Parents often seek a way to teach mathematics to their children that doesn’t include much parental involvement, because they feel they are “math deficient” themselves. They are surprised when we tell them they are the BEST mathematics instructor for their children. This is one of our most frequent convention conversations, and we would like you to understand how you can tackle this subject and model success—for yourself AND your student. If you recognize yourself in this description, this is the episode for you. Join us as we discuss ways you can model teachability to your student, and set goals for you and your student that will change your homeschool environment this coming year.
Episode Transcript
[music]
Gretchen Roe: 00:00:05.083
Welcome to the Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode.
Gretchen Roe: 00:00:23.331
Hello, everyone. Welcome. Happy 5th of July. I hope you had a wonderful weekend. It was busy around here, and I’m sure it was busy at your homes as well. And I appreciate so many of you registering for this important topic today. My name is Gretchen Roe, and it’s my very great pleasure to welcome two of the best math specialists on the planet today to help you parse this subject out. We have these conversations all the time at Demme Learning with families who say, “I can’t possibly teach math. My skills are poor.” We want to set the frame appropriately. And I’m going to let each of my colleagues introduce themselves. And then we’ll get started. So, Lisa.
Lisa Chimento: 00:01:09.962
Good morning. My name is Lisa Chimento, and I am a customer success consultant here at Demme Learning and a placement specialist as well. I’ve been working with the company full-time since 2017, and before then, at homeschool conventions for quite a while. And it is a pleasure to work with customers. We learned so much from you and from each other. And this lifelong learning journey is a good one. It keeps us all at a place where I think that it keeps us open and willing to improve and change and grow and learn. And that’s an awesome thing. I homeschooled my four kids for 25 years. We used Math-U-See for 24 of those, and they are all grown and flown now. So we are empty nesters. I don’t know what I think about that, but anyway, it’s a pleasure being here with you today.
Sue Wachter: 00:02:07.177
Hi, I’m Sue Wachter, and I’ve been with the company for over 30 years. And this is such a great topic because this has been the conversation since day one. And I’m excited that we’re actually recording so that we can help more people see the value of what they do bring to the conversation and to the teaching when you’re not quite confident that you can do it. So I’m excited to get started and just know that we are here for you for that conversation. And I hope that you’ll reach out to us if you have further questions.
Gretchen Roe: 00:02:51.378
I want to set the frame appropriately. So Lisa was kind enough to share a photo with me. And I want to share this photo with you because this is really what we want to do today is we want to set the frame like Rosie the Riveter that you can indeed teach math. And so Lisa, thanks so much for sharing that with me. That’s a precious memory from a couple of years ago. And she still has those guns. So we’re going to use those guns today and share with you all as we go along.
Sue Wachter: 00:03:31.196
Yeah, and that was back in the days where we brought the product banners.
Lisa Chimento: 00:03:37.346
Yeah, this was at a convention booth. And that’s the banner that we used. And, Sue, you’re absolutely right. This is the conversation since the very beginning. And I think it’s such a big piece of why Steve Demme even created the course.
Gretchen Roe: 00:03:54.285
I think the way I would like to begin today, ladies, is to begin with that conversation that we talked about, Lisa, when we were talking about being able to understand why Math-U-See sets parents up for success. And so you just opened the door talking about Steve creating a program that parents would understand. So can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Lisa Chimento: 00:04:23.473
Yeah, sure. When Steve Demme, he had been a school math teacher for a time, and then he and his wife were homeschooling their own boys. And he began to do co-op classes where he was teaching this very way of teaching math. And so he got a chance to see on a daily basis homeschooling parents who did not feel confident teaching math. They were worried about it. What they were seeing out there at that time was a few homeschool curricula, but they were all designed for classroom use. They were designed for a certified teacher to teach 20 or more kids in a classroom. It had a lot of busy work in it and not a lot of explanation for the teacher because it was assumed that the teacher would know how to teach that material. So when he put this together, it was with the understanding that this would be used in a tutorial setting, in a one-to-one tutorial setting for homeschooling parents. And he did it with the purpose in mind of being able to equip that parent and give the parent the tools to not only understand the math themselves, but how to then impart that information to their children and then support it if the kids had questions. The video lessons were designed specifically with that. I don’t think he realized at the time how much the kids would enjoy the videos. But in his mind, it was all about equipping the parents. And of course, the videos are very engaging because he’s standing in front of a classroom of kids and he’s interacting with them and telling lots of corny dad jokes and so forth. But this was really all about equipping the homeschool parents so that they would have the confidence that they needed to teach the math. And so I think that’s where we need to start and understand it’s the design of the program itself was designed to help you so that you would know you could do this.
Sue Wachter: 00:06:22.488
And I think to add to that, he enlisted people to work with the parents from the beginning as well so that, again, they weren’t just handed this and then left on their own. From the beginning, the support team was there in the trenches with the parents, which has been just a win-win situation because being in the trenches, then we are aware of the problems. We are aware of things that need to be fixed. We are aware of how to improve the product to make it even more effective in supporting the parent.
Gretchen Roe: 00:07:01.793
Sue, can you set the stage for the parents today as to why we’re doing this? I know this particular webinar had its genesis when you and I were together in California.
