Teaching time awareness and management

Time is money – we all know that. If a job is meant to take you 1 hour and you get paid £10 for that work, then if we spend 2 hours to do the same work, then we are getting paid £5 an hour. Simple maths for everyday life. So we need to prepare our children to be aware of this. They need to learn from an early age how to be efficient in their work or be economically inefficient. As well as helping them perform better by completing their work, they will have more time and it’s a great way to get them ready to estimate the value of work. You are developing their ability to analyse the requirements of the work before them, know their abilities and knowledge at a given point in time, and come up with a realistic goal to achieve the job – in this case homework, but this can be applied to anything (cleaning a room, baking a cake, going to the shop etc.).

Once this habit is practised and has become a regular exercise your children will be experts in visualising the extent of a job and estimating the time and resources attached to it. An incredibly important skill if you want to know your true value and not underestimate it.

So how can we help children, or anyone  for that matter, develop these skills?

Here’s an example:

Haresh has homework to do. His mother asks him what he has for homework. Haresh replies that he has some Maths, English and IT.

Ok, Haresh my be the type of student who can organise himself very well, get on with his work and complete it, being left alone to do so. However, he may be a child with dyslexia, or a child that finds it difficult to focus, and finds it difficult to think and work in a organised way.

Let’s imagine Haresh is the second type of student. How can we help.Let’s define the work in more detail and put it on paper: His mother sits with him and asks him to tell her what exactly he has to do –

• Maths – 10 problems to solve
• English – Write about an event you celebrate
• IT – Research on the event you are writing about and print/save your research.

His mother has written this out on a piece of paper for Haresh to make the goal more specific. They both know what he needs to do to complete the homework for the day.

His mother decides to sequence this list according to how the work will be done. She asks Haresh what he would like to do first the Maths or the English. Haresh is not too sure. His mother knows that he prefers English so she suggests he does the Maths first to get it out of the way. This is a good idea because it would be better to tackle the more difficult subject before he gets tired.

She also asks him whether he would do the English task before the IT to check his awareness of sequencing. They reorganise the list:

• Maths – 10 problems to solve
• IT – Research on the event you are writing about and print/save your research.
• English – Write about an event you celebrate

Now, we have a list of specific goals to achieve to complete his homework for the day. His mother will be able to see if they have been achieved by the end of the day because the work is measurable. For Maths there are 10 questions to complete; IT – research to be carried out and saved; English – a short essay to write. Mum might further define this and say that he needs to get all of the Maths correct – (she will mark, explain and ask him to redo the ones he got wrong); Mum reminds him to make sure he proof reads his work and corrects spelling and punctuation to the best of his ability (Mum reads it and explains to help Haresh make improvements – just guiding not writing for him).

Now they have defined the work, they need to estimate the time it will take to complete the tasks and make sure this is attainable.

• Maths – 10 problems to solve Haresh thinks this will take 15 minutes, but Mum knows it is his weaker subject and thinks it will be closer to 30 minutes by the time she has looked through it, marked it, explained and remarked it. She suggests to Haresh they allocate 30 minutes instead. Haresh agrees to go with this suggestion.
• IT – Research on the event you are writing about and print/save your research. Without a time limit Haresh could spend a long time researching, and his time would quickly pass away before he knew it. So Mum and Haresh agree he will only spend 20 minutes researching. Mum will help him with this to make sure he doesn’t get distracted and stays focussed on the subject matter. She can talk about the subject matter to him as they look through articles, but he also needs time to read alone.
• English – Write about an event you celebrate. Collaboratively they decide that he will write the short essay in 30 minutes. Mum will then read through it and give him another 10 minutes it correct following her feedback.

Haresh will spend 90 minutes in total on his homework, then he will stop. He will have a short break after his 30 minutes on Maths. He will then have another short break after his research. He can have another short break while his mother is reading through his work. Get Haresh to set a timer with a mobile phone, an egg timer etc.

If Mum carried on doing this with Haresh he would eventually get used to the method and be able to do it for himself. Mum can slowly get him to this stage by decreasing the amount of help over time. Though the continued support will be needed as the work gets harder perhaps.

Haresh will learn to define his targets specifically (the tasks will be measurable if there is homework to produce for marking), and allocate time to them (this time will become more realistic with practise, until he will be able to judge quite accurately how long each task will take).

Haresh is not only learning ‘time management’, but he is also learning to organise his work methodically and establish SMART targets (targets that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Time bound).

In order to motivate Haresh Mum could discuss a reward for Haresh once he has fulfilled his task before starting the work.

The greatest contribution we can make to a child’s educational development as parents is to support them in their efforts to learn and acquire knowledge. A child will inevitably encounter obstacles as they sit down to understand concepts. They might get bored or distracted while doing their homework, preferring to daydream, sleep, watch TV,….the list is ever increasing.

Children will get very frustrated and even angry when coming across blocks to their understanding of a subject, topic or concept. They might not see the relevance of what they are learning to its practical application in the real world. They might find what they are learning boring and not be able to focus as a result.

This is were we can make a difference as parents and support our children so that they can achieve. It’s the greatest investment you will ever make as a parent, not of money, but of your time, attention and creativity. Parents are a child’s first teacher. They teach them how to communicate, how to go to the toilet, etc. Your job as teacher carries on throughout their time with you. as teenagers you are endeavouring to teach them to look after themselves. Perhaps keep their room tidy, shower more often!? How successful you are depends on how good a teacher you are. Do you motivate your children? Are you a good role model and practise what you preach? Does your child trust that you have their best interest at heart? Yes children have been cataloguing all this information since birth, and most are able to collate the information and derive answers quicker than it takes to click the submit button on the computers they are often inseparable from.

