Does tutoring, extra help and extra work make a child smarter?

[mam29]

regardless of age I wonder due to lots thread here and real life.

my daughters freind goes to infant school-with a no homework policy-it feeds into a junior that does better in sats than our dds primary which has lots of homework from reception up.

a few schools round here have varying homework levels and varying results.

I know a few people who do loads extra at home.
I have done a little extra with dd on subjects shes struggling with.

private schools-have smaller classes so therefore do they get extra help and better education due to class being small?

Im on a usa education forum and theres a lot of parents over there who do afterschool education in classical subjects like latin and extra maths ect.

Some kids will be just be born clever.

Others need to work at it.

other kids late bloomer-clicks later

some kids need extra help.

at gcse/alevel we widly encourage our kids to try best, work hard aim for good grades.

but pre that if someone mentions

they doing extra then they considered as pushy.

looking at entrance tests for grammer and independants at 11+ and the common entrance exam at 13 -it appears that they need lots of additional help with that to get up to required standard, especially if in state and dident go to prep.

but we accept the extra work then as its purpose is to get them into good senior school and hopefully bright future.

but if a child goes through state school with large classes will they always be at disadvantage. .

does doing the extra =good results?

I'm not suggesting that practicing IQ tests will make a person cleverer.

I am saying that being taught in a way that motivates expanded self-teaching, will grow a brain that has more knowledge in it, not just academically but emotionally and creativley.

Finding the right style for a particular child in each topic at each stage of development is the tricky thing, and is where home educators have a distinct advantage, both of intimate knowledge of each child and experiance of what works for that person.

Variation in a classroom in terms of measured outcomes of a group of children who have all been taught the same topics, in the same way, actually proves the point that for those few who were at the receptive stage both of the level of knowledge and the way it was delivered they will know more than those who could have learnt the same either at a different time, or if the knowledge was offered in a different way.
Teachers have always known this, thus they are trained to deliver the same information in muliple different ways.
For example, there are at least 6 different ways to explain how to calculate a percentage, the starting point for a maths teacher in a year six class will be to demonstrate one of the methods (useually the one the teacher is most comfortable with), 3 of 30 children will understand and then apply to answering questions, teacher will then use the same method but demonstrate it differently, perhaps with objects or graphics, 5 children will then understand and be able to answer questions, teacher will then show method two, typically a longer method that requires more steps but less conceptual leap, 12 children will now be able to use method 2, 8 use methods one and two, and 10 children will be sent for remidial maths with the TA.....

'Bounce' is a fascinating read - I found myself agreeing with him, that you need natural interest/motivation and a basic level of ability, but after that it is focussed practice and structured repetition which turns the good to the excellent.

Of course, one then needs to balance out what sort of childhood one wants for the DCs. Some thrive on 4 hours swimming training a day, some play tennis, others do hours of instrumental practice. With those it's clear what ability they are developing and to what ends it can be used.

With general school work, the utility is less clear (as subjects overlap and thinking skills are transferable). Instilling (through opportunity, exposure and practice) a love of learning and a facility in thought/expression (like the love of music and a facility in play like a graded 8 pianist) seems achievable. It is for parents to decide if it is desirable for their particular child.

focussed practice and structured repetition".
Indeed. Last year I read the book Outliers. All the successful people in that did 10,000 hours of practice. The Beatles did 7 hour shifts playing music practising in Berlin clubs. Bill Gates did 10,000 hours of programming. I am good at music because as a teenager I would have done at leats 10,000 hours (by choice) and presumably am good at my profession now because I love it and spend ages reading about it and trying tio know more about it than anyone else on the planet.

Our youngest children who won music scholarships just now (and the older one who did) that will purely because of parental effort and their practice much much more so than talent. Similarly their sisters who are also musical and did a good few grade 8 exams they are pretty good at sport because day after day they run, marathons or whatever sport they chose. They were good riders as they were spending all weekends riding etc etc et. Whatever it might be effort is a huge part of it rather than talent which is why if you are a tiger parent personality you can certainly push little Johnny or Sarh or more likely , Sun Li, into whatever direction that might be.

However what the English do particularly well is a kind of laid back elegance, no one knows how much work you have done but you still shine. It is a very interesting thing - teenagers get it very well - it's giving the impression of not having done much work but then doing very well anyway. Indeed some chidlren are so brilliant and soak up school work information they do not need to do very much to do well. The rather thick pushed coached child often goes off the rails or has psychological issues later and is unredeemably dull and no future employer really wants them around as they aren't fun. Personality matters a lot too. So what is the answer? Yes parental help works and helps but you need to find the balance that works best for your family and your own personality and do not forget that money makes the biggest difference to many children so if mummy could go out and earn £250k and buy you a great education and have time to chat to you because she has 6 cleaners you are probably going to do a lot better in your academic private school than mummy who earns £5k a year and has all the time in the world for you but you live in relative poverty.

Edith weston you so true-if we knew what our child loved but dident know it yet and could practiceon that interest they could become truly good.