Sue Wachter: 00:07:13.517
Yeah, this was just normally Gretchen schedules weeks ahead. And we just continually, all of us in the booth, were having this conversation. And I love this conversation because it’s just such an opportunity to help the parent know that we’re there for them and know how this is designed for them. And so we just, all through the weekend, were getting these conversations. And so I said, Gretchen, we’ve got to do a roundtable on this because it just reminded me how prevalent this situation is. So in that alone, those of you that are out here realize you’re not the only one feeling this way. This is a very common conversation conversation.
Gretchen Roe: 00:08:03.075
Yes. Often we have this conversation in a booth and it goes something like this, we get a parent who says, “I’m looking at Math-U-See. I’ve heard that it’s a wonderful curricula. Lots of homeschool parents have recommended it. My husband’s going to teach it because I’m terrible at math and he’s an engineer.” Lisa, do you want to explain what we have to say about that? And, Sue, I know you have some comments as well. [laughter]
Lisa Chimento: 00:08:31.551
Yeah, that homeschooling parent who feels that he or she cannot teach the math because maybe they weren’t good at it in school or they struggled with it, you actually are the best person to teach your child because you’re coming from the same place your child is coming from. “I don’t understand this yet,” but you will. And you can learn together. And that’s such a powerful thing for a student to have somebody come alongside them and say, “We’re in this together. We’re going to learn this together. And I’m not going anywhere without you.” It’s a very different feeling than a child sitting in a classroom stumped, struggling with a concept and the teacher’s going, “Well, we’re moving on. And I don’t know why you don’t understand this.” And the child says, “That’s easy for you. You get it.” Sometimes the expert in math is not always the best person to teach math simply because they’re not coming from that same place of, “I don’t get it.” So when you don’t get it, you’re really in a wonderful place.
Sue Wachter: 00:09:39.519
Yeah. And the bonus in that is there’s going to be situations where the student teaches you. That is golden because when a student gets to the mindset of teaching it to you, they have locked it in even more than ever. So be excited when this– don’t feel like you’re less than because your student is teaching you a lot of the times. And it’s your opportunity to model to them, here as an adult, your enthusiasm for learning something new, getting something you never got before. That’s such a great model to them. So when they don’t get it or don’t get it right away, they see that that’s what normal learning looks like. And you’ve modeled to them an enthusiasm for that.
Sue Wachter: 00:10:36.372
I’m not saying it will be easy because there’s still those doubts in your head that, “Oh, should I even be teaching this? And I’m not enough,” and all that. But you’ll develop the ability to push past that. And that is so valuable to your student because the reality is we all have things we hit the wall and we don’t get and we don’t get right away. I’m fortunate to be a person I never get anything right away. And so I’ve learned through the years, and I’m not saying it’s easy. Just, “Oh, just be okay with not learning things right away.” I learned the value of that because that’s actually more normal I think. We all think that if we’re really, really smart, that we just get stuff and go. And that’s not what learning is all about. And we get to model what real learning looks like to them because of your showing them that you’re not beating yourself up or you’re not saying you’re not enough, that you’re modeling that behavior. And, again, I don’t want to casually say that’s easy because it’s not. It’s not easy. And I just want to say right here, if you just need someone to vent that or whatever, call call me. Call one of us and let us know and let us help you walk through that so that you can model that. And I hear a lot of parents also when they’re using math, you see they go– the kids just think I’m nuts because I get all excited and I say, “Oh my gosh, I get it. I finally get it.” And that’s really good stuff. And it goes back to what Lisa said about the intent of that video originally was 100% to empower the parent not to replace the parent.
Gretchen Roe: 00:12:35.484
Absolutely. I think that’s really important. And I think, just one more thing about the difference between those who are math adept and those who are math hesitant. I am definitely that math hesitant parent. And Math-U-See made it possible for me to now have five college graduates, three who are in very math-intensive fields. And I’m grateful that Steve modeled for me how to instruct.
Gretchen Roe: 00:13:00.571
You know the challenge that we have is when we’re really good at something, we forget the curve that got us to be really good at it. And so we don’t often– and there are parents who had the talent to recognize that they had a curve to get there, so they can come alongside their student. But on the whole, dads in particular are very results-oriented. And I’m not dissing fathers, because we have some tremendous Math-U-See dads with whom we work, but on the whole, they are results-oriented. And so they don’t have patience for the curve. And as moms, we had the ability to think more globally and to allow that patience for that curve to occur.
Gretchen Roe: 00:13:51.512
And I want to offer you all a quote from my middle son. He’s 23 years old now. He’s the child for whom all learning was difficult. And we were talking about this a couple of months ago, in specific talking about math learning. And he said, “You know, Mom,” he said, “I really think that it’s not that we are math stupid or math illiterate or math hesitant.” He said, “All of those are just words.” He said, “The truth is, we just haven’t been properly instructed.” And that’s what we want to encourage you today is Math-U-See allows us the opportunity to properly instruct our students toward that good end.
Gretchen Roe: 00:14:35.911
And so we’re going to talk for the next two or three minutes about how Math-U-See does that. And then we want to step into the questions about that. So Lisa, can you begin with talking about the teach back and how important the teach back is. And how it’s not just Math-U-See, but learning that skill will serve your student all the way across the board in their academics?
