How To Become A Strong Math Student

In my high school days, I had spent much time to study Number theory and other mysterious divisions of Math. My teacher was not only brilliant in Math, but also knew how to create a strong Math student. He taught Math using a discovery method that motivated exploration and guided us to become strong math students. Further, read this article to learn and know how you can be good at Math.

Create a fun atmosphere:

For me, environment is more potent than willpower. Indeed, a good surrounding motivates you to learn more and more, instead of boring you. If you feel boring when you do sums, then go to local heath Club/libraries every Saturday. Here, you can practice Math along with your friends and other fellow students, who bring joy in your mind and consecutively, you will enjoy doing sums ever.

Define Success:

It is often helpful to define success in your mind. Success for you might be to be good at solving algebra sums, studying the multiplication table, or even perhaps, to achieve a specific score in the Math exam. Or else, success may be an enlarged self-esteem or confidence, during the math exams. Be clear on what you wish to attain, note down the results as far as possible, review and modify them whenever needed, and surely you will excel in your way to Math success.

Develop Helpful Plan:

Once you define success to achieve, put it in action with simple calculation ideas such as:

a. Draw multiplication table, and say each table orally twice.

b. Look at the patterns mentioned in the table, which make things easier to learn.

c. Use scorecards such as flash cards to learn the fundamental Math facts.

d. Try to create own flash cards.

Identify Favoured Learning Style:

If you make up your mind for a particular and preferred learning manner, you would not find it difficult to learn Math at all. If you like numerous learning manners, then attempt a multi-sensory approach. This includes the following multiple approaches:

a. Using different kinds of colours to learn.

b. Using graphs, pictures, flowcharts, diagrams and other illustration tools.

c. Writing textual matter on a white panel.

d. Copying the textual matter into notebooks.

e. Orally saying what you are learning.

f. Explain to others or to yourself, what you have learned.

g. Using manipulative to pursue the kinaesthetic logic.

Suggestion for Teachers:

Do not go-it alone to help your students. Ask their friends, parents and others to help them out when they face problems in solving sums. Get some web sites and books as virtual approach to teach Math efficiently. If possible, join some online forums to share knowledge in this regard.

Things that you may find helpful to be a strong math student are:

1. Set routine timetable for doing sums. Unplug the telephone line and go away from PC while practicing Math to lessen distractions.

2. Have a regular space for doing sums. It could be your favourite room or even a specific table in the hall.

3. Collect your entire Math stuffs at one place. This includes pencils, pen, compass, sharpener, protractor, textbook, notebook and, homework project.

4. Write down the goals to obtain, so that you know what exactly you are intending to attain at your ideal learning place in the time that you have reserved.

Becoming a strong math student is in your hands, so be thorough with all above techniques to become a strong and intelligent math student. Best of luck!!!

For your success and glory!

Read, Learn and Flourish!

Change your life!

Human beings are very often products of our environments. Whatever habits we are surrounded with are what we usually pick up as a kid. Our parents set the standard for us as kids at an early age when it comes to our nutritional habits. If people had more knowledge about nutrition and how to lead a healthy life style we wouldn’t have the problem we have today with obesity starting already at the age of 5 in our society. Knowledge is power and to have the power to make the right choices based upon your knowledge is what makes he difference in people’s life.

To make healthy conscious choices makes you feel very powerful and strong. You are in charge of your own healthy and your own lifestyle. Nobody likes to be the victim of his or her own environment.

Educate Your Family

Educate yourself and your family. Learn how to cook healthy meals for your children and your family. The more knowledge you have as an adult, he more you can pass on to your children and give them a healthy start in life.

Build a Support Group

If you are starting a strict diet, try to get the support from your family and friends. The more informed people around you are the more you can count on them to support you in your pursue of a healthy lifestyle.

Avoid Temptation

Clean out the cupboards in your kitchen and throughout everything that you shouldn’t eat. Create a new healthy kitchen for you and your family. Do not buy anything in the grocery store that is not on your diet. If you bring it home, you will end up eating it at a weak moment. The rule is very simple: If you shouldn’t eat it, don’t buy it!

Top Up On Tap

Bring a bottle of water with you everywhere you go whether it’s shopping, driving in your car, going to a meeting or just to work. Don’t let that water bottle leave your side all day. Keep drinking your water throughout the day.