So, how can we develop our skills as parents and be better teachers for our children? It’s very simple and won’t take too much of your time! Be accessible to sit with them and clear up any problems that arise while they are doing their homework. A lot of parents might feel that they do not have the relevant understanding or knowledge to help their children. They do not want to undo any teaching that has taken place in class by the teacher.

That might be the case later on when your child is learning chemistry and the only ‘ion’ you know about is the one you use to iron their clothes for school. Nevertheless, the fact that you are interested and willing to work with them to investigate these new subjects shows your children that you are genuinely interested in their learning, so much so that you want to participate in it. You are enforcing that their learning is worthwhile and through your collaboration and partnership with them you can show them that learning and doing homework can be fun. You are teaching them communication skills, as they have to communicate what they have done at school and what they have to do for homework.

This is just like any scenario in a work situation where you are asked to produce something and you have to come up with a solution, either by yourself or as part of a team. Even while working on your own you will always have to work with people and be able to communicate. Even an artist is communicating to an audience.

You are teaching them discipline. Through a consistent approach to sitting down and doing their homework you are developing a work ethic from a young age and good habits that will serve them well throughout their life.

You are developing research skills when you both get onto google, or your search engine of choice, and start exploring for reliable sources to explain how the internet began, you can then share your experience of what life was like before the internet and throw in some interesting family stories that might relate to the subject. The more you can link their learning to the real world and the life that is familiar to them, the deeper and more meaningful their learning will be.

Take your children to the library as a follow up to this research and then together go through the process of looking up the same information in books. Explain that this is how all information was acquired before we had the internet. Throw in some library stories from your younger years. You’re now developing their interest in history. Keep making those links.

Before you know it you will have children who have a thirst for education and they will start acquiring it independently. Just like teaching them to ride a bike we need to help them balance at the beginning, and slowly but steadily take away this support to ensure their independence.

Our TimeZing products have are excellent resources that parents can use at home with their children. Play the TimeZing Card games, it’s a rummy game…played for centuries but adapted for times tables. As a child between the ages of 7 and 11, some of my happiest times were playing rummy with my family. This is what inspired me to come up with the TimeZing Card Game.

Check out all our other products, different ways of teaching, practising and testing times tables. They’re fun and colourful!! Go forth and learn through play!!

Teaching Maths in FE

I have been teaching Maths to 16-19 year olds and adults for the last 16 years. It has mainly been in FE Colleges to students who did not achieve a grade C in their Maths GCSE. They have been required to study Maths and English as separate subjects attached to their vocational courses. it has also been necessary for many of them to carry on with their maths in order to go on to university; the same applies to English. Students who do not get a D in GCSE English and Maths are required to work towards a Functional Skills qualification in both these subjects. Those who achieve a D must retake their GCSE.

The OECD Study

The Government has responded to the low level of Numeracy and Literacy in this country by setting these new benchmarks of achievement for students. Students on Apprenticeships must also achieve a minimum standard of Maths and English (As well as ICT). This makes sense as these skills are essential in almost every work place.

Back in 2013 the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) reported that out of 24 nations, young adults in England (aged 16-24) ranked 22nd for literacy and 21st for numeracy. Almost a quarter of the UK’s population had such basic levels of numeracy that they could manage only one-step tasks in arithmetic, sorting numbers or reading graphs.

Curriculum changes in 2014

Clearly we have a big problem on our hands. Almost immediately the government took action to try and deal with this. Michael Gove jumped write in and quickly decided to raise the bar and adjust the demands of the National Curriculum. Children would now need to know their times tables up to and including twelve by the age of 9!!

There sorted!!!

Are times tables important?

Of course this has not gone down too well in general. Further pressure on children, more tests….and times tables are boring!! To learn…. and who wants to teach something that students find boring?

Times tables are important. Many students get stuck at this point. They don’t like them, don’t learn them… and then hate maths. So many students I have taught over the years have not progressed past plus and minus by the time they arrive in Further Education. They then have 2, 3 or 4 years to pass a level 2 in Functional Skills or get a C in GCSE in order to get to university.

The resolution

So in an effort to try to remedy the problem at an earlier stage I challenged myself to make timezing fun. If a child can learn their times tables they would be able to understand division, once understanding factors they could move onto fractions… and so on. I wanted to unblock them. Get them over that times tables wall so that they can move on.

Learning and teaching times tables needs to be fun. Through our TimeZing games and resources we hope that we can provide schools, teachers and parents with the tools they need to support their students and children in their learning of these basic, yet essential, mathematical concepts.

It’s true that children don’t need to know their tables by rote to succeed at Maths. We’ve all heard the example of the Cambridge undergraduate reading Mathematics who has never been able to recite their times tables. Well, he or she is the exception. Learning times tables, even if children stumble through them and still have gaps that can be bridged with counting on fingers etc., will lead to greater achievement.

TimeZing is colourful and fun

Children must not reject them, but be happy to work with them.
TimeZing is all about colour and fun. With our ever expanding range of games and resources we cater for different learning styles and allow for all levels to play together, as a class, smaller groups or individually.

Videos

Take a look at our videos and see how to play the games and use the resources. We have kits for schools and classrooms, or you can purchase individual products from our shop.

Welcome to the TimeZing Revolution

We really hope you join the TimeZing revolution and our mission to make timestables fun to learn and fun to teach. Maybe you’ll enjoy it so much you might be enjoying playing the TimeZing card game at home as a family.

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