Parent Coaching on Khan Academy

I recently came across a set of features on Khan Academy that make it easy for parents to understand the progress made by their kids.  These help track stats about the percentage of concepts from a particular grade mastered by the student, the amount of energy being expended by the student (
I assume this takes into account the time spent on practicing and watching videos),  the list of concepts that are mastered, that are being practiced as well as concepts that are difficult for the student.  The Mastery Challenges that involve getting a certain number of questions correct in a row determine mastery.   All in all, this is the first online service I have seen that provides something that gives parents solid data about how their kids are faring.

As far as the kids are concerned, they love to watch their points and percentages go up.  They also earn "badges", and just like stickers, these badges seem to be great motivators.  :)

Here are some screenshots:

Khan Academy

I have heard and read a lot of Khan Academy, and even watched Salman Khan speak at a local TED conference.  However, it never occurred to me that any of his videos could be helpful for my 7 and 4 year old kids.  This evening, when my 7 year old was working on him Math multiplicaton Kumon sheets (yes, we are back to experimenting with Kumon...more about that later), I desperately looked online for resources to help him.  One of the sites had a link to a video, and I clicked on it not realizing that it lead to a Khan Academy video.  My 7 year old and we (the parents) watched it together.  The effect of it on my son was just amazing. Not sure if it was the reassuring voice, but he sat up and really paid attention.  The line that really got him was when Khan said "I'm not a big fan of memorization.  But, the one thing about multiplication is that if you memorize your multiplication tables that we'll start to do in this video, it'll pay huge benefits for the rest of your life".  Wow, the impact was just huge.    More interestingly, my almost 5 year old insisted that we find a video for her.  We found one of basic addition where Khan talks about adding avacadoes.  Again, I had shown my kids how to cut open an avacado just today, and that was quite a happy coincidence.  :)

Link to the multiplication video: Khan Academy Multiplication Video   

Telling Time

My seven year old was having a hard time reading the time on an analog clock, understanding the difference between AM and PM, as well as answering questions such as "if it is 11:30 AM, what will be the time 3 hours and 20 minutes later".   Here is one site I found with a clock that kids can play with to learn to read the time.  I used it as a tool to teach my son.  The only drawback is that when you add or subtract an hour, the hour hand moves ahead or forward, but it does not show the minute hand traveling around the clock.  That would have helped emphasize the point that it takes one hour for the hour hand to move from say 12 to 1, and it takes one hour for the minute hand to travel around the clock.  In spite of that drawback, I would still say that this is a very handy tool.

Teaching Mental Math

Along the lines of Number Talks, I was looking for lesson plans on teaching mental math.  I found this site with a discussion about teaching Math to struggling students.   It has some nice tips such as:

Talk about how the pairs that make 10 can help her with mental addition and subtraction. If she needs to add 5+8, she knows that:

and

So

This seems like a nice start. 

Number Talks

Last month, we attended a workshop about "Number Talks".  It was about a  novel way of teaching Math.  I have not tried it with my children, but it definitely sounds promising.    I could not find any free resources related to it.  However, I did find these:

http://www.mathsolutions.com/index.cfm?page=wp18&contentid=1238&crid=98&mcrid=107

The package with a Multimedia CD that costs 65$.  

Here is an example from Chapter 1 from the first link -

49  x 5

The goal of number talk is to help a student approach this problem like this for instance:

50 x 5 and then subtract one group of 5 to arrive at the answer of 245.

I also found a book titled Number Talks: Helping Children Build Mental Math and Computation Strategies, Grades K-5

