Have you heard the saying ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him how to fish and you feed him for life’? I am sure that you have, but you may not have related it to your child’s learning.
I would like to change the saying to “Give a child information and you help him learn for a day, show him how to learn and you help him learn for life’.
Children need to learn a lot of information. They need to know how many grams in a kilogram, who is President of the USA, what to do if they get lost, why they have to go to school and a host of other information that it is important for them to know. Do you remember learning your times tables? How were they drilled into you? The games teacher in one of my school made us recite them whenever we were getting changed. No wonder games was not my favorite subject. But, they contain information that I needed to know in order to be good at math. Well, that is what the teachers told us. I now know better.
Yes, knowing my times tables is useful and I would suggest that all children learn some times tables. But I could never remember what I called the ‘middle’ of the table. You know, 6 times 7, 8 times 9, 7 times 8 … all the awkward numbers.
Fortunately it is never a problem. Not because I use a calculator, which I don’t, but because I know HOW to work them out. I have a system of working out the result of two numbers multiplied together. I taught some of these simple ‘tricks’ to children who hated math and felt that they would never be able to understand what they were supposed to do. I am sure that you know the ‘trick’ of working out the 9 times tables using the fingers on both hands.
You don’t?
Perhaps you should ask your child, I am sure he or she knows, and if they don’t let me know and I will pass it on so that life becomes easier for them.
So, although facts, information, the ‘what’ of learning, is important the ‘how’ of learning is much more important. Once you know the ‘how’ of any learning situation it becomes easy, almost boring sometimes.
Help your child learn HOW to learn, give your child the skills he or she needs to be able to handle any learning situation, and watch them love learning and be all that they can be.
Your assignment
First, find out how to do the 9 times tables on your fingers and show your child if he doesn’t already know!
Then stop emphasizing the ‘what’ of learning, take the emphasis off the product (your child’s work) and put it on the ‘how’ of learning (your child’s use of learning skills).
Try saying phrases like these to your child;
I liked how you did that
You really tried hard to do that well
What do you have to do next?
How are you going to do this?
What did you do the last time you had a problem like this?
Did it work?
Why/Why not?
Let me know how you get on, and if you really don’t know the 9 times table trick I can tell you that too!
