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Tips for Tutoring Your Child

• Set up a program with your child - ensure he or she is part of this process. Agree a regular time and consider prominently displaying a calendar with days, times, and activities marked. Your child will have times that are best suited to their learning. If you can tutor your child at a time that is best suited to their learning then results will improve. For some children this will be before supper, for others it might be later in the evening and for others it might even be before breakfast!

• Sometimes there can be frustration when talking with our children. We might think that they are not listening or that they are "tuning us out." This may or may not be the case, regardless here a some tips that will help encourage better listening when you are tutoring your child:
  • Get close to and make eye contact with your child before speaking
  • Speak in short simple sentences. Break longer messages into a series of shorter ones. Stress important words.
  • Use body language. e.g. arm movements to illustrate your message.
  • Have your child repeat what you have told them in their own words to ensure they understand the message.
• Work on your own math tutoring skills. Ask your local Librarian for a good book or use the Internet. Adopt an attitude that if your child is struggling with algebra, or geometry, or whatever you are tutoring them on, then it is your teaching as opposed to their learning that is at fault.
• Work as closely as possible with your child's teacher at school. Your teacher can provide guidance, suggestions, and resources that will greatly help your tutoring. Supplementing and complementing what is being taught in class will be more effective than following an alternative curriculum.
• Do not reinforce the belief that a person can simply not be good at math. Saying things like "I was never any good at math" just supports the misconception that a person is either born with, or without an aptitude for math and nothing can be done to change that.