Its giving them the opportunity to try as many subjects academic,sporty or musical and then decide.

In state schools and parents with low incomes there are fewer topics and less extra curricular activities.

so if my dd was good at rowing,m horseriding ,frncing or karate right now wouldent have a clue as shes not tried those things.
Shes not done music as they dont get to do that until keystage 2.

That tv programem hidden talent screened people for potential talents then coached,tutored tme intensivly. The boy who learnt arabic was moved to middle east and immesrsed in the language, guess best way to learn then appeared on arab tv live must have been so daunting as least european languages have some common trait with ours.

xenia-why 10,000? is that what the book subscribed?
that would take some time.

Do you think you wanted kids to do musical you were musical?
To reach grade 8 they must enjoy it.
do wonder if some talents heriditary as some families are very musical or very sporty.

Sadly cant think anything me and dh very good at so god help our 3 will keep trying to woden their horizions and give them chances to find stuff they like.

I think in uk theres laid back persona ad lots pf private secret tutoring behind closed doors as no one wants to be seen as pushy parent.

never heard the term tiger parents before.

Do think some cultures take education more seriously than uk.

Think on news few months ago about chinese and education.

does seem far east and even india are highly skilled

My dd is an 'average' student at a good state school. She has a maths tutor, despite the fact that my husband and i are able to tutor her.
She is doing really well, simply because she has more confidence in herself.
Therefore, i do believe that tutoring can help a child.
I agree , that a lot of people hide the fact that their children are tutored, because they don't want to be seen as pushy.In my dd's class, all the children in the top sets have tutors, so tutoring must make a difference.

MBP, difference in CAT tests scores will be largely down to input from home in types of material related to that covered in the test.

Children who have been exposed to a wide vocabulary will do better in VR.
Children who have played a lot of number games and done a lot of number puzzles will do better on the quantitative questions.
Children who have played with a lot of construction toys or played a lot of computer games involving building and engineering will do do better in NVR.

CAT tests are just questions about basic areas of human thinking skills which children use all the time. The fact children aren't taught those skills in an explicit way as part of the national curriculum doesn't mean they are topics that children aren't familiar with.

Parental and home input can help- but tests are supposed to be " culture free" and not rely on knowledge that is learned.

I have been teaching for over 30 years BTW.

There is no such thing as knowledge that isn't learned!

People who spend more time participating in non verbal reasoning do better on non verbal reasoning tests. It is hardly ground breaking news.

From the teacher's manual written by the organisation that creates the test:

'The CAT measures developed rather than innate abilities. The development of these abilities begins at birth and continues through early adulthood. It is
influenced by both in-school and out-of-school experiences. Although test scores are based on experience, this does not negate the value of the test in helping to understand the individual as he or she is at the present time. '

And the tests are not culture free. They are designed to be accessible to people from our particular culture. Again, from the teachers' manual:

'All pupils educated in schools and exposed to modern cultural
influences should have had an opportunity to acquire the background
knowledge needed to answer the questions.'

Are you a teacher Peaks?

How is that relevant?

You are saying something about a test, that according to the creators of the test, is factually incorrect.

I'm not a researcher who creates aptitude tests, which would be the relevant qualification here.

It's relevant becaue you refer to a hand book that you have, and you seem to have lots of infoon it. why not just answer yes or no

here From the teacher's manual written by the organisation that creates the test:

one would assume that you are the teacher in possession of the manual :)

10,000 hours was what the author found was put in by successful people like the Beatles and Bill Gates and that struck a chord with me because of the things I got good at (things I practised).

If a child with an enthusiasm does it for 3 hours a day for 7 years as a teenager they will have put in 7665. That sadly is the time many teenage boys put into their practising of world of warcraft but it equally could ber reading or their hobby of collecting stamps or playing the cello or making dresses.

My point and Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers is that plenty of people have reasonable raw talent. He says take say 100 people competing for one harvard place. All 100 have the basic exam results needed. 1 in 100 gets lucky . You could apply the same to Oxbridge or even to say my daughter 2 getting into habs at age 4 but not her sister (who did then get into NLCS at 7 so it didn't matter but it shows luck counts too). Any one of those who meet the bsaic criteria had they then got into Harvard would have done pretty well.

So take a maternity ward - Janet is going home with neglectful parents and will not get much attention for the next 3 years. Jim has everything. At 3 there is vast gulf. I think genes are 50% hwo we are so if they had been swapped at birth it may not that the one placed int he worst home necessarily did worse but there is much greater chance that it would.

So putting in effort with children yes it pays off BUT they also do well with happy parents so for a parent as I am I need lots of time alone in silence each day and I like to work full time so we have a happy home because I do all that and some time with them. It would not be such ahappy home if I were doing all the tutoring, practice papers etc etc that tiger parents do.

The handbook is available online. I've read it because my youngest child is coming up to the CAT tests in September so we're going through similar questions so that she is familiar with the question types.

MissBoPeep surely you've miss-typed ?

