A failure is one who is not prepared to fix their problems themselves

Posted to Facebook on 4/9/2019 at 12:25 PM
A failure is one who is not prepared to fix their problems

Each week, the Year 4 class teacher allocates me groups of students who have learning or understanding difficulty in mathematics. I mean I tackle one group at a time.

I explain the question or problem in the simplest possible way and show them examples in order to make them understand or realise their mistakes. They have to fix the mistakes themselves without further clue.

A week ago, I had a student who cried and kept saying she was a failure because she could not do the question correctly. The student cries whenever she is under stress, not only in mathematics class, but also in other subjects too.

After calming her down, helping her understand, and watching her corrected her mistake, I said to her she had to remember for good what I said. I wanted her to repeat exactly what I said:

”Mr Chan says:
I am not going to cry in class again
I am not a failure
I WILL succeed!”

A failure is one who is not prepared to fix their problems themselves or seeks help/advice from others to have the problem solved.

Thank you for reading.

My Story - bring students to the attention of their problems and lead then to work out the answers

Posted to Facebook on 16/7/2019 at 5:49 PM
My Story - bring students to the attention of their problems and lead then to work out the answers

I was asked by the Year 4 class teacher to help 2 students to understand why they made mistakes in the online exercises and how to fix the mistakes.

One at a time the student was with me going through the online exercises on a laptop.

The first student is fairly smart. However, he was too hasty and did not pay attention to accuracy

The second did not pay enough attention to question, nor to me when I was explaining

I brought to the attention of their problems, and led them to work out the correct answers or fix their mistakes made in the online exercises.

Student 1 needs to slow down, and double check his work. He will speed up only after he has proven his can do his exercises accuracy.

Student 2 must learn to read all available information, namely question and diagrams very carefully before giving an answer. She must listen attentively, without interrupting the speaker, teacher or instructor. Otherwise, she will miss the explanation and important information.

The students were asked to repeat what they understood about their problems and they had to tell the class teacher the same

The students and the teacher were happy, and so am I.

Thank you for reading.