Review previous chapters to Retain their topics

“Hey, can we just work on the things that we are working on now and not any of this old stuff?”

This is an actual quote from a kiddo in one of my tutoring groups. He didn’t want to review Chapter 5 problems when he was already on Chapter 8. I don’t blame him, Chapter 5 was a hard chapter. Most kiddos struggled with it. Which is exactly WHY we should go back to Chapter 5 as often as possible.

As a former classroom teacher and long time tutor I have tried many ways to help kiddos retain math topics. In fact, this is such a big problem in the math teacher community that teachers gather together to discuss ways to help kiddos retain information. It’s true! I’ve sat with many teachers on different occasions in different cities talking about retention.

Here’s one thing that I’ve tried and seen positive results with: SPIRAL REVIEW!

For those of you who have never heard of the term, basically during random points in the school year, the teacher assigns homework or warm ups to review a concept learned one or more chapters ago. AND the teacher goes back to that same chapter multiple times a year.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with a now retired teacher, who felt that all operations with fractions, decimals and integers were the most important topics to review. So every now and then she would assign homework on basic operations with those numbers AND she would regularly have warm ups at the beginning of the lessons with those questions.

Can you imagine if you constantly had to review the same type of problem all year long? On the one hand I can see how you would get bored easily. But on the other hand wouldn’t you get bored if you already knew how to solve these basic problems?

Well, if you didn’t already guess, her kiddos were mostly masters at solving basic math problems with those numbers by the end of the school year and didn’t need much review at the beginning of the next school year to refresh their memory.

Chapter 5 was hard for that group of kiddos. We’ve been working on problems from Chapter 5 for a few months now, and of course the group is doing much better with the problems on their own. It just took additional time and review for them to understand and retain the concepts.

If you’re a parent who needs help to review concepts with your kiddos, have them complete a basic problem from a previous unit or chapter that they’ve completed in school. Then go to a chapter or unit before that, and so on. You’ll be amazed by what regular review will do for your kiddos – even the kiddos who are accelerating in math. They need the review for retention as well!

I also recommend that kiddos don’t stop working on math over the summer. Imagine if you took a break from work for 10 weeks. It would be really hard to go back to work. Finding a balance between some math and some summer fun is really important for retention!