3 Key Solutions to Math Success

Society values math skills. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a solid math education can mean a 350% increase in pay. Yet even with unfilled jobs in our economy, NASA estimates that two million technology jobs are going unfilled by American workers because they are unqualified. The US has an ongoing math crisis. Fortunately, there are solutions that work.

Solution 1: Move Beyond Rigid Grade Levels

Students do not learn in grade-level chunks. They learn and master material at their own pace. Grade levels exist largely because, once education grew beyond the one-room schoolhouse, they made administration easier. That is not a sufficient reason to hold children to an arbitrary timetable.

Education should nurture a child's intrinsic motivation to learn, create, and do satisfying work. An educator should guide the child to progress through the curriculum as concepts are mastered and can be built upon, rather than moving on simply because the calendar says so. Knowing the three possible outcomes of a lesson guarantees that a student moves forward with genuine understanding rather than surface compliance.

Montessori schools around the world have been liberated from grade levels, focusing instead on personalized education, for over a hundred years. This approach is also now being adopted at the Ridgeview Charter School in Colorado and hundreds of other schools across the US, with strong results.

Solution 2: Focus on the Individual Child, Not the Label

In a well-meaning attempt to help more students, education systems create categories such as LD, ADD, and ADHD, and define processes for each. In fact, every student should have a label: their own name.

Diagnostic labels serve an important role in bringing support services to students. However, they also carry unintended side effects. In grouping children under categories of diagnosis, we group together children who are actually quite different from one another, and in doing so we underemphasize their important individual differences. Parents can become frustrated when their child does not fit neatly into a diagnostic mold.

Solution 3: Multisensory Math Education

A typical homeschool curriculum engages only a portion of the brain's learning pathways. When there are no kinesthetic or auditory lessons and the use of manipulatives is limited, a child who does not take naturally to abstract thinking is at a significant disadvantage.

Consider a visual lesson where a child looks at a picture and completes a simple calculation, then successfully completes several drills on the same material. Does that mean the child has genuine mastery and a full foundational understanding of the topic? The lesson and drill reached only one learning pathway. The rest of the brain was not engaged with this concept.

Now imagine four lessons on the same concept, one each for visual, tactile, kinesthetic, and auditory learning. The child's brain is engaged across all pathways, and neural connections are formed throughout. Only then will a child truly have mastery.

Without a complete multisensory experience, children miss the richness that comes from absorbing the same material through all learning styles. Only then will a student form a solid web and foundation of knowledge and ability. Sensorial materials enable the child not just to memorize, but to gain genuine conceptual understanding.

Whether your child is average, gifted, on the autism spectrum, a combination of those, a current or former Montessori student, or anywhere from pre-K to junior high, make sure the math program you choose includes a multisensory approach like the one used by ShillerLearning.

Build Math Skills with ShillerLearning

Math Kit I
Pre-K to 3rd Grade

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Math Kit II
4th Grade to Pre-Algebra

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