After teaching Math for a number of years, I realized that many students seem to think that learning math is much harder than it really is, which hurt their chances of actually making the effort needed to learn math! In other words, it became a self-fulfilling prophesy, and math actually did become hard to learn.
I wanted my students to realize that learning math is really a matter of laying a foundation and building upon it, and after thinking about it for a while (and refining it over a period of years), I articulated The Mastery Technique. I write “articulated” because it really is nothing new, just codified common sense. But it did give me and my students some common language that we could use to communicate what needed to be done to further one’s learning in Math.
I’ll introduce it here, and spend the next few posts going into a bit more detail about each of the four steps. The Mastery Technique is really only twelve words long (and I ask my students to memorize it at the start of the school year), but those words and phrases pack a lot of punch if put to good use.
The Mastery Technique:
- Learn the Facts
- Follow the Rules
- Practice the Skills
- Strive for Mastery
That’s it! Like I wrote above, just common sense. But it must be tackled in order: 1 through 3, with principle 4 overarching everything.
We’ll explain them more deeply in the next four posts.