Ask Micki: New Ideas?

© ilco

Question: Hi, there, Micki.  It's a brand new year, and I'd like to start it off with a brand new set of ideas for my math tutoring sessions!

Any ideas on how to make math fun?

Just to give some background: my name is Lizzie and I tutor math for 3rd to 6th grade kids.

Thanks, and happy new year to you!
Lizzie, AZ

Answer: Happy new year to you, too, Lizzie, and thanks for the great question!

I'm always excited to get emails from people who love what they tutor, and want to add some pep and fun to their tutoring sessions. 

So how do you make those math problems jump off the page and capture the interest of your tutees?

First thing - find out what your tutee likes. If your tutee likes music, incorporate that into your tutoring. A lot of music relies on math, right down to the sixteenth notes used to compose songs. Grab some reading material on the subject, too, and help your tutee make the math-music connection. 

Is your tutee a young foodie?  Use the always popular pizza, pie, or cake learning technique to help explain fractions.  Have your young tutees color in a pizza (aka: a round piece of paper), and let them decorate it with their favorite toppings.  Then, slice up the pizza into small segments, and let your tutee practice adding and subtracting fractions using the pizza.  

Does your tutee like art?  It can also be a great math learning tool.  Trust me on this one - it is how I learned a lot of my ratios, percentages, and fractions!  Try coming up with word problems using paint colors (we need to use twice as much red as blue, the color purple is made up of 40% red and ?% blue, etc.), and watch budding artists take a sudden interest in math.

Maybe your tutee likes animals, dinosaurs, or sports.  You can incorporate practically any interest into math by using key elements in word problems or worksheets. 

One of my friends, for example, tutors a baseball fanatic.  So he uses baseballs, bats, and other baseball elements in all of the math worksheets that he provides to his tutee.  It works wonderfully.

And don't forget about those short breaks. Even the brightest mind can reach burnout status pretty quickly after staring at the same material for hours. Try to take a few short breaks, and let your tutee know that he's doing a great job.  Talk about school, or hobbies, and get away from the math work for a minute or two.

Have fun, and happy tutoring!

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