There are many “secrets” we can use to help our children in making math a successful subject, but what if I were allow to use only one secret? What would be the only one secret that I could use to making math a successful subject for my children? The only secret I would use would be to train my children’s thinking skill, not hand computation ability. Why I say that? The reason is too many times, I see my own tutoring children who cannot perform simple computation in their brain without using “pencil and paper” method. It is not only slow but also error prone and they did not know it. Many of these children have failed to use every opportunity they could to train their brain and exercise their brain, because of this, I feel it is very important that we not only stress mental math is important when kids are young but continue to stress it is equally important when they are older going to high school. The trouble is many tutors can “see” it is important to get the fluency of 4 basic operations (+ -, x, divide) but failed to see how children should be taught about mental math when they are older.

I give a few examples below to illustrate some of the failing jobs that math tutors have not stressed the importance of mental brain training when kids are older.

1.     When testing roots of an function such as sub 1 into x^3 – 2x^2 + 3 x + 4, it is very easy to calculate f (x) by sub 1 into f (x) and get answers mentally, yet, many students are doing it by hand. X (1)^3 – 2(1)^2 + 3(1) + 4. It is very “easy” for students to get power of 1 so there is really no need to even write the computation expression to try to figure what is (1) ^3 or (1) ^2 etc. Encourage students to do this kind of job mentally whenever they can to train their brain.

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