[00:00:00] Lisa Chimento: They’ll ask, “Why do we have to learn all these different ways?” You as the parent may be just fine with that one way, but maybe your student understands it best, approaching that problem a different way. Come algebra, there’s often many ways to solve a problem.

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[00:00:20] Gretchen Roe: Good day, everybody. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show, and it’s my very great pleasure to welcome two of my favorite colleagues. The whole reason for this session is because we’re answering a question that many of you all had asked, and so what we really want to talk about today is your kids, what it looks like to be with your kids, what it looks like to know that your kids really understand what you’ve been pouring into them, and to give you the confidence that maybe a mastery-based program or a skills-based program really is the right place for you to be. I’m going to ask my lovely colleagues to introduce themselves. Amanda we’ll start with you.

[00:01:06] Amanda Capps: Hi, I am Amanda Capps, and I’m coming to you from Northwest Arkansas. I am a homeschool mom of eight. I have successfully graduated two and have six more coming up behind them, and our caboose will not start school until the next school year, but then I will officially have all six kids in school. I have been with Demme Learning for 15 years, and I just transitioned into the role of placement specialist, so I’m joining Lisa in that, and I’m very excited to come alongside our families and help them get their kids confidently and properly placed in mastery and skills-based curriculum.

[00:01:55] Lisa: I’m Lisa Chimento. I’m here in not quite so sunny Florida, as it often is, but the winter weather has reached us as well. My husband and I homeschooled our four children for 25 years, and I have been working with Demme Learning for eight years. I’m also a placement specialist and so excited to have Amanda join me now in this because she’s already more than halfway in that place with all of the experience she’s had working with customers daily. It is really a joy and a pleasure to be here. We really look forward to sharing what we know about our products, about learning, about how the brain learns best, and to be able to answer any questions you have.

[00:02:42] Gretchen: Right, exactly. My reasoning for asking these two lovely ladies to join me today is because they have forgotten more questions about placement, about mastery, about encouragement than I can think to ask. You’re in the best of hands today, and we have a lot of things to share with you. The first thing I really want to do, Lisa, is ask you, would you please define for us what we mean in the world as mastery? What does it mean to master something?

[00:03:17] Lisa: Yes, that’s really a great question. Lots of programs will talk about mastery, and certainly in any subject, a student can master the material. We do mean different things when we’re talking particularly about different topics. Let’s talk about math first, because it really stands alone in a lot of ways among other school subjects. It is a naturally sequential topic. When you’re not teaching it according to its natural sequence, it’s easy for gaps to occur in a student’s learning.

When we’re talking about math, we are talking both about mastery and about the unique sequence where we are building skills cumulatively one upon another, like you’re constructing a building, I like to liken it to a building because it’s very much like that. You need to have a very strong foundation, and then you’re going to layer those concepts one upon another.

When we’re talking about mastery and determining mastery for a student in math, particularly what we want to see is student expression of what they’ve learned, where they are, we call it the teach back. Because receptive learning is very limited, you can lecture and lecture and lecture at a child, and they might retain some of it, but it’s not the same as when they can actively engage.

One of the things that Steve Demme likes to do, and he does so in every level of Math-U-See, he’s got it written in the instruction manual, an old proverb, and it says, tell me, I forget, show me, I understand, let me do it, I remember. We want the child to be expressive, not just receptive, and actively engaged with the material. When it comes to math, that means they are building it with the manipulatives. They are writing it in their own hand. They are speaking it and saying it out loud and hearing themselves. That multi-sensory active engagement makes an enormous difference in the student’s ability, number one, to understand, and number two, to retain. That’s a big problem.

A lot of parents will say to us, “Well, we worked on this, a day or two ago,” and they understood it fine. We got a day or two down the road, and they’ve completely forgotten that we even saw it. They have no memory of ever learning it. Get your student engaged in the material. Have them recite back or read back or teach back whatever it is that you are trying to get them to learn and remember.