Lisa Chimento: 00:15:06.491
Yeah, absolutely. And if you don’t mind, I just want to make a quick mention. First of all, placement is key. If you are looking at Math-U-See and you’re saying, “Oh, I have a child in fourth grade. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta. Okay, they belong in Delta,” that’s not going to work for you because Math-U-See is not a grade-based course. It’s a skills-based course. And it does not follow and align with grade-based programs that are out there. Most traditional math programs that are grade-based, they use a spiral approach. They split up topics and they deliver them in small pieces over many years. Math-U-See does not. It combines all the elements of a topic and teaches it in a single level. And so you’re getting soup-to-nuts multiplication and soup-to-nuts division in those different levels. So before you go and place your children, check with us, go online, use the online placement tool, give a call if you need extra help to fine-tune placement. But placement is key to where the child should start. We want to meet them where they are today, no matter what age or grade they’re in. We want to go according to where they are, meet them there, and then help them progress from that point. Going forward from there, we have lots of tools to offer you.
Lisa Chimento: 00:16:26.173
In regard to what Gretchen just asked, though, the teach-back is a big piece of it. And you can find out about the teach back in the front of the instruction manual for each level of Math-U-See in the how to use section. The teach-back, as Sue was mentioning earlier, gives that student the opportunity to stand in the place of the teacher. And it kind of does double duty. It allows you as the parent to know whether or not they’re getting it and whether or not they’ve really mastered it and are ready to move on and how well they’re getting it.
Lisa Chimento: 00:17:01.326
If they’re still sort of in the middle of understanding that concept, maybe they’re a little hesitant with the explanation, that lets you know they need a few more days of practice, and you’re going to want to be able to check not only the results in the workbook, but the teach-back is a big piece of that. Some very young children may not be able to verbalize the teach-back yet. You can model that for them. And so you can use the manipulatives and your words to show them, okay, this is what this concept was. This is how we do the steps. This is why we’re doing it. And then they can have them do it after you so that you’re giving them what you want from them ahead of time. W a person has to be able to teach somebody something else, they have to integrate that information in their own brains in a particular way, in a different part of their brain, even. And so it’s really benefiting them to be able to teach back. They’re learning a skill that is not only helpful here in math, but it’s going to be very helpful throughout life in many different fields and circumstances to be able to communicate well, what they understand, and maybe even to communicate to you, this is what I don’t get. This is what I don’t understand yet. I’m having trouble with this. This isn’t making sense to me yet. That’s a big piece of it as well. And so you want to be able to allow that child to say, I don’t get this yet, and let them know if that’s what’s going on, then that’s the right thing to say.
Sue Wachter: 00:18:37.669
And also for you to have times where you say, you know what? I’m not getting this yet. Are you getting it? And then have the student brought in too. So what do you think? Should we just take a break? Shall we come back tomorrow? Let’s look at the video again. Let’s sleep on it. I know we’re going to get it. Again, back to that modeling that it’s not like we are going to sit here till we get it because that’s not going to work. That’s not going to going to work for any of us. Which brings back to, again, being aware of full attention span. When you’re not getting something, your attention span, you’re neurologically not able to stay focused past. We typically say your age plus two. So if you have an eight-year-old and you’re working on something that you or them or you’re not getting it, then be sure you cut that off and say, “You know what? I think we need to come back to this tomorrow. I think I need to sleep on it.” And literally, that needing to sleep on it is a neurological thing because the brain sorts the information of the day during the night. And I’ve worked with students where they didn’t know it the day before, and you come back the next day and you left on on a high note and you left before their brain shut down. And they got it. Somehow miraculously between not knowing it when we properly stopped the conversation till the next day, it’s there and it’s just incredible when you see that happen. But I’ve seen the other part too where you push past the shutdown and pretty soon you’re just fighting. I mean, you’re just saying, “Come on, pay attention. We got to get this done. Come on. We only got 10 problems left.” All of that. Then nothing is learned. And you’re back at the square one again the next day. So those are things that– and trust me, even though I know that, I’ve been saying that for 30 years, I’ve gone past that point and thought, “Ah, we can get a little more in.” And then the shutdown happens and done. And it’s like, “Ugh, I went too far.” So don’t beat yourself up about it. You will make that mistake, but try to stay aware. Try to keep an eye on the clock. Even though we say an eight-year-old is 8 plus 10 minutes, your eight-year-old might shut down in more than nine minutes. So you’re going to look for a different time to bring it down. But that doesn’t mean their attention span, if they are comfortable with something or they’re confident in something, you can go past that. We’re talking about when they’re not getting it.
Gretchen Roe: 00:21:25.584
One of the things I think that has always impressed me about Demme Learning is the fact that everyone here who works with customers either has homeschooled, has worked in positions of homeschool advocacy for years, or even was homeschooled themselves. And I think that that makes a tremendous amount of difference. And so as you weigh whether Math-U-See is the right solution or if you’ve made the decision to use Math-U-See and you’re struggling, Sue said earlier, pick up the phone and give us a call. We want you to understand that we don’t expect you to row this boat by yourself. We’re here to be able to support you. And Sue, before we move into the questions, I think this would be a great time for you to talk a little bit anecdotally about the adult learners group that you worked with because I think this helps parents frame themselves appropriately.
