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Math Anxiety is a term coined by psychologists and refers to the fear of math that gets instilled in students at a very young age. This holds true for students that are public, private or homeschooled. For most of these students, this fear only increases with time and age and they dread math as they move to highschool and college level avoiding the subject as much as possible.

Nationwide statistics shows that math scores have been dropping year after year for all grade levels. Students of this tech savvy generation start to fear math as early as the beginning of middle school level. Being the world leader in science, technology and innovation, this country cannot afford to have its next generation so detached from math. It seems as if unlike other countries such as China and India, the society here as a whole is not laying enough emphasis on the importance of math. Students that perform well in school are considered geeky and “uncool”, adding to the already mounting isolation from math as a subject of choice.

A recent article in the NY Times outlines results of most difficult math competitions for young people, including the American and International Mathematical Olympiads for high school students, and the Putnam Mathematical Competition for college undergraduates. The results show that American students that excel in these competitions are immigrants from other countries. People in countries like India and China still consider math to be imperative for growth, both academically and professionally. It’s no wonder that teachers from India are now teaching students here in the U.S. online. More and more online math tutoring companies are hiring tutors in India to teach U.S. students online. Providing low cost one-on-one tutoring services serves the dual purpose of effectiveness and affordability.

Parents, teachers and educators all around should start emphasizing the importance of math in real life and make learning math easy and fun by providing individual attention whenever possible.

About our Guest Blogger and Author:
Aish Agrawal is a math tutor in Boston, MA on Tutormatch.com.  He also works with http://www.clickandclimb.com which provides live online math tutoring to students in grades 3-12. For the latest information about online math tutoring and to solve the problem of the day visit http://blogs.clickandclimb.com

Posted under Math Tutoring, Tutoring

As a 6th grade math teacher in a private school, I often discovered that my classes were a general blend of different public and private schools that either taught traditional Math or adopted newer and alternative forms of math instruction.  I found that the students with the alternative instruction came to 6th grade with a weak set of multiplication and division skills using big numbers and decimals.  I often watched the pain and anguish develop in the faces of these generally good math students because they were behind the rest of the class.  So, what can a parent or teacher do in this case?  Start reviewing early and often!

The first thing to test is your child’s ability to do standard multiplication and not the ladder method. This is fine with small numbers, but once they get to 3 digits and decimals, it becomes nothing but a pain and often a source of errors.  I usually had 2-3 students in each class using the ladder method.  I worked with them during extra help or before school, retraining their multiplication and wouldn’t you believe … they found it much easier to do the traditional vertical multiplication method!  What you can do at home is each night give your child a few problems to do using traditional method. They will be confused at first and might forget, but after a few days they should catch on.  Don’t overwhelm them with a ton of problems; 2-3 each night is fine.

The next thing I suggest is to review their long division skills.  Some students came to 6th grade only knowing how to do “partial sums” which again is fine with small whole numbers, but once you get into decimal division, it doesn’t work as well and creates confusion.  So first, review long division (or teach it depending on the case) and then review decimal division.  Most 5th grade math curriculum covers both long and decimal division so it should not be a foreign concept to a 6th grader.  Each night, give your child 2-3 decimal or long division problems.  Don’t overwhelm or overload.

Parents, if you don’t feel confident about making up your own problems, contact the teacher and ask if he or she can send your child home with a worksheet or if they can recommend a website with problems and examples.  Two very good websites with worksheets are edHelper.com (which is a paid subscription) and Math.com which is free.  And teachers, send your students home with worksheets to do at their own pace.  It may seem like a lot at the beginning of the year, but retraining math skills only makes learning new ones easier.

About our Guest Blogger and Author:
Mrs. Hilary M. is a Math Tutor and Teacher from Princeton, NJ who offers her professional math tutoring services on TutorMatch.com.  She also blogs at Mrs. Mo’s New Jersey, Baby! and HCM Tutoring.

Posted under Math Tutoring, Parents and Children, Tutoring

Math. Some people love it. Some people hate it. But if you want to survive middle school, you’ll need to find your way through it. Why is there such a clear difference between people who like math and those who don’t? There are theories floating around which say that some people are naturally predisposed to being good at math which makes them enjoy it.  I know there is a lot of truth to this. I personally love art and writing and have nightmares about trigonometry. Yet my brother loves calculus and has nightmares about going to a museum! But I think there is more to the story than just the way we were born. 

From my own experience, I know that I liked math better in sixth grade than I did in seventh. I was learning basic math in both cases. The only difference was that I had a great teacher in seventh grade (Mr. Williams) and not in sixth.  It’s amazing what a difference a teacher can make. Mr. Williams had a way of making math come alive. He would frequently point out how what we were learning applied to real life situations, such as how it might be used in business finance. One time he actually went around and asked each of us to tell him a profession we were thinking of going into when we graduated. He went through all of them one by and explained how you’ll need to know math to be your best at that field.

This brings me to the topic of math tutoring. I didn’t do too well in sixth grade math. What if I could have had someone like Mr. Williams helping me out after school in sixth grade? I have no doubt I would’ve seen a major improvement in my test scores and my self esteem.  That’s the power of a math tutor.

When you go looking for a math or algebra tutor, believe it or not, you don’t need the most knowledgeable mathematician in the world. What’s more important is their ability to adapt the way they teach to the way you learn.

You might like audio learning instead of visual learning. You might like business math examples instead of sports examples. The beauty of a good math tutor is they can get to know you personally and tailor their style to the exact way you learn best. It might be hard to believe, but effective math tutoring might just make something as treacherous as calculus fun!

Posted under Math Tutoring, Tutoring