Why is Repetition with Variation so Important in Learning Maths?

Fluency & Numeracy

If you learn how to say “Hello, my name in the Ninja Master” in a foreign language and you say it once, that’s great. If a month later you need to say it, you would probably have forgotten it.

Repeating it with variation on a regular basis helps to not only understand what you’re saying, you will also perfect the accent and work out your own variations – for example “I am the Ninja Master, how are you?”

It’s the same with maths. Repeating how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions 300 times gives your child improves their fluency.

Confidence in Maths

The more a child practices how to work out perimeters and areas of irregular shapes the better they will become at is. When opening an exam paper and seeing a few questions about perimeter and area they will immediately feel confident about solving those questions.

Sense Checking their Own Answers in Maths

Practicing percentages for example over and over instills a sense of what is the correct answer. If a child knows how to work out 45% of 700 but has no sense of what the answer should be, they may get the answer wrong and not realise it.

Through repetition a child will sense that 45% of a number is just less than half, so if they’ve worked out that 45% of 700 is 610, they’ll immediately sense this is incorrect because half of 700 is 350. This enables a child to sense and fix their own mistakes.

Not having to waste time in Exams

During an exam a question may require a child works out a long division, e.g. 876 divided by 9. This may only be one step in a six-step question. The child should not spend lots of time trying to remember and work out how to do a long division. It should be automatic.

This is not about learning by rote, it is about making the most essential and necessary maths functions second nature.

I can do this all day…

The Ninja Master could talk about this for hours. If you’re interested in starting a discussion please contact me.