Speaking of Math Podcast by Door-2-Math

The message that every little girl wants to hear from her father: 1. Daddy, when we're apart, I miss you and I hope you miss me too. 2. Tell me I matter to you. 3. Tell me you're proud of me. Even when you think I know this, tell me anyway. 4. Re-affirm me that I'm worth it. 5. Daddy, be there for me.

A www.door2math.com production. In this video I talk about my experience with girls and math struggle. Girls tend to memorize math facts which leads to math success in the lower grades but math problems after 6th grade. Critical thinking skills and figuring things out is the long term path to success and I talk about how word problems can be used to change the mindset.

A www.door2math.com production. When we look at the math topics that need to be mastered by our 6th graders, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and discouraged - there are many different math topics and it’s difficult to tell which ones are essential and need to be mastered so our kids can continue to be successful with math after 6th grade. From working over 400+ families and with dozens of different types of math curricula, I believe all that clutter taught to our kids in this age group can be simplified to just four essentials. The first milestone set is adding and subtracting. This is the most basic number operation and it’s just manipulating numbers, that’s it. The second milestone set is multiplication and division. We can think of multiplication as just a quick way to add and division as just a quick way to subtract. So if we lump these two together, we can call these arithmetics operations. The combination of decimals, percentages and fractions is the third big milestone.This skill set is very important as this is most of our daily math communication in society. This milestone I call a magic triangle. So if you can imagine there's a triangle and on the very tippy top let's say there’s a fraction, and on the lower left corner you see a fraction and on the lower right corner you see a decimal. If your child is able to go to each point of the triangle and convert from percentage to fraction to decimal then they’ve mastered this milestone. For example, let's say you have a one over eight, that's a fraction, right? In decimal form it’s 0.125 and in percentages it’s 12.5%. So if you take any one of the these and your child is able to convert to the other two, that’s a good sign. And after that is this concept called the LCM or the least common multiple. The reason that this one is so important is that's it’s the foundation for adding and subtracting fractions and lays the foundation for algebra, geometry and beyond. Learning the LCM operations also trains the mind in critical thinking skills. Unfortunately this is where we lose so many kids in math because the ones that got away with memorizing before won’t be able to successfully complete this milestone.

I have a tennis story and I hope you can gain some insights on test taking. I’ve been having a problem with consistency so my tennis coach offered to help. We did a couple of points and she said, why do you think you'll game is not consistent? I said when I do the forehand, sometimes it goes where I want to go and sometimes I shank it! So she said she wouldn't define consistency the way I define it! I'm thinking, great, what does it have to do with tennis? And what does this have to do with test taking? When it comes to test taking, many students think you have to know math to get good scores. Yes and no. Test taking has two parts, knowing the material and test taking skills. Just like test taking, consistency has two parts, a consistent stroke which I have, and the second part I didn't know is focus. My focus was poor. That's why I was shanking it. Back to test taking. Let's say you have $100 and you’re traveling and you go in through a weird toll house that needs to take 20%. After the toll house you have $80 left. Not too bad, right? Twenty bucks. Then comes another toll house. This time they take 20% of $80 and now you end up with $64 :( So on a test you want to get a 100, but you got a 64. Which skill do you work on, test taking or knowing the material? Because 80 percent of 80 percent is 64 percent. If you keep on working on the wrong thing, it's not going to increase your score and you're going to get discouraged. Just like with my tennis game, I was working on my stroke, and didn’t know it was the focus problem. So if you’re getting low test score, you need to sit down and look where you're making the mistakes. Is the mistake made from not knowing the material or silly mistakes? All mistakes cost you points much like a focus problem caused me points. So you really need to analyze. Back to tennis. Once I figured this out, I started to pay more attention to my focus problem. Every times the ball comes across the net and bounces, I say the word “bounce”. My consistency is better now because I'm working on the right thing! Much Love, Feenix

