Key Conditions To Motivating Your Child's Learning

Hi Parents,

To better pace your child in his learning to perform in Math, we have talked about:

• The use of quality content suited to the learning needs of each child.
• Ask the child questions when guiding through problem sums to help stimulate his thinking. 

Student motivation and engagement is another area to encourage positive learning and one of the ways is through external motivations, rewards or punishments. We believe in providing our children with the right “conditions for learning” - a safe, conducive, engaged and supportive environment. This is practised in all Oodles Learning centres that onSponge works with and parents can easily extend to the home by:

• Encouraging and praising your child’s good efforts instead of harping on his mistakes.
• Giving your child the confidence to seek help without the fear of being talk down.
• Engaging your child to learn Math through real-life experiences to help him make sense of his environment.
• Setting up a conducive area where your child can work with minimal distractions.

Closely related to motivation is self-discipline which occurs when a child is able to monitor and control his own behaviours with lesser reliance on external considerations. A highly self-disciplined student is more able to focus on his long-term goals through positive behaviour that will steer him towards making better choices related to his academic engagement. And with the announcement by MOE to remove the mid-year examinations, it is even more vital to ensure the discipline in learning to avoid playing catch-up for that 1 chance to perform in the year-end examination. 

For most children, self-discipline is more a nurture than nature. Here are some ideas where parents can groom their child at a young age to internalise positive behaviours:

• Create a routine to monitor and follow-up on your child’s assignments to avoid procrastination.
• Use of rubrics to modify and improve behaviour. In particular for Math problem sum solving, rubrics can help to cultivate good habits such as clear labelling, presence of computational statements, clarity of solutions, etc.
• Time your child in mini assessments or even by questions to help perform under time constraint. 

Having worked with children for more than a decade, we have observed that students with good sense of self-discipline significantly outperformed their less-disciplined peers. This reinforces Oodles Learning focus on instilling the discipline of good habits in problem sum solving as part of its process to nurture an independent solver. 

This new academic year 2019, provide the right conditions for learning to inspire your child to develop a healthy learning attitude for success is achievable with consistent and purposeful effort. For more on “Learn Right To Perform Right Consistently” click on banner below.



Elsa Tan
Co-founder onSponge

P.S Using the onSponge thinkingMath curriculum and approach, Oodles Learning focuses on helping students to build the essential skills needed to score A/A* for Math.

Since 2012, Oodles Learning has helped thousands of students to excel in PSLE Math Exams. Currently, there are 10 centres island-wide, with more centres opening in the very near future.