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Oprah Winfrey once said, “You become what you believe.” Many children fail math not because it is a complex subject but because they grew up hearing about its complexity. Others find it boring with numerous figures and formulas. Some see the figures as irrelevant and overwhelming. When I was growing up, my teacher told me that math is a game of numbers. He was joking. But as a fifth-grader, I believed him! He wanted to boost my confidence, and yes, it worked. Lack of confidence causes children to doubt their abilities leading to poor performance. What you tell your child and how you handle their shortcomings can improve or deteriorate their confidence.
Fifth graders are excited about many things because they speak out their minds over just everything. As such, you can boost their confidence in math by holding productive talks. For example, ask a fifth-grader why they hate math, and you might need a notebook. They volunteer information quickly and eagerly. While many teachers and parents spend more time trying to quiet them, you can take advantage of their character and teach them how to work on their weaknesses. Children are generally happy and very truthful at this age, so you can easily encourage their growth. They are also cooperative, something that makes it easy to improve their abilities and build their confidence.
Here are some tips you can use to develop math confidence.
Help Them Understand the Importance of Math in Real-Life.
As math continues to get complicated and less connected with everyday life experiences, your child may begin to disconnect from the subject or develop anxiety over the subject. Please help your child understand math concepts by teaching them where they are used in real life. For example, you can use math with them to make house budgets. You can also show them how baking or cooking uses math fractions when mixing ingredients. You can also do grocery calculations with your child to show the importance of math in real life.
Introduce Math in Your Child’s Daily Life
Once your child is out of school, create a math’s friendly environment at home. For example, introduce games that involve numbers and ensure that you show them how math can make life easier. Using maths, work with tangible objects to count, sort, estimate, measure, draw, and solve real issues. This way, your child will begin to think math is easy and will quickly apply it without worrying if they are smart enough or not.
Help Your Child to Prepare for the Math Class
You can reduce your child’s anxiety for math class by helping them get familiar with the concepts covered in the next course. You can work closely with the teacher to understand the syllabus. Every evening goes through what your child will be covering in class the following day and helps your child to prepare for it. You do not have to solve the problems or elaborate on the concepts, but you can briefly mention the concepts as a way of registering them in your child’s mind. You can go further to describe some of the unfamiliar terms to your child. The slightest familiarity with the words being mentioned by the teacher will boost your child’s confidence and attitude toward the subject.
Create a Positive Attitude Toward the Subject
You can boost your child’s confidence in math by speaking positively about the subject. Rather than rewarding your child for ability or grades, reward them for effort. Recognize every slight improvement and dwell on that. Please encourage your child even when they are performing poorly. You should also speak positively about math rather than terming it as a complex subject.
Readout Problems Loudly
Reading aloud in comprehension is associated with several benefits, such as memory boosting and increased ability to recognize words and text in the future. In math, reading aloud helps students clarify ideas, identify a concept that they couldn’t grasp in the past, and learn from their peers based on how they approach problems. You can also build your child’s confidence in math by having them read every situation carefully and much slower. By doing so, they will begin to comprehend and understand what the question requires. Understanding the question boosts confidence and eventually helps them develop an appropriate strategy to solve the problem.
Last but Not List:
- Teach your child about commitment and hard work.
- Encourage mistake-making by reducing criticism.
- Speak well of math
- Dispel every myth about the subject
- Work closely with the teacher
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