Opportunities for learning

Children like doing the things that they can do well. They appreciate praise and when they do something well they get praise. The upshot is that children like the school subjects that they can “do”. On the other hand, children do not like criticism. Criticism is psychologically linked to rejection, and children fear rejection by the family group, upon which they rely for their very survival. Because of their fear of criticism some children are afraid of doing new things. They want to play safe, and stick to the things that they can do. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I, myself, when aged 6, was given a spinner, which I was required to spin twice and then add the two numbers that it fell on together. I found that I could do this and get right answers. There was no end to this exercise, I could keep on spinning the spinners and adding the numbers as long as I liked. So I continued to do so. I remember being afraid that the teacher would notice that I was not moving on and criticise me, but the attraction of being able to do the work was greater than my fear of criticism. At the time I thought that the teacher had not noticed the inordinate amount of time I’d spent on that one activity, but now I realise otherwise. She saw that I was gaining confidence in handling numbers, that I was building a sound base for the future. She let me spend my time practicing what I could already do because she realised the value of my gaining mastery of adding small numbers, and she knew that by playing with these numbers I was gaining a feeling for their relative values. I recall that I managed to spin out that activity to the end of term, and it was only after the holidays that I found myself too embarrassed to return to it, and move onto the next exercise in the book. At Puppet Maths we understand that children may wish to spend longer practicing a topic, that they may wish to consolidate their learning before moving on, so we do not march our pupils through the syllabus, instead we offer them opportunities for learning.