Ace maths and numeracy blogger Damon Whitten has written a couple of great posts here and here recently on how things you can do to improve maths learning for kids.
I think his suggestions apply to adults as well. It’s super simple and boils down to this – ask the following four questions:
- “What did you do yesterday?” Expect details.
- “How did you work that out?” Don’t help and don’t give away the answer.
- “Can you show me using this… Can you draw it?” Make them use physical objects or draw pictures to explain.
- “If someone was going to make a mistake with this, where would they make the mistake” Make them talk through the problem.
There are good reasons for all of these… and they’re backed up by research as well. But you’ll need to read Damon’s articles to get the rest of the explanation.