[00:05:55] Gretchen: Amanda, we talk about build, write, say, but those three have different value to the student for their long-term retention. Can you explicate for our audience why the say part is so critical, and having a house full of boys, how hard it is to get them to do that? [chuckles]

[00:06:21] Amanda: Yes. Articulation is really a key skill. This is a great opportunity to cultivate that skill in our kids. On the reading side of things, we may call this narration. On the math side of things, it’s being able to break down and explain the process of what they are doing and why they are doing it. That’s it in a nutshell. If a child is hesitant or frustrated or can’t articulate that, then that’s a good indication to the parent that maybe we’re not completely understanding the concept, and we might need to spend a little more time doing the building and the writing part.

Then it’s also an opportunity as a parent to be able to model what we’re looking for our children. This is really important and a key thing. I think sometimes it sends parents running for the hills because they’re like, wait a minute, I’m not super confident. I don’t necessarily feel like I understand this concept. That’s why the beauty of the videos and Mr. Demme teaching, because that’s what he’s doing. He’s modeling this and modeling these concepts for us to take that pressure off. We automatically have a clue as to what it is we’re looking for. We’re looking for that ease and that comfortableness with the topic at hand. When we see that, as we engage in dialogue with our students, that’s really the key indicator that, okay, we’ve got this and we’re ready to move on to the next baby step in the sequence.

[00:08:08] Gretchen: Lisa, I know you already mentioned Steve and the quote that he begins every book, but I wonder if you would be kind enough to explain Steve’s story about starting with one of his own children and explaining a problem in front of that child and why that has virtue. It would never have occurred to me as a mom to do that very thing. Can you explain that?

[00:08:38] Lisa: Yes, it was really telling to me too, when you interviewed him, he explained that when he was working with one of his sons, he noticed a hesitance in the student’s ability to do that modeling, do that teach back. What he said was whenever he would start a new day’s work, instead of asking his son to jump right in and do a problem on the page or show him how he did a problem on the page, Steve would first take one of the problems himself. He would say, “Okay, I’m going to work this problem for you.”

As he worked it, he narrated his steps. He’d explain everything that he was doing with each step and why he was doing it. Then he said to his son, “Okay, would you like to take the next one? Do you feel like you’re ready to take the next one?” If his son was not ready to do that same process, that meant, “Okay, we need more practice here.” A lot of parents will just whip through page after page after page, but getting a correct answer is only half the indication. You want to make sure your student understands what they’re doing and why.

A lot of parents will go, “Why do they need to know why?” I’ll tell you why. [chuckles] Because there’s such a thing as algebra in the world. When they get to algebra, if they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing, they won’t know how to do it or when to do it. The ability to manipulate numbers, convert one operation to another, has to be there and in place. In order to do that, you need to know why you’re doing what you’re doing. Take that time. It’s a small amount of time invested early on for the parent, but it’s going to pay off big later on when they get into those higher level materials.

[00:10:25] Gretchen: I think one of the things I found is, not being a confident mathematician, it was very hard for me to say, “All right, here’s how to do this problem.” Because I wasn’t always confident that I was doing it correctly. Being able to say that out loud, Amanda, you’re the reason we’re here today. You’re the one who came to me after a conversation with a parent three months ago when you said, being able to produce a correct answer does not equal mastery. Define for us, what’s the difference between a correct answer and mastery?

[00:11:04] Amanda: I didn’t share any introduction that I’m a second-generation homeschooler. I also have a homeschool student background. Because of that, I was the poster child for that specific situation. I knew what to do to produce a correct answer. I could do fact sheets all day long and get perfect accuracy. I had no concept of how to take those math operations and apply them to a word problem or even really grasp what was happening behind the formula. I had no idea.

It sounds so ridiculous now as an adult and as a parent to be like, I didn’t know that three of something plus two of something equaled five total somethings. Until I could visually see that with the manipulatives, it had no context and no meaning. I think sometimes when people say they’re a visual learner, it means they create a picture, but not always. Sometimes a visual learner means you need someone to give you a picture so that there is information and context to attach that formula to so that you can effectively understand and demonstrate what it is you’re actually even doing.

