Doodlebug Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 DS hit a wall with math just before Christmas. Some concepts needed shoring up, so we backed off and went to 1/2 lesson days. I took time to reteach the concepts he was struggling with and we cut the amount of math back... Odds one day, evens the next, with mental math and drill daily. It slowed us down, but he's finishing math work within an hour, and confidence is improving. Good things. Here's my observation... DS's accuracy has improved on his mixed practice with LESS problems. By leaps and bounds. Mind you, we do ALL the problems... we just do them across 2 days. Additionally, he took a test last week in which I split the 20 questions in two -- 1st ten problems in the morning, 2nd set of ten problems in the afternoon. Splitting the test this way meant larger groups of the same type of problem than he sees with the odd/even split -- and again, accuracy issues showed up on the repeated problem sets (of the "careless error" variety). What am I seeing here? Anyone with experience? I'm scratching my head! Stella Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
regentrude Posted January 28, 2015 Share Posted January 28, 2015 You may be seeing : concentration declines with time - kid remains focused if assignment is short, loses focus if assignment is long, or kid gets bored with problems or long assignment seems insurmountable More is not always more. Sometimes more is less. The art is finding the sweet spot how many problems the student needs to master the concept, how many he can focus on in one sitting, and how many turn him off math. Expecting an hour of concentrated math work for an 8 y/o is a lot. My kids would not have been able to give focused quality work for that long at that age. My hunch is that you are seeing exactly this. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doodlebug Posted January 28, 2015 Author Share Posted January 28, 2015 You may be seeing : concentration declines with time - kid remains focused if assignment is short, loses focus if assignment is long, or kid gets bored with problems or long assignment seems insurmountable More is not always more. Sometimes more is less. The art is finding the sweet spot how many problems the student needs to master the concept, how many he can focus on in one sitting, and how many turn him off math. Expecting an hour of concentrated math work for an 8 y/o is a lot. My kids would not have been able to give focused quality work for that long at that age. My hunch is that you are seeing exactly this. That's very helpful... thank you! Just for clarity sake, we finish math in its entirety in about an hour. That's my teaching time, his problem sets, a drill game, etc altogether. No way is an hour of solo work happening. ;) Hmm. This gives me lots to think about as we move forward -- good advice. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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