By Chloe, Instructor

I want to start this article by saying that learning gaps are completely normal. Everyone has learning gaps, and it has nothing to do with how “smart” you are, or how hard you worked—learning gaps naturally occur when a new concept is not fully internalized or understood. This can happen for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which being that people have different learning styles. There aren’t enough hours in the day to make sure all learning styles are covered, so sometimes little pieces of information get lost in the shuffle.

Learning gaps are especially common in math because math is not just one skill, but a series of skills - including numerical fluency, spatial awareness, wholes and parts, and more—that work together to make up the whole. Each skill needs to be practiced separately, or else new concepts will seem frustrating, confusing, or just plain impossible.

A small detail now eventually becomes a much larger detail a few years down the road.

All of math works this way. Understanding exactly how fractions work may seem pointless if you can memorize the “steps” to solving problems involving fractions, but once you move into complex fractions, or fractions inside of fractions, the rules you learned will no longer apply. If you didn’t learn the skill the first time around, it’s not going to get easier later.

“Okay,” you’re probably thinking, “if everyone has learning gaps that make it more difficult to learn, what can I do to help my child learn what’s missing?”

Much like you would with any sport or physical skill, if you want to improve performance, you have to practice, practice, practice. To practice math skills and fill in learning gaps, you first have to identify which skills need the most work. That takes calling in a coach—or in this case, an educator—to assess which areas need work.

Mathnasium has a plan to locate, identify, and fill in learning gaps.

After an initial assessment of your child’s math knowledge and skills, a customized learning plan is created to practice each skill that has not yet been mastered. When they attend Mathnasium, they will work on improving their abilities in each area where skill or learning gaps exist. (Schedule a free intial consultaion here)

Mathnasium work is separated into specific skill sets, beginning at the most basic level and continuing all the way through most high school math. As your child improves at a skill that used to be a skill gap, they will move on to more advanced material.

So on top of catching up in areas you may have fallen behind, Mathnasium also offers the opportunity to surge forward, mastering skills farther ahead on the path of learning so that new concepts can be grasped even more quickly.