Khan Academy, one the best tools I have found for learning math concepts, is a completely free website designed to teach kids basic concepts through video lessons, and quizzes to check their comprehension. The videos and quizzes are all laid out in a logical progression based on grade level and topic. Kids can use Khan Academy to review material taught in class, learn material that they missed from a previous grade, prevent forgetting material over the summer, or even working ahead of their class.
Khan Academy has made it simple to go back to the very beginning of math and find out if your child is missing some concepts. Sal Khan compares each child’s learning to Swiss cheese. Most children arrive at a new grade at the beginning of the year with gaps in their learning. They may have learned most of the math for the previous grades, but they each have unique holes in the mastery of the subject; each child’s set of holes is different.
To find and fill those gaps, start your child off on the Kindergarten math course on Khan Academy no matter what grade they are in. No really. The course allows the child to take a test to show what they know. For an older child, they can usually pass through the Kindergarten level in about an hour. Anything they miss shows up in the course which prompts them to watch a video on that subject and practice a few problems on their own. Then they can take a new test to pass off those levels they missed on the initial test.
Next you would have your child work through the first grade level in the same way. At some point, as they approach their actual grade level, they will find the videos and test more challenging. This is good, because you have filled in all the early gaps and are starting to fill in the larger gaps, which include recently-learned material and more complex material, and you will begin venturing into new material.
It will take time to work through all the grades up to their current grade level, but I think it will be worth it. For one anecdote of how this played out, you can watch a YouTube video on how well this technique worked in one California classroom here:
When teacher Tim Vandenberg used this mastery approach in his sixth grade classroom, the kids’ state test scores improved dramatically. Admittedly, we need more studies and data to really show what going back and filling in all the gaps can do for a student’s performance in math, and hopefully those studies will be done at some point.
Khan Academy is a super powerful tool for many subjects and not just for math. It’s amazing to me that it is available for free. Check it out, and definitely keep it bookmarked for when your kids need some extra help in any of their classes.