Beat the Pavement

Take a walk around the block at night before you go to bed to clear your mind and to get some fresh air before you go to sleep. If you work in the city, take a 20 minutes’ walk at your lunch. It will relieve some stress and get your metabolism going. If you have the possibility to take a power nap nothing will recharge your batteries better then a 20-30 minutes catnap.

New Role Models

If you are trying to change old habits and create new healthy ones it can sometimes be hard to do it all alone. Try to find other people that are going through the same experience and share your thoughts with them.

New Activities

Pick up a new activity involving the whole family such as hiking, group exercise and outdoor activities in the park on the weekends. There is a lot offered if you just look around you a little.

Change Your Mind

Put little notes of motivational thoughts and other supporting words in your home in places where you will walk by them constantly. Changing your lifestyle takes discipline, energy, determination, motivation and will power but it can be done and the sooner you start to take that first step towards a healthier you the sooner you get to reap the rewards.

Get Personal

Join the nearest gym and book yourself a couple of sessions with a personal trainer. You will not only push yourself to go if you have an appointment with somebody but you will also learn so much more from a fitness professional then just how to use the exercise equipment.

A personal trainer can answer a lot of your health related questions and help you put a weekly lifestyle schedule together that would work for you. Starting out with a personal trainer also help you get to know more people at the fitness center that are trying to do the same thing as you are.

Prepare for New Environment

If you have never been to a health club it can be intimidating the first time. Go online and find out as much information you can before you go there or call them up and ask all the questions on forehand. That way you will be a little bit prepared once you step foot inside the fitness center.

For your Success and Glory!

Read, Learn and Flourish!

Reading – A Fun!

Radhakrishnan Chettour

We learn how to read when we are very young, and from that age onwards it becomes an essential skill that we rarely think twice about. But there is more to reading than simply scooping up a paperback and picking up where we left off last time. Reading has the ability to change our lives in many different ways.

When did you last read for pleasure? It doesn’t matter whether it is fact or fiction, the effect can be the same – it lifts you out of your everyday life and into an alternative existence which can be very different from your regular daily routine. Fiction has the upper hand of course, because it has the ability to take you to places that may not even exist in real life.

But reading can also be something of a luxury and a way of de-stressing in today’s busy surroundings. Who hasn’t looked forward to sinking into a bath filled with bubbles with their favourite paperback in hand? Even taking a paperback onto the train with you to while away the time while you are on your way to work can set you up for the day ahead much more effectively than worrying about what may or may not happen. By taking yourself out of what could be a stressful situation you are giving yourself some respite and you’ll arrive for work feeling more refreshed as a result.

It’s also the case that the more you read, the more you learn and digest. This is true in two separate cases. Firstly you will learn more new words; regular readers tend to have a bigger vocabulary than those who rarely read at all. And secondly you will find that it expands your knowledge of all kinds of things. If there is something you want to learn, one of the best ways to learn it is by reading all about it. There is also something about reading and digesting the words on a page that is not comparable with any other form of storytelling. It can take you away into another place where your imagination rules the roost and dictates – along with the words the writer has written – exactly where you are and what everything looks like.

It’s a small wonder that so many people love to receive books as gifts, because they really can change your life if you let them, in more ways than one. The hardest part is choosing which one you should read first!

For your success and Glory!

Read, Learn and Flourish!

The Present by Spencer Johnson

Summarised by Radhakrishnan. C

This time I am planning to introduce to you ‘The Present – The Secret to Enjoying your Work and Life, Now!’ by Spencer Johnson, the author of ‘Who Moved My Cheese?’ Here is the brief summary. In no way I want to review the book. You get the book, read and apply it in your life to enjoy the beauty of the present.

The Summary of The Present

The fable itself concerns the story of a boy and a “wise old man”, who tells the boy about something called “The Present” which he says the boy will find to be the most valuable gift of all. The old man observes the boy fully engaged in cutting grass. When the boy asks about The Present and how could he get it, he is told that it is so wonderful and would make him happier and more successful than anything else he could receive. As the boy grows into his teens, he keeps wondering about how and where he can find The Present. The old man tells him he already knows and points out how engaged he was when he was cutting the grass. The boy doesn’t understand and the old man tells him that The Present is a gift we have to give to ourselves.

As the boy grows into a young man he abandons the search for The Present, and he begins running into problems at work and in his personal life. When he is passed over for a promotion at work, he goes to see the old man who advises him to spend some time in the mountains and to reflect on times when he was most happy. As he is sitting in front of a fireplace in the cabin in the mountains, he notices how well made it is, by a craftsman who must have been as engaged as he was when he was cutting the grass. Suddenly in a rush, it hits him: he realises he was living in The Present. The Present means focusing on what is happening right now.