Sue Wachter: 00:22:24.772
I don’t remember how long ago. It was probably 10 or 15 years ago. I realized that I didn’t have all my elementary math squared away, and I wasn’t fluent in everything. And so usually when I need to learn something, I put out a bulletin, “Hey, anybody else want to learn this along with me?” And I had a store at the time, and so literally, I was hammering almost every customer. I would said, “Hey, I’m thinking of starting an adult math group. What do you think? Are you interested?” And so we got a group of about six ladies and we started in Gamma. So what’s Gamma? It’s more like third grade, right, ish. And we got our facts fluent. I mean, it was fun. I remember stopping at a stoplight. So every time I’d stop at a stoplight, I’d review the facts that I was still trying to get, that I was struggling with. And I remember stopping and going, “7 times 8,” whatever. And so over a course of six months, because we went back and we got our basics and we– we made it to Algebra 1 before life got in the way and we couldn’t meet anymore. But it was exciting. And I remember one day we were talking mathematically, and I said, “Listen to us. We’re having a math conversation.” And here we thought we were all really poor in math. And I have lasting friendships out of that. But get creative with that. And that’s just another way to get support and be with people that it’s not embarrassing to not know stuff in front of. Find those safe people that will just encourage and help you along the way.
Gretchen Roe: 00:24:17.601
One of the things I think that is very important is to recognize because the way Math-U-See foundational principles are using the manipulatives we’re warranted and being able to have a student work with these manipulatives in order to teach back to you, you’re laying a foundation in the elementary years for upper-level success. And several parents said to us today, when they registered, they said, what do we do about teaching upper-level math? And I don’t know where you’re coming into Math-U-See. My family actually had our first experience with Math-U-See at pre-algebra. That’s where we found our way to these materials. I didn’t have kids who did the Greek series until my fifth and sixth child. I only had begun it pre-algebra. But what I think is important for you to understand is regardless of where you come into the program, if you establish that foundation of teach back, what you’re doing is you’re teaching your student how to teach themselves. So when you get a student who moves into those upper-level math levels, they have the ability to have the wherewithal to talk themselves through what they’re doing. And believe it or not, that verbalization of what do I know, here’s what I’m doing, being able to speak the steps out loud, is tremendously helpful, particularly when you get to a level where the math is more complex. And I’ll give you an example of that. I have never taken Math-U-See beyond Algebra 2 and frankly would hope never to have to.
Gretchen Roe: 00:25:58.391
My fifth child, the one whom I quoted earlier, went all the way through calculus. And his younger brother is modeling in his footsteps. And Owen was doing pre-calculus this year and came into my office and said, I need your help. I need you to help me with this problem. Now, as an aside, there’s no way I could have possibly helped Owen with this problem. I know zero about pre-calc and hope never to learn. Except for the fact that Owen [inaudible] since he was a child. And now as a teenager, he knows the process. He knows the teach-back process. He knows the talk-it-out-loud process. And he said, “Here’s what I’m trying to do. This is the first step. This is the second step. Oh, that’s my mistake.” And off he goes, I did not say a word, but he yells down the hall, “Thanks for your help, mom.” That’s what we want to do. That kind of confidence with our kids that allows them to feel that they can learn on their own. So those of you who registered and said, “How am I going to teach my children upper-level math?” You’re going to make sure that their foundation is solid, as Lisa has already described. It’s a skills-based curriculum. And if there are pieces that are missing, you’re going to fill those pieces in first. So Lisa, can you talk a little bit about why we put so much emphasis on laying that solid foundation?
Lisa Chimento: 00:27:35.527
Yeah, if you think about math like constructing a building, it really works the same way. If you were a building engineer and you laid the foundation and you started putting on floors one, two, and three, and somebody discovered a crack in the foundation, you would be a foolish master builder if you went and said, “Well, sorry, we have a schedule to keep and we’re supposed to have completed this by this date. And you went on and put on additional floors because that foundational crack would just become worse. The more weight you put on that structure, the more insecure you make it. And it’s a lot like that with math. It just happens to be a very sequential topic by its very nature. And so when you follow that sequence, you’re giving the students the skills that they need to be successful. But if there happened to be some gaps in a previous level, in an earlier place that they just never quite got, and now you’re keeping higher-level concepts on top of it, they are very weighty, if you will. And it begins to really create frustration and exasperation for the student. Not only are the skills growing in difficulty, but they’re growing in complexity. They become multi-step problems. And if you have to have all of these steps in a single problem to solve, and some of those steps require skills that they were shaky on, it’s going to affect what they’re doing. I have spoken with a lot of parents, and I hear this and I totally understand it. “Oh, we don’t want to go back. We’re going to be behind and then we’re going to lose time.” But if you go forward, you are going to meet up with this problem over and over and over again. And that student is going to become more and more frustrated. And it’s really hard to hear kids start to say things like, “Well, I’m just stupid. I’m never going to learn math. I’m not good at this. I don’t know why I hate math.” Those kinds of things come out of a child’s mouth when they’re frustrated, when they’re exasperated, and the thing that they have to do becomes so dreadful to them.
