Earlier this month when we went to parent teacher conferences, we found out that Zach was struggling with math. Apparently this year they switched the work books for 5th graders and even the teacher admitted that the other teachers and herself were struggling with teaching it and understanding it.
Today Zach emptied out his backpack and his math scores were really low. As a mom, it's hard when kids are struggling in any way, shape or form. I've been thinking of what I can do to help, but he's been doing so well with after school stuff. He gets home and is great. He whips out his homework, gets it done, does dishes, cleans his room and is off to play. We used to struggle with homework, so I've wanted to take a more standoffish approach this year. I figured as long as he was doing his stuff smoothly without arguments, then I'd let the cards fall where they may.
Well, when I saw a stack of homework with low scores, I immediately wondered what I could do that wouldn't cause stress to his every day homework time. I decided I'd have him give me his work when he was done and I'd correct it while he was off getting his other stuff done. This way I could figure out what he wasn't getting and try and help.
He's working on the FUN stuff right now like 3 + 3 - (5 x 2) - 1 x 5. I love that stuff and I knew if he understood how to do it, he'd like it too. So after I corrected, I sat down with him and went over the steps that were laid out on his paper. I showed him how to do EACH and EVERY step, one step at a time and how EASY it was when he did it the right way.
After he got going, man, he just GOT IT. We started out with tears because he kept telling me that he knew what he was doing and I kept explaining to him that if he knew what he was doing, the answers would be mostly right, not mostly wrong. As he worked the problems the right way, his whole demeanor changed and he was smiling and saying "this is so easy!" I sat with him through 16 problems and we talked about how things can become fun and easy when we know how to do them and by the end, he was all bubbly and proud of himself for kicking maths butt. As his mom, I just watched him and even got a little teary eyed because I saw that spark when he GOT IT.
It was a good reminder to me that my kids might be going through life seemingly happy like they get what's going on, but a little help and encouragement from mom can go a long way!
by the way, the answer to the problem above is -9 ;)
[gallery columns="2" ids="8458,8459,8460,8461,8462"]
No comments:
Post a Comment