As an adult, student or parent, they usually lack confidence in working with numbers. This common problem swells out of proportion many times and can sometimes be an obstacle to success in school, working or helping your children become more confident in their abilities. In this article, I present five areas of skills that need to be improved in order to improve my own skill, computation speed, and self-confidence in mathematical thinking.
These areas of skill are exactly what you need: practice many times until you can do it quickly and confidently. At school, be careful with things that are taught, but not enough time to practice. Think of these ideas as homework for you or your children. If you have enough time, these building blocks can extremely help a student cope with math situations in school or in life with ease!
Math Skill Building Block No. 1: Basic Mathematical Facts
This step is very common sense, but extremely important, and sometimes it is not enough for him in elementary school before students are allowed to move on. All MUST know the facts of addition and subtraction of at least two-digit numbers. Every day we have to combine or select quantities, and we do not need a calculator! Move back the calculator; practice adding or subtracting two-digit numbers conveniently until you can do it quickly without fingers.
The study of breeding facts to at least 12 is also required. When you really know this, you should be able to enumerate the multiplicity of 12 easily or count from 100 to 7, etc. If you work with your child, try these several lists or list the subtraction exercises.
TIP. Separate numbers separately to add or subtract. Instead of 12 + 39, think about it as 10 plus 39 equals 49, but add two more to get 51. OR 12 plus 40 - 52, pick up another one - 51. This is a great mental math exercise.
Math Skill Building Block number 2: Working with percent
Knowing how to take a percentage of a number is really just included in the total. We know how important this is when we work with money, finance, buying and selling, investments and other parts of our lives.
Students should be able to work with percentage terms. To practice, find 10% of the number. Of course, this is simply moving the decimal point above one place to the left. For example, 10% of 55 is 5.5, 10% of 39.6 is 3.96, and 10% of 442 is 44.2.
Similarly, people should find 1% of the number (move the decimal 2 places to the left), 5% (half of the 10% of the amount), 20% (one fifth of something), 50% (half of something), 75% (half the number, then add half of it). Understanding percentages and their fractional equivalents is HUGE! And it requires a lot of practice and repetition.
TIP. The magic way to determine the percentage of a number is to use the fact that mathematically 15% of 50 is the same as 50% of 15 (7.5). Simply select a percentage number with a different number to find a simpler calculation. Try it!
Math Skill Building Block 3: Using Estimation and Rounding
The ability to estimate how much something will cost, how much to buy, how much space is required, and so on. Is a critical skill for students. With repetitive practice, we should all be able to improve our rounding rate to a calculation or round off the result of our calculations. In most cases, we do not need an exact answer. Knowing how round and estimating our numbers is being tested all the time is in our math and science classes at school.
Look for opportunities to search for estimates: the cost of a home improvement project, money received over time, the time it takes to complete a task, or an increase and decrease in temperature over time. After the evaluation, ask yourself or your children to use a calculator or paper to check how close you are to the actual answer. If students can quickly evaluate the answer, even for complex calculations or problem solving, their confidence will skyrocket!
TIP: practice evaluation skills when attempting to grocery stores. You or your children can set the price of the object before putting it in the basket, and follow the calculated result. The one who is closest to the actual amount wins! If the shopping list is huge, just round each amount to the nearest $ 5 or $ 10 or something else that might be appropriate.
Math Skill Building Block # 4: Creating your own word problems
This skill is the opposite of the dreadful task of reading a problem with text from your math textbook and solving it. In this case, parents or students should think about the situation from the point of view of how this could be written in a math textbook. I urge my students to put the problem in their own words (out loud), and then write it down on paper (at the moment they can be really creative), and then take the next critical step: look for clues for mathematical operations. These “keywords” make the solver think about how the numbers relate to or how they interact in this problem. If students cannot put a situation on a mathematical language, then they do not understand what they are asking.
Council A mathematical “keyword” to look for after writing a problem on paper:
Addition: amount, total, combined, combined, given, placed in a heap, earned money
-Management: clean up, withdraw, pay money, lose amounts, less
-Multiplication: multiple groups, pile with the same amount, re-add, "from"
-Division: divided into groups, how many in each group, part of the "part",
Math Skill Building Block Number 5: Understanding Basic Geometric Concepts
Geometric concepts of scope, perimeter, and volume are ideas that may have a direct bearing on students when they learn in school. A simple connection could be the task of building a house or building something. Other ideas include the properties of squares, rectangles, and sides of special right triangles. Building block number 3 (assessment) is associated with this idea.
Ask yourself (or your children / students) to estimate the amount of water that will hold a certain container. First, use simple block shapes to animate the volume formula of three-dimensional objects (base area X height, length X width X height). Then pour the water into a container that has measurements on the side to check the estimate.
Another idea is to measure the two legs of an object that is in the right triangle shape. Then evaluate the hypotenuse (diagonal distance). An example would be to find out how high a set of stairs are, how far they are horizontally, and then measure the distance at the top of each staircase to a lower level. For older students studying the Pythagorean theorem (for regular triangles), this is an excellent application of this idea. For young students, ask them how far he looks from one corner to another rectangle or square on a piece of paper. Then measure to find out who is closer.
TIP. Geometric ideas relate directly to objects found in our daily life. Take advantage of this and learn to apply what you know about squares, rectangles and diagonals to estimate square roots without a calculator. Then check your calculations. After several successful attempts, you will feel or see increased confidence.
These building blocks are taught in the first days of each training, but sometimes they are not sufficiently practiced to be effective tools in your mental toolbox. Regardless of whether you are a student, a parent, or someone who lacks confidence in math, keep these tips in mind. It should not be boring; just increase your speed with basic mathematical facts and estimates, and then learn how to work with percentage concepts. Look for “hints” in problem solving situations and check them later with a calculator. With the help of these tips, everyone can re-open their “mathematical brain!”.