Lisa Chimento: 00:29:52.541
So we want to help remove those kinds of thoughts and that dread by equipping them, by giving them the tools that they were missing, and helping them to feel confident. And we have seen this happen over and over again. And it can be such a game changer for the student because suddenly they’re like, “Oh. Oh, that’s why you’re doing that.” And now they’re eager to continue going instead of dreading it. We see it often with regard to fact mastery. And so we created the AIM courses to deal with that. If your students are counting on fingers or skip counting for multiplication facts, we can help them get those facts mastered. And while you may say as an adult, “Oh, well, I still count on my fingers and it’s okay with me. Yes, but you’re not in a learning situation.” You are not having to be forced to continually learn higher and higher level math skills. That student is. And so let’s put ourselves in their place and let’s understand that to give them the tools they need and equip them properly will give them that confidence. It will help remove that frustration and allow them to progress. But we want to make sure that you understand that you’re not going backwards. You’re just filling in gaps. And it’s a wise move for both parent and student. And you can have that conversation with your child if you happen to have a child who is anxious about time and losing time, letting them know no, no, no, no, no. You’re not going backwards. You are filling in gaps. You are strengthening your foundation so that you can have the confidence to move forward. And I think it’s just a marvelous thing to be able to do that for them.
Sue Wachter: 00:31:38.735
Yeah, and because we have these conversations all the time, we have developed tools to help you figure out what the gaps are. So you’re not on your own with that either. Regardless, whether you buy our products or not, it’s worth your time and setting yourself up for success to figure out where holes are. And we have tools to do that, if you call the placement support team. We’ve got the tools to figure that out with not too much. We try to do it with as little evaluation as possible. And then once we find that first gap, we have to fill that gap before we go on beyond that because filling that gap catapults information to other things that they may be struggling with now, but they won’t be struggling once we fill that gap. So it’s absolutely fascinating to me how we can get that student’s confidence level up. I mean, hearing emails back from parents saying, “My student used to cry at the table, and now this morning, he said, I love math.” And that’s when the learning can really start accelerating when they come to the math table with that confidence rather than beating themselves up and already discouraged before the math session even starts. And I wanted to add for that upper level. Keep in mind, we do have upper level support. So if you can’t figure out how to make it work, you can get on the phone with the support person, and they can step you through the difficulty you’re having with that, especially that upper. We don’t get that too much at the lower levels, but we do have a lot of people do call for upper level support when it’s more difficult. The key is you try to wrestle it through yourself. And then when you just can’t figure it out, then you call. And a lot of times, just like what Gretchen said, I’ve had it many times where they call and they get on the phone and they start telling you, they go, “Oh, never mind. I got it.” I mean, there’s just something about confessing to someone that you don’t get something that makes it all come together.
Gretchen Roe: 00:34:03.423
So one of the questions that we had that I think I would love for you to answer is a parent who said, “We watch the video and it makes sense. We try to do it ourselves, we get it wrong.” And I know this is a twofold answer. And one of the things has to do with the fact that half the instruction is in those manuals you see behind me. The video is how, but why is found in the lesson manual, in the instruction manual. So we want to make sure that you’re using both halves of the coin. But can you elaborate on what happens when we try and do ourselves and we get it wrong? And what I’m really thinking about is the conversation I often hear you have about Algebra 1 is you watch the video and you open up to A, and you’re looking at this. So can you elaborate on that?
Sue Wachter: 00:34:56.641
I just share, again, the beauty of me having to struggle through everything is in Algebra 1 is where I fell in love with [inaudible]. It was so exciting because I finally were catching on. Remember I did the ladies group and I got up to where I could do Algebra 1. I finally realized I would watch the video and I’d say to myself, “I don’t understand a word the man just said.” But I didn’t get discouraged and I didn’t think it was something wrong with the program or what Steve was doing. I just knew that that was part of my process. And at first, it didn’t make sense. Usually, I’d open the student book and I would try to do one of the first problem because in Math-U-See, when you go to the student book after you watch the video, it’s going to focus only on what was on the video. So you don’t have other things into it. Then I’d open up the answer key. The answer key is your friend. It is one of the best teaching elements that you have. So I’d look the answer key, try to see if it makes sense. And if it wasn’t making sense, I didn’t force myself to fill out a page wrong. I would say, “You know what? I don’t think I’m going to get it quite today or now. And I’ll either come back in a couple of hours or I’ll look at it again tomorrow.” Again, allowing the brain to marinate that information sometimes is so important. And then, when you come back to it– and I never knew. It wasn’t like a magic trick where I’d come back and I immediately had it. I might say, “Okay. So I think I’ll rewatch the video,” or, “I’ll look at the teacher’s manual again,” or, “I’ll look at the answer key again, see if I’m getting it.” And then, it was amazing because I allowed that type of learning. I allowed my brain to integrate the information that I was trying to obtain. Suddenly, I never knew what was going to happen. It would just go boom. It would be there. And I was like, “Oh, my goodness. That was so easy.” But I realized that that was how I learned. Now, I’m not saying everybody learns that way, but to realize that not getting it right away is part of the gift. You know what I mean? And there’s just a lot of fun and joy in allowing yourself to wait for the light bulb to come on. And then, the light bulb was really fun when it does come on. So I just want you to be encouraged that it’s not about, “We’ve got to get our math done today. Therefore, this page must be filled out,” especially when you’re in the learning part of it, which is the first section of the books. Now, when you are past that and you’ve mastered it and you can do the teach-back, then the review pages should go fairly smooth. But again, if you get a wrong answer, you might– and we’re not going to get all the answers right all the time either, so– and that’s okay. And that doesn’t mean– I mean, I’m kind of the grandma in the room. I wouldn’t make him redo every wrong answer, but I would make note of what is the consistent reason we keep getting the wrong answer here? Is there something we don’t understand? Is there a habit we developed that’s causing us this wrong answer? But anyway, I don’t know if I got off topic of that, but.
