# Tag Info

18

I realize that your question is about the $100 \times 100$ table: But since you ask about approaching the multiplication table in ways other than by rote learning alone, I thought I would leave you with a list of problems I generated based on the $10 \times 10$ table. [Edit 5/9/14: You can find some of the problems below in an informal paper of mine; the ...

17

I am that tutor. I work in a math center where my job is not classroom lessons, but one on one help. This is high school level, ages 13-18, grades 9-12. Most student come of their own free will, and as this is my first year, word is still spreading. The teachers around me are skilled, but in any class the distribution of students means the teacher has to ...

8

In my high-school days I tutored a boy in elementary school for a year or so. My feeling at the time was that I did't really teach him about the subject matter, but forced him to work by being there, and (indirectly) discipline. During college, I often helped classmates (and students in lower classes) in solving particularly hard proposed problems. I also ...

6

I would recommend "math enrichment" instead of straightforward math acceleration. (1) Here is one source from the US Florida school system: Math SuperStars (a.k.a. Sunshine Math). It covers grades K-5, and contains weekly problem worksheets. It is a bit too problem-based (rather than project-based) for my tastes, but at least it gives you a consistent set ...

6

If he wants to memorize them, then obviously there is no other way than to memorize them. (I would let him estimate the number of entries in the bigger table compared to the usual $10\times10$-table first, though.) If he just wants to be able to quickly multiply two-digit numbers in his head, then I would start out differently: Memorize the squares, powers ...

5

I began tutoring as a fellow student when I was asked for help with homework, continued when I began getting referrals to help student athletes, was employed by tutoring centers and the mathematics department, and finally attempted to set up a private tutoring service. It was my experience that tutoring could help considerably, especially when I was able to ...

5

Three books you can read with your young student: The Cat in Numberland. After reading it, you get to discuss orders of infinity. The Man Who Counted, by Malba Tahan. (Do you and your student speak Portuguese together? This was originally in Portuguese; the author is Brazilian.) As you read each episode, try to predict what Beremiz will do to solve the ...

5

My experience: In the early 2000's, I had my first child ($\approx$ 5 yrs) help me "build" an analog clock (it was just a paper model, no gears). We would occasionally set it to the correct time (given on my phone), perform some task, and then come back to the clock to reset the time. I think this gave him the sense of how fast/slow the minute hand took to ...

4

My suggestion would be that you pick a book with some difficult exercises, attempt to work through the exercises yourself, and then your tutor can help you with the exercises you got stuck on. This works best if they give you hints which lead you to the solution, rather than just solving the exercise for you. The tutor can also check exercises you believe ...

3

I was impressed by some of the material used in the first and second grades of my son's elementary school in the USA, where I suspect the material comes from the recent Common Core standards. There were some basic enumeration problems ("How many ways can you attach three squares together on their sides, so that the whole side is shared by the squares?") ...

3

Have you considered buying an analog watch for your child? My parents got me one for my sixth birthday and I was able to use it to tell time. I would think the child could also use it to learn to tell time. The advantages are that your child will always have it handy and be able to compare the watch to the digital time. Whenever you want to talk about ...

3

Have you tried KenKen puzzles? For those unfamiliar with them, these puzzles require logic and arithmetic operations to solve. One of the best sites is here. You can choose puzzles of different levels of difficulty with different combinations of the four operations. I have had a lot of success using these puzzles with first through fifth graders. This ...

3

I agree that you need to do a lot of the heavy lifting. Furthermore, I would try to use texts that are suitable for self-study, basically always. Feel like the teacher-salary-justifiers try to push books that need an instructor more. I.e. even with a paid teacher, I think you should pedagogically optimized materials. All that said, I do think a tutor can ...

2

They'll start to explain material that I can read in the book? (1) Depending on where you are in your mathematical development (which you don't make clear in your posting), you might take on a challenging text, for example, Michael Spivak's Calculus (4th ed), and work it through with the guidance of a private teacher. (2) If not Calculus, then Gilbert ...

1

I noticed that you said that he needs reassurance and many of the comments suggest that he needs drill. I would therefore encourage you to use Khan Academy. You can set up an account with you as his teacher. This will give you an opportunity to assign practice in skills in a specific time frame and see his progress. More importantly, he will have ...

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