2:09:19 1986 French Open Ladies Final kevmcg Recommended for you 9:25 A simple way to break a bad habit | Judson Brewer TED 5M views 20:39 Listening to shame | Brené Brown TED 2.4M views 14:50 How To Get Kids To Listen Without Yelling Live On Purpose TV 87K views 13:30 Life Lessons From 100-Year-Olds LifeHunters 6.8M views 8:54 The Valedictorian Speech that will change your life Neel Sharma 13M views 11:10 How to Score Over a 30 on the ACT! TIPS AND ADVICE Joi Wade 185K views 14:25 After watching this, your brain will not be the same | Lara Boyd | TEDxVancouver TEDx Talks 18M views 11:50 How to Stop Back Talk and Get Kids to Listen Bill Corbett 226K views 27:02 Joel Osteen ( APRIL 25, 2018 ) | Depositing Good Things Paul Burley Recommended for you New 9:03 7 Reasons to NEVER Do a PhD agoncharov 91K views 27:00 Joel Osteen ( April 25, 2018 ) | NEW MESSAGE: Keep Your Crown Jess Mcdonald Recommended for you New 3:54 The Woman Who Left Oprah and Simon Cowell Speechless | The Oprah Winfrey Show | OWN OWN Recommended for you Can't Stop Yelling at Homework Time - Try THIS!!

When it comes to math, or other topics that can be complex, a student may want to try things her way rather than the “right” way. For us parents, we have a natural tendency to stop our child right away and show her the “correct” way. In this podcast we discuss why it’s important to let the student try the problem her way and see where she’s right and wrong to help her develop critical thinking skills and to honor her ideas.

Parents of 1st and 2nd grade students sometimes ask what are the things to watch out for when it comes math as kids go through the elementary grades. In this podcast we talk about the six things to watch out for: - adding on fingers - doing the multiplication table from the top down - trouble with fractions - trouble with percentages - bad grades in the 7-8th grade - messy backpack

When a child starts having a bad attitude towards math, this is a warning sign and a parent can intervene. In this podcast we talk about a 4 step process that a parent can use to help their child when they have a bad attitude towards math. The steps are: 1. Get the emotions on a piece of paper and crumble them. 2. Split up the work into smaller time chunks. 3. Celebrate every accomplishment. 4. Look for the milestone when a child says they want to do better.

When kids have math struggle, there are several emotions and causes jumbled up in the distress. In this podcast we discuss what parents can do to to untangle the emotions and causes when kids come home with math distress.

When parents have fears about math, they can unintentionally dump them on their kids and continue the cycle. In this episode we talk about how to identify these fears and what can be done to prevent the parent from being a fear garbage truck.

When having an argument with a child about what classes to take, the solution is usually not at the end of a straight line. In this podcast we discuss how parents can first work through a child’s emotions when searching for a solution and only then go to the logical decisions.

When kids are having a hard time with math, learning math can be compared to swallowing bitter medicine. This is why drug makers coat the medicine with an easy to swallow substance. The same analogy can be used with math. In this podcast we talk about several different ways that parents can make math easier to swallow for their kids.

When a child comes home with a bad grade on a math test, the parent needs to have “math mental agility” to guide their child through the experience. In this podcast we discuss the steps needed.

Math in itself can be very boring to students. It’s a foreign language describing abstract concepts. In this podcast we discuss ways to make math interesting to children through oddball experiments.

A power struggle often happens with parents when kids are not able to concentrate on math homework or on other subjects. In this podcast se discuss strategies to help kids with concentration including breaking down the homework sessions into smaller chunks.

When one child comes home with a good math grade and her sibling comes home with a bad math grades, parents can often be at a loss. In this podcast we discuss how to foster a cooperative environment instead, having a success journal and emphasizing learning rather than grades.

When a child comes home with a negative statement about math (I suck at math), we as parents often freeze because we may have had the same feelings when we were kids. In this podcast, we introduce the THINK process to work through math anxiety with your child. THINK stands for: Is it TRUE? Is he/she HONEST? Get INSIDE his/her reality. Have new INTERPRETATIONS. KEEP the most powerful interpretation.

In this podcast we continue our discussion on how parents can best help their kids with common core math. We talk about the best outside resources for parents who are not able to take on helping their kids with common core themselves.

This is part 2 of a 3 part series. When parents decide that they want to help their kids with the math common core curriculum at home, they can follow the ACE process. A - Awareness C - Commitment E- Execution We discuss each of the steps in the podcast.

In this episode we talk about best ways to approach common core as parents when it is taught in your child’s school. It is a different way to do math and parents need to decide whether to help their kids at home or to find an outside resource to help their kids. One way to decide is for the parents to take an 8th grade math exam based on common core and see how they do.