You can't be saying, as a teacher for donkey's years, that children are given tests that do not test their knowledge ??????

What on earth are they being tested on ?

If you want your child to do well in school, retain information about dinosaurs or whatever, then you are going to have to talk with her for hours every day (yes, aim for 10,000 hours a year) about everything she is doing in school, get her to tell you all she has learned without even realising it, plus add on bits that you know about in small doses, cover extra details that weren't covered in class. You should do this in all of her subjects, maths, science, reading -- the whole shebang. Children need a lot of repetition before information sticks. Do not rely on her to learn in school. Do not rely on school to do the sort of repetition and follow up that learning requires. You need to reinforce everything at home even though a lot of it is as exciting as watching paint dry. You need to go back every few weeks and chat about the dinosaurs and everything else she has heard about in school since then, point out dinos wherever you see them, ask her if she could be a flying dinosaur what sort would she be, etc., point out similarities between dinos and birds, watch nature programmes over and over and chat together about them..

It doesn't have to be a long conversation. You could spend 20 minutes while you're stuck in traffic or while she's in the bath or while you're queueing in the supermarket. Or you could fit in a chat when you're having dinner. It is a discreet form of tiger parenting.

You should make the effort to speak proper, grammatically correct English at home and to use a large vocabulary; for some parents this may require expanding their own horizons. Parents who immigrate to English speaking countries who are determined that their children will do well in the education system make the effort to support their acquisition of English, even if it means trying hard to speak English themselves. Children are wired to learn language and will gather the meaning of all the words they hear regularly so it's best to expose them to thousands of them, not hundreds, and the longer and more literary the better.

Also read to her and do maths activities with her (show her how change is calculated, teach her to tell the time the old fashioned way, do skip counting by 2s, 5s, 10s, 20s; add doubles (2+2, 7+7, 13+13, etc., -- go beyond the times tables she will encounter in school so she realises there are numbers beyond 12). Simple creative toys like blocks can provide excellent practice for non verbal skills.

You don't need lots of extra money to do any of that though if you wanted to splash out you could get a set of cuisenaire rods for endless maths support.

I really wonder about this. I don't recall my parents taking that sort of interest in my education, or that of my siblings, nor do I remember any of the rest of my family doing so. However my sister and BIL spent hours with their son right through to making sure he revised with them for his IB (for hours). It seemed very intrusive to me to be honest, and quite beyond what I considered normal.

My parents did spend many hours talking to us about many things, but it was their interests and to some extent ours, not school related (my father in particular is very widely read and liked to tell us all about his latest book). We do the same with our children, but I certainly don't quiz them about school and then attempt to reteach them unless they specifically say they are stuck on something. I think it is important to give children space to discover things on their own, and not to spoon feed them too much.

To answer the OP we used specialist tutoring for ds to help him learn to read and it was fantastic, and I woudl totally advocate it to others in the same situation. However I don't think that extra work for the sake of it is necessarily beneficial. For example I understand that there is very little evidence that homework brings any benefits at least at primary level.

I really liked maths posts and it resonates so much with me. I'm a talker by nature, as are my DC, and I'm sure all that blather helps.

In fact I was ata a friend's house recently and her DC came to ask what was the best way to make water trickle more slowly down a blade of grass. They wanted to film it. I suggested Fairy Liquid as being more gloopy than water, but my friend immediately said no, then explained about surface tension. Five mins chatting with two practical tests at the kitchen sink. Job done. Amazing.

Actually I think there is now some opposition to the "Outliers" 10,000 hours theory. I was reading the other week about how innate talent can be tapped into much later than has previously been thought - it is not necessary to have started violin lessons at age 3 or been playing football in a nappy to achieve success in such pursuits. I wish I could remember the thing I was reading, it would be useful to have some back-up!

(yes, aim for 10,000 hours a year)

How is that possible?

I generally agree with nooka on this and can think of nothing more likely to make children clam up about what they are doing at school than a daily grilling about it. If they have learned something that they have found interesting, they will probably tell you. If they are stuck with something, it is great to be able to help, or if they need more help than you are able to provide, then it is good to be able to buy it in, but I agree that children need space to develop their own interests and learn new things.

Letty to be fair, Gladwell doesn't say talent can't be tapped into later, just that it probably won't.

Most systems are set up to spot/nurture talent in childhood/early adulthood.

cecily I think it is highly dependent upon the child. I have DC who have always filled me in on the minutae of their day (from their lunch to what Mrs X said in geography, to what little Jonny Y did to get a demerit). I'm often the source of information for other parents.

I have one of each, ds generally finds school quite boring and tells us very little about it unless he was inspired by something, dd will go for the blow by blow account, but it is generally about what happened, not what she learned unless there was some injustice involved.

However as a family we talk a lot about all sorts of things that interest us, politics, history, ethics and other things that come up. Pretty much as my parents did with us. Mainly because it is enjoyable and interesting to discuss stuff and the children bring their own interesting perspective.