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Dou Kleefstra

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What are some of the problems that your kids have in maths at school. Please mention grade and age.

Am planing on making videos and writing material to complimint the existing videos available for free on the net. Want to share more than 30 years of hard earned knowledge with everybody that wants to use it. needs someone to help with animation and getting the info out into the world. am extremely busy teaching but am so tired of hearing how people(children of all ages and adults) are not enjoying maths

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Topics: Human Motivation Mathematics confidence education
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  • Carla Patriquin

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    May 30 2012: I have two boys. One, 14 in grade 8 with a learning disability, can tell you the answer but he cannot tell you how he got it. He keeps getting Cs or low Bs because if you can't show the process it's wrong in the eyes of the teacher. The other, 15 in grade 10 cannot decide, when faced with a question, what formula to use. Are there any tricks out there for remembering which formula to use for which question? He has his exam coming up soon and feels like he has to relearn everything because he didn't get it the first time before they moved on to the next section. Math has never been my strong point, numbers turn their back on me, so I am of no use to them. If I didn't have fingers to count on I would never get to 10!

  • Tasha Wilkins

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    May 27 2012: My son is in 3rd grade. His biggest problems: 1) He doesn't want to write anything down & tries to do math in his head. That worked ok in 1st and 2nd grade but is getting harder as the math is getting harder (e.g. 8 x 789). 2) He pysches himself out when there is a large volume of math problems to do or a tricky word problem. It's more a confidence thing than an ability thing. He gets so worked up he has trouble focusing and taking it one step at a time.

  • Sharon McCann 10+

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    May 21 2012: What does p = 2 x (l+w) mean? This is a problem my daughter has in 6th grade algebra.

    To me in my own learning of math and in watching her try to learn it, it was the connection between objects and the symbols (numbers) that helped. I could not see for the longest time as a child that these symbols represented a three dimensional logical underpinning of things. That additional and multiplication where all really the same constructs of manipulating data to get to the same places......

    • Dou Kleefstra

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      May 22 2012: hi Sharon. this is the kind of questions I would like to hear of. That is most probably a formula for perimeter of a rectangle. A much beter way to look at it would have been to use the formula: perimeter( the distance around a rectangle) is found by adding up all the sides. perimeter= length + bredth+ length + bredth ( length and width could be interchanged). AS KIDS GET OLDER AND MORE EXPERIENCED THEY CAN USE THAT FORMULA OR KEEP USING THE BASIC ONE FOREVER
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    Josh S

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    May 21 2012: Im a junior in high school taking pre-calc right now. I'd say that im a pretty good student but the things i usually have trouble with are adding/multiplying/dividing exponents, especially when they are in parentheses. Fractions are ok but you eventually get used to them and faster at them with practice.

    if there's one thing i remember specifically helping in math in general was repetition of easy problems. Instead of a few very hard problems, lots of easy problems, gradually working up to harder ones only when students are completely confident in their abilities in easier problems. Making math fun also helps, especially as the teacher. Teachers who are funny/ poke fun at others/ take fun made at them/ are easy going and easily approachable/ help a lot more then i think teachers know.
    Good luck =)

    • Dou Kleefstra

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      May 21 2012: Hi. Thank you for your input. Can see you have a great idee on how basics should be tackled. Wiil work through all the idees this weekend. Appreciate your input.
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    Fritzie Reisner 100+

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    Host
    May 21 2012: As there is so much online, I couldn't say where the gaps are in what is already available, but the areas that most tend to trip kids up in my experience are operations with fractions and word problems involving proportions. Again in my experience, parents can often help their kids with algorithms and teachers are adept at teaching algorithmic processes, but determining which sorts of operations are needed in an authentic context can be more difficult.

    • Dou Kleefstra

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      May 21 2012: Thank you for your comments. will be working through all the idees this weekend. think you are spot on
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