when you were a student. Maybe you're a skilled mathematician, but don't know how to explain what you're doing to a child. Whatever the case, math homework can leave parents feeling every bit as frustrated as their children. Homework doesn't have to lead to unpleasantness, though.

What I've learned through my own experience—as a teacher, a researcher, from helping my own children, and now watching my daughter work as an elementary school mathematics teacher—is that communication is (excuse the pun) the common denominator when it comes to making math homework a positive experience.

The National Science Foundation (NSF), where I work, is dedicated to research. We support scientists across the country who study learning and education systems. But we're also teachers at heart. On lunch breaks in the past, a group of us gathered to help our NSF peers with their own questions about how to help their kids learn math.

Here are a few tips from what we've learned:

Do Soylentils have better tips, things that have really helped their own kids learn math?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 13 2017, @06:04AM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday May 13 2017, @06:04AM (#509029) Homepage

    Your kid sucks at math. Deal with it. Learning math isn't supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be a life-lesson in that all the hard things are fought for with extreme tedium, and the only time people appreciate math is when they're not actually using it.

    Though I will say this -- before Common Core homeschooling used to be the method of choice for religious nutbags. Now, homeschooling is the last resort you have to prevent your kid from becoming a retard.

    Quantitative reasoning was the last bastion of a good honest foundation in logic and critical thinking, but with Common Core even math has now been subjectified-away into nebulous guesswork so that your smart White kid is now on equal-footing with one of Jamal's many illegitimate offspring, and it's now possible for your teacher to fail your kid even if they get correct answers to the problems.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Saturday May 13 2017, @07:22AM (2 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday May 13 2017, @07:22AM (#509047) Journal

    Learning math isn't supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be a life-lesson in that all the hard things are fought for with extreme tedium

    Well, in that case I seem to have missed that life-lesson. ;-)

    Honestly, if I think of extreme tedium back in school, the first thing that comes into my mind is learning vocabulary. Long lists of words with translations to memorize. There cannot be anything more tedious than that.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Saturday May 13 2017, @10:40AM (1 child)

      by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday May 13 2017, @10:40AM (#509080)

      Learning math isn't supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be a life-lesson in that all the hard things are fought for with extreme tedium

      Well, in that case I seem to have missed that life-lesson. ;-)

      Me too.

      ...Long lists of words with translations to memorize. There cannot be anything more tedious than that.

      Except sport/phys ed classes.

      --
      It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday May 13 2017, @11:55AM

        by anubi (2828) on Saturday May 13 2017, @11:55AM (#509102) Journal

        Math... any of the sciences... shop... fun!

        No problems with spelling or grammar.

        English Literature was my own personal hell.

        Especially lengthy tomes by Charles Dickens, Shakespeare, or Chaucer.

        I loved a good science fiction read.

        The other stuff, like History, wasn't fun, but do-able. I much preferred the "why" part of it to the "who" or "when" part.

        Geography was interesting.

        PE was a welcome break from the tedium of sitting in the classroom. I was good at rope climbing in those days, but did not run worth a damm. Like a skinny little monkey. No good at it now, though.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]