Gretchen Roe: 00:38:29.712
Thank you That’s perfect and actually, Lisa– you gave me a perfect segue to ask Lisa. Lisa, you often talk about what if you get the same 20% wrong? So can you talk about the value as a parent to being on top of a student’s math work on a frequent basis instead of just at the end of the week?
Lisa Chimento: 00:38:52.124
Yeah, we get good at the things that we practice a lot. So if you are not checking your child’s work until the end of the week and they’ve been doing it– doing some certain things wrong, then they’ve been practicing the wrong thing over and over again. And that’s not something you want to reinforce. So it is a good idea to try to check the work as often as possible. And I know that’s not always easy, especially if you have multiple kids at home. Homeschool parents are juggling an awful lot of plates in the air, so I do understand. But when my kids reached a certain age – I think maybe we were probably doing probably around the pre-algebra age – I began handing them the instruction manual at the end so that they could check their own work and if– abd I would say to them, “Okay, here are the– you can go to the answer key and check your answers against these answers. And if you get one wrong, don’t put the correct answer down. Just put a circle around that problem number.” And then, they would do that. And then, they would hand me back the manual. And then, I would say to them, “Okay. Now, why don’t you see if you can go back to that problem that you circled and if you can find error, see where this went wrong. Well, that did a couple of things. One of them was that it supported my argument with them about why they had to show their work, which was– for a couple of my kids, that was an ongoing battle, but it was a worthy battle because it was so important. As the concepts got more difficult and more complex, there were lots of steps. If they had made it an error in only one of those steps, but if they had kept all of that work in their head, they wouldn’t have known where the mistake happened. And this is where we have an opportunity to really embrace errors. You can start to reframe this idea of making a mistake as something being awful and negative and forbidden, and turn it into an opportunity for deeper understanding. We can take those mistakes that they’ve made and say, let’s see if you can go in and find out where that mistake happened. And let them go in and see if they can find it themselves. If not, you can do that with them. But when you can identify a mistake and figure out why it happened even, then you’ve taken some gold out of that opportunity and given them an opportunity to see this in a different way and recognize the error. And they probably will not make that mistake again. But it does need for the parent to be able to go in and say, okay, was this just a careless little error, or am I seeing a consistent pattern of this same error going on and on?
Lisa Chimento: 00:41:37.277
If so, then it might be time to just pause forward motion for a little bit and go back in and review the concept or the process of solving the problem where that error keeps occurring. When my youngest hit the delta level, I started to notice he was making a lot of errors in his division. And we went in and examined it. I recognized that it was happening in the multiplication step of each problem if it involved multiplying by six, seven, or eight. I mean, those seem to be consistently the ones that just stymie kids. And so we stopped. We didn’t go on with our lessons for a few weeks. And we just worked on getting those multiplication facts solidified so that they weren’t creating problems for him every day in his division work. So that’s really the beauty of being able to go in and look at the work on a regular basis and seeing if there are consistent errors.
Gretchen Roe: 00:42:37.893
I think it’s important as parents for us to be willing to fight the fight of show your work. And if it’s an argument at your house, statistically, you’re arguing with a boy because boys are that results-oriented thing that I described earlier that are the dads who just want you to get it right. And the truth of the matter is it’s worth fighting the fight with a seven, eight, nine-year-old because what they don’t see coming down the road is the fact that they’re going to soon have problems that are multiple, multiple steps. The problem that Owen– that I described earlier, that Owen came into my office and asked for help with, went to five pages of notebook paper before it was completely solved. If he hadn’t learned at the ages of seven, eight, nine, to show his work, that would have been a heck of a fight. And he might have given up before he got an answer. But the truth of the matter is, it’s up to us to recognize how we’re setting the stage at one level of math for what’s going to happen at a later level of math. And that makes a tremendous difference for you as a parent. Sue, can you talk about– there are three places that we consistently see the wheels blow off a kid’s wagon mathematics at division, at pre-algebra, at algebra 1. So can you talk a little bit– because I know you were instrumental in the development of the interventions that Lisa and I have behind our heads as far as AIM for addition and subtraction and AIM for multiplication. So can you talk a little bit about those two programs and why we see struggle at division in pre-algebra and algebra 1?
