I’ve spent a large part of the summer watching large multi-event sporting events on TV.  First, there was The World Athletics Championships, followed by The Commonwealth Games, and then hot on its heels, The European Championships.

As well as enjoying the competition, I find the background stuff really fascinating.  How the athletes have got to be competing in a world-class event, at the top of their discipline.  They aren’t just “really good” at running, jumping, throwing, or swimming and magically found themselves at the competition.  There is a lot of hard work, perseverance, disappointment, failure, resilience, and LEARNING happening over a long period of time that got them to that competition.

This is why I think athletes are such great role models for children and why we should encourage children to “think like an athlete”.

From listening to commentators, coaches and athletes talk about how athletes prepare for competition, and cope when things don’t go their way, it is clear that athletes have mastered “growth mindset”.  I’ve talked about this before in other blogs.  Essentially, if you believe you can do something if you have a go, learn from mistakes and persevere, then you will find the learning process much more enjoyable and achieve higher levels as a result.  World-class athletes have growth mindset in spades, and they are world-class athletes because of this growth mindset.  If they had fixed mindsets – “I can’t do this.  This is hard.  I’ll never be able to run that fast,” then they wouldn’t be at the championships, or winning medals, because they would think they’re not good enough and therefore won’t even try. 

As an example, let’s take Eilish McColgan who won gold in the 10,000m and silver in the 5000m at The Commonwealth Games and just over a week later won a silver medal in the 10,000m and bronze in the 5000m at The European Championships.  This is an astounding achievement and one she had been waiting to achieve for a long time!

How did she achieve it?  It’s not just about running faster than the other people in the race.  It’s not as simple as that. It took lots and lots and lots of practise.  Lots and lots and lots of learning from mistakes.  Lots and lots and lots of disappointments where she didn’t medal in competitions or didn’t run as well as she wanted to, or had injuries and illnesses which meant she couldn’t compete or run to the best of her abilities. 

Every single training run, every stumble, every defeat and disappointment were all essential to her achievements.  They all added up to help her refine her technique, learn how to manage her energy, when to run slow, when to run fast, where to place herself in the pack, when to make a move, when to hold back, how to get out of being boxed in by other runners, how to run in the most efficient way.  Small changes to make marginal gains which helped her win the race.  It’s as much, if not more so, about mindset and learning than it is actually putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as you can.

Another example is the high jump.  While watching this event the commentator was explaining how after an unsuccessful jump, the athlete will make tiny tiny adjustments to how they approach their next jump.  These alterations are imperceptible to us novices sitting at home. We can’t see them starting their jump a few milliseconds before they did previously, or making a tiny change to the angle of their body going over the bar.  But they are constantly learning and tweaking.  If they do knock the bar down, they might have a moment of frustration, but then they stand up, wave to the crowd and walk off to think through what to change next time with their coach. They are probably still feeling disappointed and frustrated, but they are able to manage this and not just have a hissy fit and give up. They learn from their mistakes to make the next jump better.

So, how does all this help children with their learning?  How can children “think more like an athlete”?  Here are my top takeaways from watching athletes this summer:

 Practise

Top athletes keep practising their key skill a lot.  Runners run every day.  Swimmers swim every day.  Round and round the track, up and down the pool.  Once they’ve learned how to run/swim/cycle they don’t stop doing it – they keep doing it, over and over again.  It’s not always fun.  It’s often very boring.  Especially in the cold and dark of winter.  But they get up, get out and get practising – keeping the end goal in mind – to enter a certain competition, to run a personal best, to win a gold medal.  If they are injured or ill and can’t train, they notice that their technique is not as good as it was when they go back to it, because they haven’t been practising. 

Children need to keep practising key skills.  Practise makes the connections in your brain stronger.  The more we practise the stronger the connections get and the easier it is to recall the fact, or do the skill or whatever it is.  If we stop practising, the connections become weaker and it is harder to do.

If you don’t keep practising your times tables, your recall will not be so fast and it will hold you back in other areas of maths.  Just because you know your 3 times table it doesn’t mean you stop practising it.  Eilish McColgan knows how to run. But she keeps practising her running so she can get better and better at it.  Keeping practising the things you can already do are essential to help keep you moving forwards. 

They are resilient

Resilience is the ability to cope when things go wrong.  Athletes want to win every race, but they also know how to cope when they don’t.  That’s not to say they don’t feel disappointed or frustrated.  They absolutely do!  But they use that to help them get better, rather than giving up at the first hurdle (excuse the pun!)  In so many post-race interviews where the athlete has not done as well as they wanted to, they say things along the lines of “I’ll look at what went wrong and what I can improve and I will do better next time”.  This is growth mindset.  This is learning. 

