Asked about giving maths grinds

Cen92

I just finished my leaving cert, (I did HL maths) and I was asked to give grinds to somebody going into second year, Im just wondering what kind of stuff should I expect? Any tips?

mikhail

Cen92 wrote: »

I just finished my leaving cert, (I did HL maths) and I was asked to give grinds to somebody going into second year, Im just wondering what kind of stuff should I expect? Any tips?

You should find the maths very easy now, but you should try to remember that it didn't always seem that way. Be patient and understanding. This is the most important thing.

You've seen professional maths teachers at work for probably the guts of 800 hours. Try to remember how these guys explained concepts to you. I won't say it's easy, but it's not something you need to obsess over. Break things into small steps, be clear and don't rush.

There's a pretty venerable teaching formula which goes like this:
First, you do the problem while the student observes.
Second, the student does the problem while you watch, intervening only when necessary.
Finally, the student does the problem alone.

I presume Text and Tests is still the standard textbook? It's is broken down very neatly by chapter. Establish what the student has studied, and deal with one subject/chapter at a time; don't skip around. (That said, do change the subject if the student is getting frustrated. Be calm about it - teenagers can be temperamental, but it's important that you don't react to something like that. Tell them it's okay, and that you'll come back to it later.)

The Junior Cert past papers are a valuable source of problems, but be careful not to use one which the student hasn't studied yet.

Cen92

mikhail wrote: »

Try to remember how these guys explained concepts to you. I won't say it's easy, but it's not something you need to obsess over.

There's a pretty venerable teaching formula which goes like this:
First, you do the problem while the student observes.
Second, the student does the problem while you watch, intervening only when necessary.
Finally, the student does the problem alone.

Thats what I was unsure of, that I would be able to do the maths no problem but when it comes to explaining why I actually did it I would blank.

If you were to use the 3 steps above should you do each on a new page or let the student look at the solutions?

Finally the student is only going into second year, would he really be using past papers yet?

LeixlipRed

If you don't understand the material you're going to be teaching and hence can't explain it then you need to revise it so that you can explain the "why". That's the most important part.

mikhail

Cen92 wrote: »

If you were to use the 3 steps above should you do each on a new page or let the student look at the solutions?

They're an outline rather than a strict rule - by which I mean that this isn't about three sheets of paper.

You should explain this to the student: ultimately, he's required to solve a problem like this in an exam, with no help. So he has to understand the problem (some students try to skip this at secondary school level, but it's ten times easier to memorise a process you understand than one you don't), and then he has to learn it by heart.

So step 1 has you show him how to do it, explaining what each step entails, until he can explain your solution back to you.

Step 2 reinforces this. You let the student have access to the book, your solution and supervise him solving a new problem. If he can do this, he understands. As he practices, he requires less and less help from you.

Once he doesn't need much prompting (don't prompt first; ask him to identify how you did it in your solution first, unless he's getting frustrated with that), he should be encouraged to practice on his own. After he's done enough similar problems, he'll need to reference your solution less and less. Now, he can do the problem in an exam.

Finally the student is only going into second year, would he really be using past papers yet?

I misread your first post there; thought he was just out of second year.

He won't have bought any past papers, no. It's a while since I've seen Junior Cert material, so someone else may be able to correct me here, but I think that if there's a chapter on, say, the circle, there'll be an exam question which arises on this. Maybe they return to it later (in 2nd or 3rd year) with another chapter, in which case maybe only part (a) of the question can be attempted from what he knows. You'll have to compare the papers with the textbook.

That's quite easy to do, but don't worry; there are plenty of questions in the textbook you can use. If you're happy with those, you may prefer to ignore past papers for now.