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?

Exposure to the world, and debriefing of experiences (talking about them and analysing what happened) are the key to learning. My DD (7) and DSS2 (15) spent three weeks at a summer camp in the US this summer. They returned a fortnight ago and they haven't stopped talking about it, both between themselves and with us. Their excitement and enthusiasm about all their new friends, skills, travels etc is infectious and easy to discuss. They both seem to have grown up a year in a month.

It was 10,000 hours over a good long period he had found and indeed I will have spent 10,000 hours singing and plyaing the piano and more than that on my profession and hence I am very good at those things.

So we are saying practising makes people better at most things? That is not controversial. You can have the most perfect body for ballet on the planet but if you never dance a step you'll never get anywhere.

Secondly some people just don't have the brains to do a lot of things so however many hours they put in Jimmy with his IQ of 80 is never going to be getting his first from Oxford but Mary, John and many others might if they have a reasonably high IQ and work hard and have involved parents.

On the question of what attention parents pay I certainly did not know all that my chidlren were doing at school but I think we all talked to them about a host of subjects so they probably have fairly extensive general knowledge as I seem to soak information up like a sponge and I am sure that has done them good.

On whether children will talk about their day at school or not it just depends on the child. I have never had any giving me much detail but some more than most.

I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers last year and the practising thing just seemed like common sense to me too - I'm good at things I have done a lot of and as far as I can see our children are good at things they've done a lot of - but there is clearly an issue of innate talent too. DSS2 is just amazingly well coordinated and he doesn't need to practice things like marksmanship or archery or juggling to be "prodigy-level" (the feedback we get from teachers). The things any of our children are going to be best at are surely those where they have some degree of natural talent and they practice a lot.

Grades don't equal intelligence, I don't think so, anyway. All they measure is how good a particular person is at performing in that particular education system.

Tutoring and extra work would, naturally, improve grades, because it's all extra practice and tips about how to perform in that particular system. But most of life isn't spent in school, for example person A might get consistently better marks in French at school than person B, but if both people later end up living in or visiting France, person B might well end up more fluent or with a better grasp of the language than person A, just acquired over a longer period of time.

Or some people don't get on with teaching methods at school but later find they have an interest in the same area and something "switches on" and they can do it. But they still wouldn't be able to pass the test because the way that skill is being assessed is in a very particular way.

I think it's problematic the way that school grades children (although I can't suggest a better way) because it can instil a belief that "I'm rubbish at maths" for example when really we all do maths all the time and that person might just be slower to pick it up, or need it explaining in a different way, or understand it perfectly when they work it out by themselves with no explanation at all, and just get there in their own time.

It's bizarre, you know - we don't conclude that child X is "really great at walking" because they consistently hit "walking" milestones earlier than child Y. When they're both five years old you can't tell a difference at all, sometimes the more co-ordinated children are the ones who hit milestones later on. Or a child who talked early might not be "as good" at English or languages than one who developed these skills later. It doesn't correlate at all, so I don't see why we judge at school age on who's "good at" what.

I agree with BB and I think my perspective now (oldest children in their 20s) is that all that fuss and worry about who read at what age (the oldest was a slow reader, slightly dyslexic) and the second one could read most books put in front of her at 2 and yet there they are in their 20s in almost identical jobs and none of that fuss over reading etc really mattered at all; although it certainly helped that they were well educated and came from a supportive home.

On sports and other things yes don't categorise someone as useless at things. It doesn't help. I have non identical twins who are gorgeously different. One was off crawling at a very young age very co-oridinated. The other (not sporty one) did not even crawl correctly - one of his feet was on the ground but not his knee. However he has found as he got older sports he can enjoy at school and home.

What I hope most parents and schools can find is that one thing that the child is good at. One of mine got the cup for being nice for example (and he is rather nice and you chuckle and think well yes there probably wasn't another cup he might qualify for that year but good for the school for rooting that one out). You just need one thing that child can succeed at (eg for some children it is a sport - look at some of the Olympians who came from difficult backgrounds). Once you feel good at something that gives you self confidence in a lot of other things too.

I've been wondering if it's really related anyway. My strengths at school were Art and design, Maths and Physics. I was shit at PE and anything which required writing essays.

In my life now, I'd still say I'm fairly creative, although not a patch on what I'd consider "real" creative ability/skill which some of my friends certainly have. But I enjoy things like drawing, painting, music.

I still find it easy to understand topics on maths and science and am quite interested by things like that.

I'm still uncoordinated and pretty unfit. I hate the very idea of anything sporty. However I read as much as I can, I'm studying for a part time degree and get good marks on my essays, am told my essay style is good, and that I'm very articulate. I think my grammar is generally good although not up to pedant standard, because I never understood all of the rules.

So how do we know which way it goes? Did I perform well in these subjects at school because I had a natural ability for them, and if so, why was I crap at English? Or have I continued in these interests because I was told that I was good at them at school, and perhaps missed out on something I might otherwise have enjoyed, like a sport for example. I'm in my twenties, so haven't had that long to deviate from these ideas that school has given me, but I think it's interesting that my strengths and weaknesses/likes and dislikes are still quite similar. And of course I'm only one person. I'd be interested to see what others think about this.

I wasn't at all suggesting a grilling. What I had in mind was questions along the lines of 'what did you most enjoy learning about today?'/'what interesting thing did the teacher talk about in school today?'

When children are young they like to talk about themselves and their day in school can fall into that category if you word it to make it seem all about them. Then a quick comment or two about dinosaurs or bears or whatever it was can steer the conversation towards the jurassic period or the frozen tundra for a little while. You don't have to whack them over the head with your encyclopedic knowledge. A few days later you can mention the favourite thing again and begin by referring to how the child said they liked learning about XYZ. It relates it back to the child and can be more engaging as a result.

As they grow older you can share your own interests or talk about your childhood interests with them. Chatting with children frequently and taking an interest in their thoughts and feelings and sharing yours in a non-confrontational context boosts every aspect of their development.

I would stop far, far short of interfering in someone's revision for IB. I sit and go over practice tests orally with the DCs up to about age 13ish when that approach is still possible but after that it tends to become a matter of longer written answers ime and prep requires only the input of the student.

Math I totally agree that spending time talking to your children is incredibly important, and letting them know that you think that their ideas are interesting and of value builds confidence.

But I have asked such questions of my children in the past and the answer has often been respectively 'we didn't learn anything' and 'nothing'. Sometimes children really don't want to bring school thinking home with them, and as I often feel that way about work I don't really blame them :)

"Grades don't equal intelligence, I don't think so, anyway. All they measure is how good a particular person is at performing in that particular education system."

This is indeed true. There is a major issue in France with children who are surdoués (gifted & talented) failing to meet minimum performance targets in school, because the teaching and performance measures are not designed for the brightest children.

Bonsoir - can you explain that, about the gifted and talented failing to meet targets? Why?

i

What do you mean by intelligence? Emotional? Physical? Intellectual? These are all now seen as types of intelligence by employers.