Student Support

Giving Praise

It’s that time of year when students have adjusted to their new school routines and especially their week 1 and week 2 timetables. However, how do we keep our kids motivated if they worked hard but still did not achieve what they expected? Building self-esteem is so crucial to young teens and teenagers. As a parent or caretaker, it is also important to know how to approach children with praise. Please look at the article “How to give praise that builds kids’ self-esteem" by Amanda Morin.

Knowing your Strengths Activity

Have your child acknowledge their strength. Make a strength chain together and hang in their room. Click here to download the activity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7snnRaC4t5c&t=276s

Often people are heard to be saying “I’m not a maths person”. But you don’t hear people saying, “I’m not an English person” or “I’m not a Design person”.

Not everyone needs to be fluent in Calculus or Geometry to say they are a maths person! But feeling comfortable with numbers and statistics in the increasingly complex world in which we live helps us make sense of what is going on around us. Everyone can be a maths person, just like everyone can be an artist or writer.

“Many people incorrectly believe that being good at mathematics means being fast at mathematics. It doesn’t and we need to dissociate mathematics from speed. When we value fast computation we encourage a subset of learners who compute quickly and discourage many others, including deep slow thinkers who are very important to mathematics. We no longer need students to compute fast (we have computers for this) we need them to think deeply, connect methods, reason, and justify.”

More detailed information about Maths Anxiety and how to respond to it can be found in a pdf in

[In the MYP section of the Secondary School Webpage]