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How do I tutor Math?

So, this is one of the most important and common question parents have for me.

“My kid doesn’t like Math, How are you going to introduce Math to him/her?“

High School Math Tutoring

Well, it really depends on the student. For highschool and Adult tutees, I usually employ the “ I do, we do, you do ” method of teaching. It works like a charm. They aren’t coming to get lectured for hours. They just want to get comfortable with numbers. And “I do, we do, you do” is a great tool to help them with that.

Middle School Math Tutoring

But, For middle schoolers, it is generally a different ball game. Most of them hate extra classes. They don’t want to sit in the same place and do Math for an hour. So, I split the time we spend learning together.

The first five to ten minutes is actually warming up. I just ask them to recall what they learned in the last lesson. That puts them in the learning mode. After that, we start with the lesson of the day. I introduce the concept with a little backstory. Usually, a thing they do every day. Like, for example, when I introduce Integer Addition, I ask them to explain “How credit cards work?” Almost all of them get that right. And gradually we get into integer addition. We start working on the problems after this.

Also, I always have at least two to three alternate methods. If this doesn’t work, at least any of the alternate ways will work. This would go on for probably 40 minutes. The last ten minutes, I just make them practice the problems that they will be working after the lesson that day. We wind up the session recalling what we learned that day.

And I make sure that my students are vocal about their understanding of the lesson. I encourage them to ask questions the moment they pop on their head.

Maintaining this rapport is what I believe the important aspect of my Tutoring.

Here is an interesting conversation I had with a student I tutor. I used Pi to explain Rational and Irrational Numbers to her.

So, this is how I introduced Irrational Numbers to a student of mine. I asked her “Do you know Pi?” she said, “Yes, my teacher said Pi is equal to 3.14”. I said “Is that it, just 3.14? “  she said, “Yes, that’s what she said.”

I shared my screen and typed pi’s value in Google. I found a wiki article and asked her to read it.  And she was quite surprised by the number of digits that follow 14. And I also told her about Emma Haruka Iwao, a Google employee from Japan, who calculated Pi to a new world record length of 31 trillion digits with the help of the company’s cloud computing service. She was even amused to know that is still an approximation of Pi.

After this interesting conversation, I told her to observe two Numbers

1.851851851 And 3.141592653589793 (pi)              

I asked her to figure out a pattern among the fractional parts of both Numbers. She was quick to find a Pattern with the first one and couldn’t come up with one with the second one.

I told her that finite and recurring decimals are indeed rational Numbers as they can be written as a ratio of two integers. And we discussed writing Pi as a ratio of 2 integers (I told her 22/7 is an approximation) and found it is not possible to come up with one.

She quickly understood the difference between Irrational and Rational Numbers.

I also came up with some open-ended questions at the end of the lesson like,

if Pi is irrational, why are defining it has a ratio of Circumference to the Diameter of any Circle?

I also asked her “Do you think it is possible for Pi to be a rational Number as we have not yet computed it completely?”

Well, I am pretty sure, I didn’t turn her into a “Pi is Rational” Zombie.