Children need to learn that we all make mistakes and this is normal.  Things don’t always go our way.  This is good!  This is how we get better at things.  Instead of giving up, think about how you can change what you did, so you don’t do it again (this might take practise!)

They persevere

Athletes are this good at what they do because they have kept practising, they haven’t given up, they kept trying.  Athletes don’t turn up to the Olympics having done no preparation in the 4 years beforehand. Those 4 years are full of perseverance.  Perseverance to keep training in the cold and dark, early in the morning and late at night.  Perseverance to keep practising key skills.  Perseverance to keep trying even when you didn’t win the race.  Perseverance to try and beat your best time, or best distance.  Perseverance to move up one place in the rankings.  Perseverance to get through the tough times because without those, no learning will take place and the successes won’t come your way.

Children need to understand that we don’t get good at things overnight or by magic.  People who are good at things work hard to be that good at it.  We often don’t see that hard work going on – we only see them being good at stuff.  If they want to be good at something they need to keep trying and accept it will be hard sometimes.

PMA

They have a positive mental attitude.  They don’t say things like “I can’t do this” “I’m not good at this”.  They believe they can win.  They believe they can be the fastest. They believe fully in their abilities because they have put the work in.  If they don’t win races they say things like “I haven’t won a race yet, but I will!” or “I didn’t beat my top competitor today, but I will one day!”

Changing the way we talk about our abilities is powerful.  Using the word “yet” is helpful for children – “I can’t tie my shoelaces yet, but one day I will!”  or, “I’m finding this difficult at the moment, but if I keep practising it will become easier.” 

 What’s the goal?

Depending on where athletes are in their career, they might not be aiming to win the race.  Their goal might have been to get into the competition itself, or to make it through the heats into the final, or to get a personal best, or top finish in the top 5.  Many athletes don’t go to major competitions to win a medal – that isn’t the goal.  Some do go on to win a medal, and that’s a bonus, but it wasn’t the goal.  Every athlete has their own individual goals and they focus on those. Your child can focus on their own goals.  What do they want to achieve?  Take small steps, keep practising, think like an athlete and you will get there.  Many athletes say things like “I ran my own race and it paid off”.  This means they focused on the skills they had practised, kept their goal in mind and didn’t worry about what their competitiors were doing. 

Don’t worry what others are doing.  You focus on you.  Practise, persevere, welcome mistakes and use them to help you get better.  That’s how you can think like an athlete whether you’re running, jumping, swimming, writing or doing long division!

If you have found this blog helpful, then do come and join my free Facebook group Primary Matters for more help and advice about learning in the vital primary years.

To discuss how I can help support your child’s learning, please see my services or contact me.

The post What can we learn about learning from World Class Athletes? appeared first on Karen Lander - The Top Cat Tutor.

In a parent consultation recently, the issue of giving praise to children came up.  Praise is good, right?  All children love praise!  They won’t achieve anything without it.

When I was training to be a teacher back in the noughties, everything was based around praise.  Praise for sitting still and listening, praise for writing the date, praise for answering a question right, praise for answering a question wrong, praise for not hitting that child, praise for saying sorry for hitting that child… 

I vividly remember being told never to tell a child they had got something wrong.  To say something like “good try, but not quite”. 

After a few years at the chalkface, it becomes clear that these strategies aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.  Praise only works when it is used sparingly and honestly.  Praising a child every five minutes for things that don’t necessarily deserve it can lead to apathy and lack of motivation.

The Problem with Praise

For children lacking in confidence, such as many of the children I work with, it can be tempting to over-praise to raise their self-esteem.  You may say that their picture or writing, or whatever it is, is the “best you’ve ever seen” or that it is “amazing”.  However, research suggests that this language has the opposite effect.  If you say or imply something is “perfect” or “incredibly good” (when it isn’t) children know what you are saying is not true and as a result, are less likely to choose a more challenging activity afterwards compared to children who were told it was just “good”, (“Mind Over Money”, Claudia Hammond, 2016, p153-154). By over-praising, we are setting standards that children feel are too high and creating a fear of failure because they don’t believe they can achieve the same level again in the future.

Research by Professor Carole Dweck, who has pioneered thinking around mindset, shows that praise is more effective when it is given for effort or the way a task is approached, rather than results (getting answers right).  She found that repeatedly telling a child they are “clever” (even if they are) can result in them staying within their comfort zone and not wanting to challenge themselves.

