These are some of the most commonly asked questions regarding online Math Tutorials and their answers. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions that are not answered here and we will get you the answer very quickly.
For many students, yes, but a good tutor, like a good teacher, is invaluable for some students. It depends on the needs of the student so it might be wise to experiment a bit. That is, try the video without a tutor at first and if you are not getting where you want to be, bring on a tutor. If a tutor is needed for your child, you will find the videos will reinforce the tutor’s instruction, making both more effective. By the way, some tutors already recommend our videos and use them to help their students.
Although most students will seek help only when confused or behind, the most effective way to utilize the video instruction is to become proactive. That is, watch video corresponding with classroom topics before the topics are presented in class. Doing so will make math seem very easy and will enhance long-term memory of topics.
Ask your children to watch one or two free sample sections with you. Watch them as they watch the video. You should know within moments if the video instruction is engaging them. Ask if they follow the conversation and enjoy the presentation style. [You are way ahead if they are onboard with the video instruction idea.]
With their help, find where they are in their book. Click on “Courses, Lessons, Prices and Checkout” and navigate to a course and table of contents. Select the corresponding topic in the table of contents and follow the simple instructions for checkout. Encourage your children to watch the video more than once for reinforcement.
ideo instruction is just as likely as a tutor to make a difference for your child and it is much less expensive, so it is worth trying. Your experience in math has little to do with your children’s math achievement unless you discourage or denigrate the learning of math, so try to be positive and encourage your children to become engaged. When they are watching the video, try to create a setting with few distractions. Complete quiet is not necessary, but try to avoid any loud outbursts from other sources. Apart from watching video, encourage the completion of homework in your child’s classes and be supportive of their teachers. You might also be interested to know that many parents have indicated they are finally able to understand math now that video instruction is available.
There is no guarantee, but experience indicates a one letter-grade improvement or better for almost every student that uses the videos, even those with special needs. That performance expectation is not unreasonable when you consider some of the differences between classroom instruction and video instruction:
1. Video instruction can be repeated
2. Video instruction has no distractions
3. Video instruction is available at any time of day
4. Video instruction is available when the student is ill or on vacation
The Department of Education in each state produces a list of standards that students are expected to achieve in each course. Those standards are remarkably similar from state to state and the major textbook publishers produce books that address those standards. Therefore, the scope and sequence of math topics are remarkably similar from textbook to textbook and the video elements on this site address those standards as well.
The situation you describe is not unusual and is often misunderstood. Some students that do well in the early grades find they don’t have to study very much to make good grades. They are often gifted students who are able to learn and retain math skills without difficulty using memorization. At some point they discover memorization does not work so well. Problems appear on homework and on tests that they have never seen before and they tend to think it’s so unfair. Many students adjust to learning concepts rather than using memory alone, but others stay with old habits, struggle, and become frustrated.
Encourage the idea of learning general ideas rather than memorizing specific skills. Here is one way to do that. When your child asks a math question, rather than just show how to work the problem, ask, “What is the general idea in working that kind of problem?” Try to get your child to explain the process in words and in doing so she will often answer the original question without further help. After doing that several times, your child will anticipate the answer and begin thinking that way, too.
Concept learning is not as complicated as it sounds. For example, the concept in adding fractions, whether in arithmetic, algebra, or calculus, is to write the fractions so they have a common denominator and then add the numerators.
Yes. Just call the phone number on the website and we will set you up. You might be interested to know that some schools use the video to train their teachers and many teachers use video to brush up on topics or to learn new ways to present them. Some schools even use the video as their primary teacher.
Problems of almost every kind become progressively more difficult and at some point students will need the steps to work the more difficult problems successfully. The time to learn the correct steps is while working the easier problems. Students say they will show the work when the problems become more difficult but that never happens and, once started, the habit of skipping steps is difficult to break.
A common misconception on the part of students is that working problems by skipping steps is a sign of advanced math ability. More often it is a sign that a promising student is likely to struggle with more advanced math.
For those students, it is easier to denigrate math and those that want to learn math than it is to try to learn math because trying implies the risk of failure. And once the anti-math student goes down that path, peer pressure often stands in the way of change.
It is so unfortunate because those students are just as capable of learning math as other students. They mainly just lack the most basic amount of confidence to be successful and they often believe others were born with math skills and they were not. They don’t realize that everyone comes to math at every level in a condition of relative ignorance so we are all in the same boat so to speak.
