If you’re the parent of a teenager, chances are good that a few years have passed since you had to graph a polynomial or find a derivative. Since high school math covers topics that people working outside of STEM don’t come across very often, many parents don’t feel like they can give much help to their teenage children with their math homework. But you’re an adult who solves problems every day! You have a lot to offer your teenage student about how to approach problems productively, utilize resources, and access their own abilities. 

Some of the below mentioned topics should be considered?

Question 1: What is the problem asking?

 Asking your child to identify the goal of the problem will help them to frame it correctly in their mind, which can turn what looks like word soup into a reasonable problem. This is especially helpful with wordy questions.

Question 2: What do you already know?

Establishing what they already know should also help your child to situate the question within content from class. They may realize there are vocabulary words from that day’s lesson, or numbers that lend themselves to a particular formula. This question is helpful with lengthy word problems and for problems that contain complicated diagrams.

Question 3: Where have you seen something like this before?

While teachers occasionally give students unfamiliar problems in order to help them to learn how to approach something brand new on their own, which is an important skill, homework problems usually have something in common with material presented in class. 

Question 4: Can you brainstorm 5 different ways you could try to solve this problem?

Sometimes students are paralyzed at the start of a problem because they are worried they’re not doing it the ‘right’ way. Remove that pressure by just asking them to list lots of ways they could start working on the problem. Some ideas might be tedious, some might require luck, and some might just be silly. The point is to loosen up your child’s thought process. 

Question 5: Can you make a guess? How would you know if it was right?

Guessing the answer, and then checking that guess, has many benefits. First of all, it’s an approachable way to start thinking about a problem. Coming up with a reasonable guess might even be enough for your child to recognize the underlying mathematical concepts. If it’s not, the checking process lets your child walk through the problem with a concrete number, instead of with an abstract variable, which is often much easier. In some cases, your child might even guess the correct answer, or something close to it. Guessing and checking is especially useful for word problems and just about any other problem that has a number for an answer.

As a parents, its your duty to provide best available educational support to your children. If you think, a professional help for online homework is required, you can always rely on the expert service provided by classof1.co.