[00:12:39] Gretchen: I’m so glad you mentioned visual learning because we did an amazing episode last summer with Dr. Temple Grandin talking about the unique skill set that truly visual learners have. I made a mistake with one of my children, one of my children who struggles mathematically. I would have bet money that that kid was a visual learner. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he said to me, “Oh, no, I’m not a visual learner. I’m an auditory learner.” [laughs] I was actually a little bit shocked by that.

What was interesting to me and sort of hindsight is 2020, is to recognize how often when he would do something, he would quietly self-narrate. That was one of the ways that I finally realized in retrospect that he was auditory learning because he needed to speak what he was doing to himself to ensure that he was doing it right. Now, the irony of it as an adult is he’s in a very visual field. He’s a graphic designer, but he still narrates to himself when he has to get something done.

Sometimes as parents, I think we inadvertently say to our children, “Stop talking to yourself.” We don’t want to do that. What we actually want to do is encourage them to talk to themselves and to talk to us to be able to explain, particularly, as Lisa said, in an algebra problem, you’re going to have multiple steps. Lisa, I’m going to pause here for a second and ask if you could explain to people why having the why is so important in algebra, because not every algebra problem solves the same way.

[00:14:35] Lisa: Correct. Very often there’s more than one way to approach a problem and solve it. Depending on the student’s personal learning preferences, they may approach it one way because it makes more sense to them than another way that is a valid way of approaching it. When I’m working with students, and I encourage parents this, too, because Mr. Demme often teaches more than one way. They’ll ask, “Why do we have to learn all these different ways?” You as the parent may be just fine with that one way, but maybe your student understands it best approaching that problem a different way. Come algebra, there’s often many ways to solve a problem.

In a problem, you may have not just many steps, but different operations going on. There’s going to be groupings, parentheses, and absolute value symbols, and braces and brackets. There are going to be exponents going on. They need to learn the order of operations. There are going to be addition, subtraction, multiplication, division. There are going to be fractions, and there are going to be decimals, and sometimes both in the same problem. Before you get going on that problem, you have to make a decision. Okay, I need to make these things all fractions, or I need to make them all decimal numbers. Which way do I want to do it? You have to be able to evaluate.

That’s one of the things that algebra is so good at developing in a student, those evaluation skills, instead of diving right in, but to be able to step back and evaluate, “Okay, which way should I do this? Should I make these all decimals? Should I turn them all into fractions?” You have to be able to convert numbers from thing to thing. You need to understand the connection between division and fractions, and the connection between fractions and decimals.

Place value is critical, even in algebra. Learning place value and understanding its heart and the importance it plays all along the way in every other level is going to be critical when you get to algebra. All of these things together are necessary. To have that student demonstrating mastery along the way is going to assist you as the parent in recognizing whether or not they’re ready to move on to the next level, because that next level or that next lesson is going to build on the previous ones. You want to make sure that they have all of those prerequisite skills solid.

[00:17:05] Gretchen: Amanda, I know that you recently had the opportunity to engage in a conversation online with a parent talking about she wanted to know how many days to plan for a lesson. You had said, and we all get a giggle out of this, because that’s the cart is in front of the horse. Being a master of your own time is the hallmark of being a homeschool parent. How do I know, as a parent, how long something’s going to take? How do I figure that out? Particularly if I am coming to the table with that, “Well, I’m not a teacher. I don’t know how to parse this thought process.”

[00:17:52] Amanda: I think a lot of our customers come to us with this idea because this is what they have experienced in that we’re blocking off your traditional hour for a subject, whatever that subject might be. This is where I feel like I have an unfair advantage, because having that homeschooling background myself, I’m not trying to make my children do school at home. I am homeschooling. In our house, education has become a lifestyle. We have how ever many hours in a day, from when they get up to when they go to bed, and educational opportunities happen constantly within that time frame, and at a different level for each child.

I think the answer to that question is, I understand because I am a firstborn and a type A and probably a little OCD, if you ask my husband and my children, but it’s what keeps the ship going forward. I am a planner. I need to have a general idea. Generally, and that’s the word I like to use when I’m talking with parents, a lesson of math is going to take a week. That’s general, typical, average.

