Is your child struggling with math? Here are four concrete ways you can help get them on the right track today.

It’s not news to many families that Albert Einstein, one of the greatest math geniuses of all times, struggled mightily in math class as a child. Certainly, the way we teach math in school has changed considerably since Albert Einstein was a child, but the fact remains that talent in math does not necessarily correlate with high performance on math quizzes or tests in schools. When students do poorly on math tests, that undermines their confidence which greatly compounds the problem.

If you want to help your child with math, the first thing to remember is that their struggles are likely not due to low talent in math, but problems in the way math is taught in school. They need different strategies for learning.

• First and foremost, math is a subject that is like building a house. If you miss a brick, you can not put another brick on top of that. You can not add a brick to thin air.
• Especially, this past year, students have missed many vital concepts in a year of remote schooling. If you skip one concept in learning math, it is very difficult to move on to the next. If a child spaces out and misses one concept, they may never catch up for a whole year — or even their whole K12 education.
• It’s difficult to learn math in a group setting because if students have mastered one concept, they have to wait for the whole class to catch up before they move on to the next.
• Different minds work differently and they require different strategies for learning. Some minds understand math better through symbols, others through explanations, still others learn better through hands-on materials. It’s difficult for a teacher to personalize math to every child’s learning style in a group setting, but a parent or tutor can do this.

There is a lot of buzz around the term Mastery Learning. This refers to students working on-one-one with a tutor and/or independent study, so math lessons can be customized to the way they learn, and they move forward at the right rate, sometimes slowing down, sometimes speeding up, but never waiting until others catch up (learning nothing) or getting left behind (as others race ahead)

So what’s a parent to do?

First of all, please know that you don’t have to be good at math to help your child learn it. This is a common justification parents use to not get involved in their child’s math education and it’s unnecessary and false.

1) Even if you’re not good at math, you know your child and you know how to learn. Learn the math concepts with your child, use modeling, show them how learning is done, and they will have tools to be a lifelong learner.

2) Even better, you can ask your child to explain math concepts to you! It’s a common problem that gifted math students get stuck at a certain point as math majors in college, and can not move forward, if they’ve never taken the time to break down concepts. Everything came too easily to them and they never really knew how it all worked. This will boost your child’s confidence and help reinforce their knowledge. And perhaps you’ll even learn something useful in the process!

3) Adaptive learning apps (and other tools for learning at home) can help. There are so many great mastery-based apps, youtube videos or hands-on materials to help children with math. And many are free! The best apps track children’s progress and give them problems based on weak areas. They are even aligned with state standards. I recommend spending time with your child and engaging with them while they play these apps. You can ask questions or help them solve problems. This creates a more mindful approach to technology and helps make sure they understand what they’re doing and don’t get stuck. There are also great physical materials and workbooks to help with math. Here are some of my favorite tools for learning math or you can use our free curriculum planner to find math tools aligned with your child’s learning style.

4) Consider getting a tutor. A study by Benjamin Bloom showed that students who receive mastery-based one-one-one math tutoring perform 98% better than peers in a group classroom environment. While this can be done by the parent, sometimes kids respond better to older peers/teachers than parents, especially if it’s a subject that can be as emotionally fraught as math. And let’s face it, not all of us have time to sit down and tutor math to our kids 2–3 times a week. At Modulo, we’ve spent the last year training a group of 500 math majors to tutor kids online, using child-centered/developmentally appropriate communication, inquiry-based learning and a mastery-based approach to help them build confidence and greatly accelerate their math learning — integrating movement and mindfulness to help them cultivate a healthy relationship to technology. Generally, we encourage students to do sessions that are no longer than 30–40 minutes at at time and we incorporate adaptive learning apps to make sure they are focusing on areas that need progress. Through this method, many of our students have jumped 5 or 6 grade levels in only 6 to 9 months.

If you’re interested in working with a Modulo math tutor, feel free to make a request and we can discuss whether this approach will be the best fit for your child’s needs.