Sue Wachter: 00:44:34.311
Right. So if you have a student where the long division, the wheels are falling off, it almost always has to do with one of two things. Either they’re still counting to add or subtract, or they don’t have their multiplication facts, or they’re skip counting to get their multiplication facts. And the reason this is happening is because now we’re taking what we’ve learned or maybe we haven’t learned yet or not fluent in, and we’re mixing it up in the long division problem. We’re doing multiple steps. We’re having to remember multiple things. We’re using more than one operation. And when the student has to stop and count and then try to remember what to do with that number once they have it, they’re taking themselves in and out of the problem. They neurologically get overloaded and they shut down and then they’re totally lost. And it has been amazing to see. And what we used to have to do is send them back to Alpha, which was obvious to an older student that you were taking them back to first grade. So those students that did go back to Alpha and did use Alpha to get those facts mastered. I just have the utmost respect that they did that because that was asking a lot. So what we did was we took what we had learned from sending students back to Alpha and working with those parents. Again, in the trenches, learning from them what worked, what didn’t work as we went through this process. We were able to put together the AIM products. And we have the AIM addition subtraction for– and this is for an older student who has not yet became fluid in their facts. And if you see any counting at all going on when they’re adding and subtracting, it doesn’t mean to automatically get AIMed, but there is an assessment that we can take to see if it’s consistent enough that that needs to be done. And then if you need the same thing for multiplication, and sometimes they’ve got the multiplication and they don’t need to do that, you will see then when you go back to the long division that it all comes together. So I’ve seen that so many times and it’s exciting to see. But again, it’s that foundational thing like Lisa was talking about. The foundation of your basic fact operations has to be there for them to have a better chance of– I’m not saying they can’t be successful without it, but in most cases, that’s the problem. The next piece that is often missing is the fractions. And a lot of times, a lot of curriculums just teach fractions as a formula. And so they really don’t understand what they’re doing. The formula is simple. So if they do have their basic facts there, if they got a quick reminder on how to multiply a fraction, they can do it. But they don’t have a clue what’s going on with the fractions. Because when you get to the pre-algebra and algebra 1, the fractions, again, just like the long division, are part of the mix. And sometimes you use a fraction to get out of the problem and sometimes you don’t. And you have to know what the fractions do to the rest of the equation to be able to function in that. And I will tell you, no one does fractions like we do. Even if you only come in and do our fraction level, we go to an understanding level, and the students really know so that when they do get to the upper levels, they can manipulate those fractions as needed. But it’s real easy to let that slip by because that formula is so simple. They just need a quick reminder. And I’ve said that to many parents. Do they know the fractions? Yes. Do they need a little reminder? Yeah, they usually need a little reminder. That tells you that they really don’t understand it. The formula is so easy that if you just remind them of the formula, they can get answers to the problems, so. And again, that doesn’t mean if you need to go back to Epsilon before you start Algebra One that you have to then take all the levels in between because again, filling gaps dominoes into everything else. It gives them a better understanding of decimals and the connection between decimals and fractions. It just really helps with everything. But that’s another common one that an older student might have to do the epsilon level to get that squared away.
Gretchen Roe: 00:49:28.482
Lisa, I know you provide a lot of support in social media for parents who are posting about questions they have about the math program. And can you talk a little bit about the value of the manipulative? Sometimes we’ll have parents who’ll say, “Oh, we’re not using the manipulative.” So why is Math-U-See different and why do we say that these aren’t optional?
Lisa Chimento: 00:49:55.462
Okay, so there are a couple of different things to address here and one of them is the idea that my children aren’t visual or my children aren’t kinesthetic. And we do want to address that idea of learning styles because it became a very big trend for a while there. The bottom line is this, when your children get out of school and they get a job and they go into life, nobody’s going to say to them, what is your learning style and I’ll be sure and teach you that way. No, they get a new job and the boss is going to go, this is what you have to do. And your student can’t say, well, I learn best auditorily. That’s not going to happen. So what we want to do is be able to present material to children in such a way that all of their senses are being developed and they’re all growing and they’re all improving so that they can learn in many different ways. So even if they do have a learning preference, they can still learn things through other sensory channels. So the manipulatives are so key because they get the opportunity now to engage a variety of senses in their learning. They are seeing it, they are hearing it, they are building it, they are writing it, they are saying it. And then the brain takes all of that information through those different sensory channels and it connects in the brain and it improves all of their sensory learning, not just the way they learn best. The manipulatives are so key in helping to do that. The other things that they are doing is that they are giving a concrete and visual representation of the numbers and the processes that make that thing more understandable. If you have an abstract concept to present to a student, being able to present it concretely first will absolutely benefit them. And so this is giving them that opportunity. And as you get up into higher level concepts, the more abstract they will become.
Lisa Chimento: 00:51:56.108
Fractions is really the first place where things start to really get abstract. And I think it’s probably the reason why so many students struggle there. We’re dealing mostly with numbers that are less than one, so you can’t see it. But the fraction overlays are such powerful tools because they give a student a concrete representation of fractions and the working of fractions. Before they get two fractions, they’re working with whole numbers. So when they multiply two numbers, they get a number that’s larger than the two factors they started with. But when they multiply two fractions, the answer is going to be smaller than what they started with. And that kind of is counterintuitive. The fraction overlays is going to help them understand the why behind that. And the why helps us all work word problems. Because word problems are our life application of math skills. And that’s really the goal of all of Math-U-See, for students to be able to work word problems. And those manipulatives are key in making that work. And you will have the odd student who can really get things without building, but I would say you are benefiting them by having them using the manipulatives no matter what their learning preferences are.