Now, there are all kinds of exceptions to that, because you will have some children who just naturally gravitate towards this method. They’re very mathematically inclined, and they are just going to be bored out of their gourd if we sit here and drag this concept out and make it take a week. Then there are other children who are going to follow that norm. Then there are other children where we might have struggles or diagnoses on board, and they’re going to need more time than that traditional week, and that’s okay.

I had a situation when my daughter, my oldest daughter, was in pre-algebra where she sustained an injury in soccer and got a concussion. We lost pre-algebra. We actually had to completely take two years to do pre-algebra because of that injury. For me to say, “Well, we’ve already done this and I’m not going to take the time to read,” that would have been detrimental to her. She was not in the place in her recovery where that would have been a smart decision. Her brain needed a break. It’s not always a learning challenge or a difference that is causing the issue. There are all kinds of outside factors. This is a great opportunity to really observe your student and customize this to exactly what they need. That is going to be different for each and every child.

[00:21:02] Gretchen: Lisa, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that parental engagement piece, because, often, as homeschool moms, we hear, and all of us have experienced this, we’re frenetically busy. We’re maintaining a household. We’re raising children. We’re trying to educate them. We’re trying to do all these things. We have this in our head that says, “You ought to be able to do that by yourself.” It doesn’t necessarily work that way. We talk often about parental engagement. Can you talk what that should look like from before you ever figure out what you’re going to do into the act of doing it?

[00:21:41] Lisa: Yes, absolutely. One of the things that I like to, and you have said very often as well, Gretchen, is this is an opportunity for you to become a student of your child. Look at the way that they’re learning. Look at the way they engage with anything that they’re doing. You mentioned about a child you noticed was narrating to himself, talking the steps through verbally. You might notice that in a child, and that’s a clue for you. Pay attention to what part of the day they work best in, and things like that.

The first place really to begin is before you even begin teaching your children, you’re going to need to assess them. If you are going to be coming to a skills-based curriculum, and all of Demme Learning courses are skills-based, the placement process is not going to be based at all on their age or their grade, but it’s going to be based on their current skill level. Where are they now? Because we want to meet them where they are. That means that letting go of that, “Well, they should be in this place. They should be in this grade. They should be doing such and such a work.”

If that child isn’t there yet, if they haven’t learned the skills, the prerequisite skills that are needed for success in that level, then you’re just introducing frustration for both of you, honestly. Let’s not go there. Let’s start the assessment process. Let’s figure out where proper placement is, because that’s going to be critical for success. Engagement by the parent starts before the learning, before the instruction. It’s going to start from the assessment process. We’ve got some great assessment tools online.

As Amanda said, she and I are both working as placement specialists. There are different placement tools depending on the curriculum that you’re looking at, whether it’s math, spelling, grammar, or writing. Each of them serves parents in helping to determine proper placement. First of all, let’s look at the tools that are being provided to you. Also, you have your own tools at home. You know your children better than anyone on this earth, and you love them better. You might be a little biased in some things, but you can also be honest in what you’re dealing with on a daily basis with children that you know so well, and you can observe these things.

Keep a notebook for yourself if you want to to make those kinds of notes of what you’re observing, what you’re seeing. When a student is working, how long before they start melting down? How long before you see mental fatigue come in, or they start getting jittery and jumpy, and they’re totally losing focus? Then you know, “I can’t go beyond that.” [chuckles]

A general rule of thumb that we like to say is add two to three minutes to your child’s age, and that’s pretty much their optimal time for not only learning, but also retention. Because even if you have a very compliant, willing child who will sit with you all day and listen, it doesn’t mean they’re going to remember things from one day to the next. You’ve gone past that neurological threshold where they can retain it. Pay attention to their time frame of learning, and then we’ll go from there. I don’t want to jump ahead of you, Gretchen, and let you decide what you want to talk about next.

[00:25:16] Gretchen: No, actually, what I wanted to talk about is following a set schedule, because sometimes I think this is the place where when you have that personality, the helper’s personality I’ll call it, I was willing to drop anything. Somebody was sick, “Oh, let me make you a casserole.” I was that kind of parent. I always said to my children, flexibility is the sign of intelligence. There’s a degree of beyond which if you’re too flexible, things don’t get done.