Math tutoring in the South Bay

The more I talk to parents of middle schoolers, the more I am convinced that it is really important for Math foundation concepts to be really strong.  The first grade teacher is doing a great job.  However, the curriculum does not seem challenging enough.  We have tried teaching our six year old more than what's covered in school.  But, given that we are two working parents, it is hard to maintain regularity.  So, I looked into a couple of Math tutoring options.  One was Math Sqaured in Saratoga.  It is very reasonably priced - around 100$ a month.  They test the student initially, and place the kid at some grade level.  Kids go the center once or twice a week.  At each meeting, they do seven pages of a workbook at the center, and then seven more at home.  The workbook presents Math concepts in visually appealing ways.  The other place I checked out was Mathnasium in Campbell.  It is run by a person who has a doctorate in engineering.    This place charges twice as much as the Math Squared place.  However, the teacher-student ratio seemed much better - as far as I could see, barely 1-3 students per instructor.  Here again, the kid is tested to see his or her grasp of concepts.  After our son's test, we got a detailed report of his performance on specific concepts.  For instance, we realized this multiplication concepts needed some reinforcing.   I was very impressed with this place.   Just have to make a decision of whether it is necessary given that we are capable of teaching the same concepts, and when we have so many free resources on the Web.  However, children do sometimes take things more seriously when it is an external authority to whom they are answerable. :)  Maybe, we will use them over the summer.

Mathnasium in Campbell -http://www.mathnasium.com/campbell
Math Squared in Saratoga - http://www.m2math.com/

Stanford's EPGY Program

Stanford has an Education Program for Gifted Youth with online courses in Math, Physics, English, Computer Programming and other subjects.  Math and English are available at the Elementary School Level.   Students are supposed to take an aptitude test to apply.   I have not enrolled my kids for any of the classes.  A friend has, and is quite happy with it so far.  

Saxon Math

Although the title of the blog is "Web" teaching resources, I would like to mention a non-Web resource that we have been using for first grade Math. The two popular private schools in the bay area are Challenger and Stratford, and both use the Saxon system of Math in their curriculum. My son attended KG at Stratford after which we moved him into a public school. Since he and we really liked the Saxon Math, we purchased the next level of that series from Amazon. Pros of this system - Very gentle, gradual progression through various Math concepts - addition, subtraction, estimation, time, etc. Unlike Kumon, each worksheet has a variety of activities, and this seems to work better with our son.   When new concepts are introduced, the child will need some help initially, but the burden on the parent/teacher is not much because of the slow and steady pace. 

Beestar

We were referred to http://www.beestar.org/by a friend. Turns out to be quite a treasure trove. They have Math and Reading worksheets for K-8. We signed up for the free version that allows one access to 2 worksheets per week. The first grade Math worksheets are not easy, to put it mildly. They cover a variety of concepts such as "read clock, place value, simple patterns, problem solving methods, describe individual coins, understand real object graphs, skip count, unit sense, apply simple addition facts, addition/subtraction patterns, compare small numbers, etc". This is a huge improvement over say, Kumon, worksheets that tend to be very uni-dimensional.

Again, this is not a site that teaches concepts but tests concepts. They do provide a list of reference books that could be used offline.

I am still on the quest for finding sites that not just test but also teach in a fun way. Of course, it would be nice if those sites were free and great at capturing the imagination of young children. :)

If you like Kumon...

If you like the Kumon system, you can save some money by using sites that provide free Math worksheets. An example - http://www.freemathworksheets.net/general-math.php

A site that is more comprehensive -  covers Math and Language Arts - http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/index.html

Pro - This is an easy way to save the 100$ a month one would pay to a Kumon franchise for their worksheets. Con - Children are not accountable to any third parties, and this may lead to them slacking off. One more con is that at Kumon, they test the kid once in a while to see if he/she is ready for the next level. In the case of using free worksheets, parents would have to make that call, and decide what the next level should be. Again, just like in the case of Miss Maggie, these worksheets are good once the concepts have been taught, and only speed has to be developed.

Miss Maggie Around the World in 80 Seconds

http://www.missmaggie.org/scholastic/roundtheworld_eng_launcher.html

Great site for building speed in mental math. When we discontinued our son from Kumon, we experimented with this site. Worked very well. Our hyperative son loved being able to jump around the room shouting out answers to questions, and seeing how many seconds it took him to finish a round of addition and subtraction questions. We started with this when he was 5. The "game" has two settings - "easy" and "hard". Pros - Fun for children because it takes less time than filling out worksheets. Cons - Great for testing addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts, and not suitable for teaching and learning those concepts. Most importantly, helps build speed after the concepts have been learned.