Sue Wachter: 00:53:17.466
Especially when you come in with an older student, they can be manipulative resistant because they think that’s for babies and you’re kind of talking down to them. So what I usually recommend is that it goes back to that whole teach-back thing, that once they can teach it back to you, they can actually maybe skip one of those practice pages. But the goal is that it’s their job to be prepared to teach it back to you, having not watched the video in the last 24 hours. And then once they can teach it back to you on the manipulatives and show that they can use it in a word problem, then they can drop the manipulatives. But I’ve had parents, especially with Epsilon, get all the way through Epsilon, say the students didn’t want to use the manipulatives, and they get to the final test, and they can’t function. And I’ve had them come to me and say, we just spent a whole year on this, and now my student doesn’t appear to know what they’re doing. And every single time I’ve said, did you use the manipulatives? And every single time they’ve said no. Because again, they can get that work done by just using the formula, but they don’t have the understanding to retain it all.
Gretchen Roe: 00:54:40.174
Absolutely. Ladies, it has been wonderful to share this hour with you, and I can’t believe we’re almost at the end of it. What closing comments would each of you have for our parents? Sue, I’ll begin with you.
Sue Wachter: 00:54:52.717
If you need to be encouraged that you can do this, call because we want to encourage you that you can. And yes, we do mean you. And just remember, this material is designed for the parent that doesn’t know everything. That’s who it’s designed for. So it’s designed for you. And plus, the support along with it will get you there. So I just want to encourage you that you can do this and that we’re here for you.
Lisa Chimento: 00:55:32.001
14 years ago, probably around the time that that photo was taken, I attended and worked at my first homeschool convention in Orlando. And I was very nervous. And I wasn’t sure that I could do this thing at the booth to help people. But mom came to the booth. She had been homeschooling her kids for a couple of years and she was hitting a snag with the math in whatever curriculum they were using. And she looked at Math-U-See and she said, “I was terrible in math at school. I am not going to be able to teach this.” And I said to her, “Yes, you can do this.” And for all the reasons that we’ve been sharing with you here today. And so she took a step and she purchased the curriculum. And so when I went back to Orlando the following year for the convention, she came to the booth with the book in her hand waving it like this and going, “I understand it. I understand it now” And she bought every year after that. And when I would go back to Orlando every year, she’d come back to the booth. Her name was Laura. And she would come and see me. And she would go, “We’re ready for the next level of Math-U-See.” And it was just such a joy that she remembered me and I remembered her, and we had this connection. Well, I was there in Orlando this past May and she has graduated her kids now, but she came to the convention. I think she still has one at home, but he’s in high school and doing all kinds of interesting things. But she came to the booth to see me. And she brought her husband and she said, “Tell my husband how we met.” And so I demonstrated the arm waving with the book to her husband and he broke up laughing and he goes, “Yeah, that’s my wife.” But it was the story. And I saw this happen over and over again with so many people, but Laura was my first, and I was her first connection with Math-U-See. And it was such a lovely thing to see that this woman who thought, “No way can I teach this.” She taught her kids for years using Math-U-See and became more confident and independent herself in her ability to teach this math. And I just think that that’s such a lovely thing to know that this can be done. If you are feeling, “No way. I can’t do this.” You can. You can teach this math. And you won’t be on your own because we do support you. We’re a phone call away. You can get on the online chat and you can say, “I need a little help.”
Lisa Chimento: 00:57:56.421
And I’ve done it before, Sue has done it before, Gretchen has done it. We get on there and we just walk them through a couple of problems. We make the student talk us through what they’re doing. And just like Sue said, so many times when they are forced to verbalize their steps and narrate as they go, they hear themselves say. And then they go, “Oh, wait a minute. I see what I did.” And they’ve got it. But the parent is right there with them. And it’s a lovely thing to see them growing together in this. So please know that this is a doable thing for you. We are here for you to support you. And it’s a joy and a pleasure.
Gretchen Roe: 00:58:34.668
I have to say that I am the non-math competent parent. I would describe myself as math-hesitant. But in closing, I’d like to give you all a piece of advice. No matter how you feel about math, little pictures have big ears. So make sure that you frame affirmatively in front of your children that they will have a greater understanding of math than you. It’s okay to talk about what you don’t understand. And I think that that’s a very honest conversation. But it’s also important not to be the parent I was who, when my children would bring me a word problem, I go, “Oh, a word problem. I hate word problems. They’re so hard.” They’re not. You just need to know how to address them. And that’s one of the things that Math-U-See will help you do. I hope we’ve been able to frame this for you in an affirmative context. And if you’ve watched this video to this point in time and you still have questions, please do reach out to us. We have an 800 number. We have live chat. We have email. All of those will get you to us, and we’re happy to help.
Gretchen Roe: 00:59:43.982
This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it.
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Show Notes
Remember, it is not that you are poor in math—you just have not been properly instructed.
Math-U-See is designed to support parents as they join their students on a journey with mathematics. We strive to bring as many senses to the table as possible with this skills-based approach to learning. You will see YOUR mathematical confidence improve as your student learns.
The most powerful form of learning is modeling for your student what you would like them to learn, and allowing them to teach you what they are learning.
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