Amanda, can you talk a little bit about following that deliberate time, maybe, having observed your children, knowing what they need that would help parents be successful? Math would be the first thing I would kick to the curb on a busy day, and it doesn’t serve us for success, does it, Amanda?

[00:26:16] Amanda: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head, because not only will our children avoid the subjects that they don’t particularly care for, but so will we. That’s just human nature. We want the path of least resistance, no matter what that looks like. I can understand the temptation to get pulled in a million different directions. Sometimes that’s a gift, and sometimes that’s a curse.

What I have always tried to focus on with my family and my schedule is what I call my core subjects. Envision in your head a three-legged stool, okay? Without one of these legs, you cannot sit on this thing. You’re going to be really struggling. Yes, you’re going to be really struggling to keep your balance. Again, that’s another great word. We’re looking for balance here. We’re not looking for perfection. We’re looking for balance. Writing, reading, and math, those are the three legs of your stool, and those skills need consistency over quantity to be effective. It would be better to have short, focused sessions consistently for those subjects than to try to cram it all in and not really get anywhere with anything.

One other thing I want to bring up that we’ve talked about before, but I think really pertains to what we’re talking about here is, we’ve talked a little bit about your external dialoguer, but we also have internal dialoguer. What is your preference? What is your style? What is your child’s? I have a running dialogue inside of me happening all the time, and I didn’t realize that was unusual or not everybody’s experience.

When my family is like, “Hey, we need some input, I can’t read your mind,” that is what they are looking for from me, is some external dialoguing, so that I’m getting what’s in my head out so that they can then try to tackle those expectations. It’s very difficult for them to do if they don’t know what I want. Same if you’ve got a child who, bless their little hearts, never stops talking. You may have an external dialoguer, but again, that has to be reined in certain environments and on certain levels because we can’t derail the educational experience or ask a million non-pertaining questions to what we’re doing and expect to effectively get anything done. Those are two other things to be aware of and to be cognizant of as you are schooling and as you are approaching your core subjects.

[00:29:22] Gretchen: I’m going to insert a little pro tip here because I had that kid. She was born talking, 30 years old. She still talks. Amanda can testify to that because she knows her, and I love her, and she always has the most ardent observations. If you have that child as a student in your household, sometimes it’s hard to get on task because they’re too busy asking questions.

We actually solved that problem with her as a child because we gave her poker chips. By her breakfast every morning, by her plate, would be five poker chips. Every time she asked a question, she had to surrender a poker chip. When she was out of poker chips, until I deigned to give her more, she couldn’t ask any more questions. It didn’t take long for her siblings to figure out that she could keep us from getting to school if she kept talking. They weren’t actually enthusiastic about me giving her poker chips, but it allowed us to stay on task a little bit more. It also helped her learn to parse, “I got a thousand things I want to ask, but what are the really important things to be able to begin to weigh what that is?”

In closing, I want to say that these two ladies pour their hearts into other families every single day. They are an invaluable resource that Demme Learning provides to our community, to the Demme Learning family. if you use a Demme Learning product, you’re part of our family, and we want to make sure that we support you in that journey. If Amanda and Lisa are not available, we also have a crackerjack staff of customer service specialists who are here to make sure that you’re successful in the journey.

Sometimes the frustration of parenting is you’re missing maybe something small, maybe you’re missing a vital piece, and just being able to have a third party come alongside you and ask you the proper questions and encourage you in the right direction can be a huge game changer for you. We want to be that game changer for you. We want to thank you all for joining us today. Thank you for allowing us to come into your living room and getting the opportunity to speak to this. We think it’s a vital message that we’ve shared today. I want to say thank you again.

Lisa is actually here on her day off because she thinks this is such a vital message to share with you all. I want to say, Lisa, thank you, Amanda, as always, thank you so much for your wisdom, and your guidance for our families. Take care, everyone, and we’ll look forward to your joining us again soon.

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[00:32:04] Voice-Over: Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.