Praise in Tuition

To return to my consultation with a parent, she mentioned that at school, praise was a little too forthcoming and results-driven, which had led to exactly the situation found by Dewck’s research.  My tutee thought the work they did was good (when it wasn’t always good) and they were resisting challenging themselves.  Having worked with me for a few months now, we can both see that the child is thinking more carefully about their work, putting more effort into it, and spending longer on it.  They are willing to try new things that will challenge them and move their learning forward.  They are also more receptive to making mistakes and correcting them.  This is because I don’t NOT praise, but I don’t OVER-praise, and I praise for effort and approach, not just results. 

If a child I’m working with has done something well, I will tell them; if it is truly amazing, I will tell them and we will celebrate that – but if it isn’t, I won’t claim it is, but will help them work out how to improve it.  If they have found something difficult, but have tried hard, overcome frustrations, or asked for help I will give praise, because this helps build their confidence and willingness to keep trying and challenging themselves more in the future. 

To go back to my training days and being told not to tell and child they got something wrong but to say something like “good try, but not quite”, well, I’ve dropped the “good try, but” bit if it wasn’t a good try.  If the child is clearly not thinking hard enough, or has rushed, or has shown no understanding of the question or task, it is not necessarily a “good” try.  The praise I give is appropriate and based on effort and approach, not just results.   The impact that has on the child’s confidence and learning is clear to see.

Do contact me to discuss how I can help support you with your child’s learning.

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Throughout November I will be going live on my Facebook page to quickly explain some of the most common misconceptions, or stumbling blocks, that the children I work with often display, and provide advice on overcoming them.

I’ll take a look at each of them further in this blog.

The Maths Blocks:

Firstly, a couple of maths issues that crop up again and again: multiplying and dividing by powers of 10 and the commutativity of multiplication.

Multiplying and dividing by powers of 10.

A power of 10 is 10, 100, 1000 etc.  When I was at school, and I’m sure when you were too, we were taught to add zeros when we multiply by powers of 10 and to take zeros away when we divide by powers of 10. It was only when I was in teacher training college 20 years ago that I found out this is mathematically incorrect, and sets children up for problems further down the line (and probably helps explain one reason why I struggled with maths).  It is important to teach this correctly from the start so children don’t get stuck later on.  However, children are still being taught this “trick” and I’ve lost count of the times it has put a barrier in their way over the years.

So, if adding and taking away zeros is not correct, what is?

We need to understand that it is the digits moving and changing their place value.  When multiplying, numbers get bigger, so the digits move up the place values.  This leaves a space, or spaces, so we need to use a zero as a “place holder” to show there are no ones, for example. 

When we divide numbers, they get smaller, so here the numbers move down the place values.

So far, however, the trick of adding or taking away a zero works and gets the right answer, so what’s the issue?  Why does it matter whether we add or take off a zero or move the digits? 

Let’s start with looking at dividing.  When dividing, not all numbers have a zero on the end to “take away”.  If you have been taught to take off a zero and then you are presented with 32÷10, you are now well and truly stuck.  You have no idea how to solve this problem.  You get despondent and frustrated.  Maths becomes “difficult”.  If you have, however, been taught that the digits move, then this barrier never appears.  We just know what to do – move the digits.  No problem was created and we can continue to access maths and understand number. The digits might need to “jump” over the decimal point to become tenths or hundredths. When I was at school, I was told to move the decimal point.  Again, this is fundamentally incorrect.  The decimal point is fixed to the spot.  It doesn’t move.  It is glued down.  The digits move around it.

What about when we are multiplying?  We are adding a zero so why is it a problem?  The answer is because it leads to poor understanding of place value.  This is understanding what each digit represents – hundreds, tens and ones (sometimes called units).  If we just add a zero to 32 without moving any digits we still have 32.  We don’t write 32.0 because the zero tenths is not telling me anything useful, because I don’t need to know I don’t have any tenths.  Adding a zero on the end of 32 does not change the number in any way.  We need to move the digits, then place a zero in the empty place value columns to show clearly what the number is and avoid confusion.  A three in the tens column means 30, but 30 what?  31? 38?  The zero place holder is saying “there are no ones”.  This zero is vital.  And it’s vital it is in the ones column, not the tenths column.  Where it is means very different things.

Children enjoy practising these skills by moving numbers up and down a place value chart.  Imagine the numbers sprouting feet, or wheels, or being pushed in a trolley – whatever works to remember they are MOVING.

To know how many places on the chart to move, look at the power of 10 you are multiplying or dividing by.  10 moves one place because there is one zero, 100 two places because there are two zeros, 1000 three places etc.

