02/06/2017
Why Maths and Science Marks Drop?
MOST OF THE CHILDREN IN YOUR CHILD’S CLASS will only be studying maths at an Elementary Level when they reach Year 12.
Let me explain why so many children who do well in Maths and Science subjects in Primary School and Junior High School cannot keep up by the time they reach Grade 10 or Grade 11 – and so are forced to drop back to the most basic Maths course, and often drop out of Science courses altogether.
They Can’t or Don’t Read the Textbooks
The words in the Maths and Science textbooks are just as important as the numbers but most students rarely read the explanations contained in the books because they find the text in the books very difficult to comprehend. Instead, they are forced to rely on learning by listening to their teachers, or more commonly, by just learning procedures off-by-heart without understanding.
The concepts contained in Maths and Science are complex so good analytical skills are required to comprehend them. These advanced reading and study skills are rarely taught explicitly in High School.
To succeed at Year 12 level:
students need to know how to build a good technical vocabulary,
they need to be skilled at breaking ideas down into simple parts, and
they need to understand how all those parts are related when they are put together.
Many students view learning information in Maths and Science as a process of memorisation of patterns which they learn in a visual way by copying the procedures used in the examples in their textbooks. Unfortunately this is a very inefficient way to learn because even simple procedures are hard to remember for the long term.
Long-term learning is particularly critical in Maths and Science subjects because the work done in Years 11 and 12 relies heavily on virtually all of the skills and information learned in the previous 5 years. For example, accurate addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions, algebraic fractions, decimals and percentages is required right through High School and University.
You will be able to get an idea of how High School students are faring with long-term learning by testing these basic mathematical operations using numbers such as: 13/18, 10/17, 3x/7, x/3, 0.37, 5.23, 58%.
A student who does not score of 100% on your test is likely to experience difficulties in the future because of long-term memory problems.
Act Sooner Rather Than Later
If you or your child are struggling to learn Maths or Science it is best to do something about it as soon as possible – every day that goes by when learning in inefficient ways is another day that needs to be caught up.
