“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.” - Seth Godin

Each week I send out 2 emails: one on supporting primary maths and English. The second on supporting secondary school maths and English. Before I start talking about Math revision, I wanted to say thank you for the really kind feedback I’ve had about these emails from Dina and Daisy’s mum.  

I was thinking about Daisy’s mum’s email and thought that you could also put fractions on the bricks (this relates to using Jenga to help your child learn: 5 ways to use Jenga to support your child's learning)

Create a random fraction and decide if you were going to add, subtract, multiply, or divide and then as you pull out the brick use that method to calculate the answer with your random chosen fraction.

So, for example if we pick ¾ as our random fraction and we are going to multiply. The brick I pull out says 4/6, so I would multiply the top by top: 12, and the bottom by bottom: 24. Giving me the fraction 12/24, which could then be simplified down to ½.  

Very often when people get in touch about tutoring, one of the things that they say is that their son/ daughter doesn’t know how to revise Math. So, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts.

These can also be adapted and used for your 6 SATs, 11+, etc if relevant.  

One of the first things I would suggest is that you get a copy of the syllabus, I will put this together so that you can just download it for foundation and higher, I don’t know of anyone who does AQA Math, but if your child does, let me know and I will find their syllabus as well.

Along side this, I would put 4 columns: I don’t think I know this; I know this, I love this!  

The reason I wouldn’t put I don’t know this, is because as you first set out you could be disheartened by everything you apparently don’t know. And it could be that you do know it, you just didn't know that’s what it was called.  

This will give you a guide so that you aren’t always just revising the stuff you love. Having said that, the days you can’t be bothered, at least reaffirming your knowledge about those things is better than nothing.  

When you come to revise use a range of techniques so that you are creating multiple memories to help store the information. This will make it easier to recall when you come to need it.   Writing an explanation for someone else, teaching it to your parents, or siblings, or dog. Creating a YouTube video to explain it, even if you never put it live.

Making a power point, posters, etc. The list goes on.   Create an index for your revision/ explanations so that if you want to go over them again, you can easily find them.  

Watch the YouTube videos created by others and use them as a walk and talk. (Jamie and I did that a lot when he was studying for his GCSE’s as it was around the time, I started supporting GCSE Math and we would sit and learn and support each other).  

(We’ve also started creating our “Getting to Grips” books, so far we only have angles, but it includes an explanation and a range of games/ resources to help with understanding and learning them, it’s on Amazon if you’re interested, though I have a couple of copies here and whilst I have, can give you one if you would like).  

At the end of the day, note what you have done today to help you to pass your exams. Also knowing why, you want to pass is important.

Is it because you just want to endure another Math lesson again… or is it because you want to study Math at a higher level and need to do well now in order to achieve that.  

We all have different starting points and end goals. We all have a different reason why. But by logging what you’ve achieved today, it will help you to track your progress so you can see what you’ve achieved.  

This became a lot longer than I anticipated so I’ve used this theme for my latest Podcast. If you’re interested, you can find the link HERE  

I’ve also logged the previous emails on the website, so if you want to catch up with any of those, you can find them here.  

Finally, when I asked about a paper copy of the newsletter the other day (sorry, sometimes I waffle on and because I know what my brain is on about, I forget that others can’t read it and I’m probably making very little sense) is if you would like to received a copy through the post once a month with all the month’s emails in (plus a couple of other bits as well), let me know and if it’s of interest to enough people, I will definitely get it up and running.  

For today, have a great week and thank you for taking the time to read these, it means a lot.