Times tables are commutative:

Commutative means that the calculation can be written either way around.  3X4=12 is the same as 4X3 =12.  As I’ve explained in my blog “What Can I do to Help my Child with their Learning?”, it is best to learn all the related times table facts together as it creates less work in the long run.  If you know 3X4 = 12 you therefore know 4X3 = 12 and therefore 12÷4 = 3 and 12÷3=4.  That’s four facts for the price of one!  Lots of children, when presented with 12X5 for example, will say they don’t know their 12 times table.  When asked “do you know your 5 times table?” they say yes and know 5X12 = 60.  Understanding that you can swap the numbers around is liberating.  Children think the 12 times table is hard, or that they don’t know it.  They will know more 12 times questions than they think.  Turn the question around!

The English Blocks:

Over sounding phonemes and resistance to editing writing.

“Uh” Phonics:

Phonemes are the smallest unit of sound within a word.  Children are taught phonics from the early years and there is a huge focus on it in school.  Children will be familiar with the word “phonics” and “phoneme”.  We use phonics to sound out words to help us read and write (this is only helpful to a point in English as lots of English words are not phonetic).

The children I work with who struggle with reading and spelling often are not sounding phonemes correctly.  They say, for example, “c-hu – ah – t-hu”.  We don’t say cat “cuhahtuh”,  it’s “c-a-t”.  The sounds are very small and quiet, with no “uh” on the end.  The vowel sounds (a, e, i, o, u) are louder and may have a slight “uh” on the end, but the consonants are small, made by a little puff of air (b, p), or restricting the back of the throat (c, k, q) for example.  Encourage your child to say the sounds as small and quietly as possible (but still being able to hear them!)  This will help them hear the word they are sounding out – “c-a-t” sounds like “cat” -which helps with reading and spelling.

As a side note, I’ve noticed lots of children calling letters words – “how many words in the word?”  It’s also important to know the difference between the name of the letter (A – ay) and the sound it makes (“a” as in apple).

Proofreading and Editing:

Children are generally great at writing.  They have fantastic ideas which they write down eagerly.  However, many think that once they’ve written the last word (not necessarily with a full stop after it) they are done and it’s time to move on to the next thing.  When you explain that the next thing is to go over and edit the writing, they sometimes become frustrated and despondent, and issues around fear of mistakes and getting things wrong surface.

Children need to understand that writing is a process, and correcting their work is an integral part of that process.  Proofreading (finding spelling, grammar and punctuation errors) and editing (changing the word choice, word order, sentence structure etc) are essential parts of being a writer. Every writer goes through this process and every piece of text that has been professionally published goes through this process, multiple times.  Find your favourite book.  The author didn’t write those words first time, and then it was printed and you bought it.  Those words are there after a process of changing, correcting, adding in or taking out many, many times before it was printed and sent to the shop.  Being a proofreader and/or editor is a career.  People are paid to check writing and make it as good as it can be.  It is not a criticism or telling off.  It is an essential part of the writing process.

When children understand that the first draft of their writing is not the finished version and there is an expectation to proofread and edit, and that is done in an engaging, creative way, they are able to see this as part of the process and embrace the task of making their writing “as good as it can be”.

A first draft should be about getting ideas out of your head and on paper.  Children shouldn’t be worrying about how to spell words or where to put full stops at this stage.  What’s important is getting the ideas down.  The next stage is to check the spelling, punctuation etc.  Children should do this themselves first, before someone else checks it (it is good to have a fresh pair of eyes look at it which is why authors use professional proofreaders and editors.)  Instead of looking for all the things that need changing at once, focus on one thing at a time.  Are the capital letters correct?  Now the full stops and other punctuation?  Are there any words I know are spelt incorrectly, or I think might be?  Check them (put a wiggly line under them first).  Be a writing detective.  Put yourself in the shoes of your reader.  Have you made your writing as clear as possible for them?  Will they understand and enjoy it?

Drafts of writing should be messy.  There should be crossing out, insertion, asterisks to show where new sentences and paragraphs are that couldn’t be fitted in.  Use different coloured pens if it helps, but it’s not necessary.  This shows the child has gone back and thought about their writing, and corrected errors, embedding learning along the way.

Young children in Years 1 and 2 should be checking they have used capital letters and full stops correctly, and maybe checking 1 or 2 spelling words.  Build up the amount of proofreading and editing done as the children become older and more skilled in their writing abilities. 

Editing is often seen as a chore by children, but it is actually a really creative process.  Is there a better word or phrase to use to really get across what I want the reader to know or imagine?  What happens if I move the words around, take a word out, change a word, move a comma…?  Editing is being playful with language.  That is fun!

To see my short explanations of these misconceptions, please visit my Facebook page.  Coming in the new year will be my Learning Support Membership where there will be short, engaging video lessons and supporting activities to address these misconceptions. Do get in touch if you are interested in discussing how I can help support your child’s learning.

I’m now off to proofread and edit this blog before publishing!  What you are reading is not the first draft 😉.

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