Home education, a sense of community.

We teach children in the classroom rather than give them books to read and leave them to get on with it. Why? Children are usually not motivated to spend a long time studying, especially when the learning gets challenging, when it is so much more congenial to give up and do something else, so social pressure to keep on task is one reason. Another reason is the provision of feedback. Pupil’s learning needs to be assessed and their strengths and weaknesses identified, so that they don’t remain in their comfort zone repeatedly doing things that they know they can do well and ignoring those things at which they need more practice. But also there is the element of human interaction. The human animal is designed to learn from other humans by social interaction. This is where the internet tends to fall down. There is plenty of information on the internet, some of it text, some audio, some video, but outside of chat rooms and social media sites, where individuals online communicate in real time, there is little social interaction. Puppet Maths intends to address this aspect of learning when it teaches maths. Children often have imaginary friends, or they often relate to a comic character or a fictional character from film or TV. Reality is not a barrier to them in this respect… but it is a character that they relate to. When we at Puppet Maths teach maths we put a lot of effort into characterisation. Each puppet has its own character, so that the child can imagine that they are a participant in the classroom along with the puppets, they can learn from the puppets and even feel superior that they could solve a problem that a puppet struggled with, giving them a sense of achievement. This is especially valuable to children that are being home educated / home schooled, who, however content they may be learning in the family environment, can still feel isolated.