Flush with his discovery, he returns to work with new energy and enthusiasm, and for a time he prospers as he is more engaged than ever before. But after a while, a female colleague lets him down by not doing her share of a common task and his performance suffers as he tries vainly to fill the gap. His passion and commitment catches the attention of his boss, and he meets a wonderful woman with whom he is developing “a great relationship”. Under attack from his boss, he returns to see the old man who advises him that there was another element to living in The Present: learn from the past. He returns to work, confronts his colleague and resolves the problem, and once again moves forward happily in his work.

He is promoted in his job to a new position and does well for a while until he is overwhelmed as a result of attempting too many tasks and wasting time on things that are not important. He consults the old man again and is advised that there is a third element to living in The Present: plan for the future. The young man starts planning his day, his week, his month, and once again finds that he is able to resolve his problems. At a budget meeting, when the firm is considering cutting out R&D for at least a year, the young man is able to point out this was short-sighted, since the quality of the firm’s products is already in questions. Later in the week, he is able to paint a picture of what a brighter future for the firm would look like, and indeed, in due course, one of the products developed is hugely successful (page 70).

As the younger man grows into maturity, suddenly the older man dies. This causes the younger man to reflect on his life and conclude that the older man had an element that he lacks – a purpose. He realizes now that this is the final element: It is only when you Live with Purpose that life lived in The Present has meaning.

The younger man decides that his purpose would be helping others discover what he had learned about The Present.

Over the years, the man uses what he has learned over and over again. He advances to become the head of his company and is admired by all around him. Why? He listens better than others and is able to anticipate and solve problems. He has a loving family. And he enjoys sharing The Present with others. He hands out cards with “The Present” written on it to everyone he meets and tells them the story. Eventually, he becomes an old man and as the story ends, he is telling a young girl about … The Present.

The frame story

The fable is nested inside a frame story which begins with a conversation between Bill Green, a busy executive, and Liz Green, a troubled young manager. Although Liz has received promotions, she isn’t enjoying her work as much, but is under stress from trying to do more with less. Bill tells her that he solved similar problems through a story called The Present. She is amazed that a simple story could do so much and begs to hear it. Bill assures her that there is a great deal more to the story than he had anticipated.

After Bill tells the story of The Present, Liz says, “I needed that.” She has been taking “many notes” on what she heard and then she leaves without much discussion.

After an unspecified period, Bill and Liz have lunch again, and now Liz looks refreshed, rather than tired or anxious. She reports that she is now learning from the past, and is also open to the future, instead of resisting her boss’s idea developing a new marketing plan.

She finds herself giving more attention to her son when he needs her and it makes both of them happy.

She also tells the story of The Present to her staff with astoundingly successful results. One salesman finds that by asking himself what his purpose is enables him to realize that meeting a sales quota is not as important as serving his customers’ needs. When he focuses fully on his customers and their needs, then amazing results just come on their own.

It also enables a friend to deal with an awful divorce by realizing that she has not been living in The Present.

It also facilitates a discussion between Liz and her husband about personal finances. By planning for the future, they are able to solve problems they had never been able to solve before.

When she tells the story of the The Present, Liz admits that not everyone “gets it”, but for most people The Present makes an incredible difference. And the more people in a group use it, the greater the benefit. Liz says she plans to have as many people in her firm use it as soon as possible. She tells Bill that for her The Present has changed everything.

If you feel good go and get the book from the nearest seller or buy online.

For your Success and Glory!

Read, Learn and Flourish!

Tips to Live in the Present

It is very easy to burn up all your energy worrying. Concerns about past mistakes, rehashing what you should have done, revisiting occasions of sadness or anger spend time and energy. Many people think of the future with anxiety, anticipating problems that they may not be able to overcome. Losing sleep, feeling on edge, and stress-related problems can be the results. One way to get out of the worry habit is to heighten your awareness of the present. Things are happening all around you every minute of the day. Why not focus on what is going on now, enjoying the simple fact of being alive and immediate, rather than casting your thoughts forward or backward to events you cannot change? The principle is simple, but the art is more complex. It takes practice, discipline, and above all, focus. Try the following tips to live in the present as warm-up exercises for learning to enjoy your life more fully in the here and now.

Tips to Live in the Present

1. Listen. Stand still and focus on the sounds around you. What you hear is life happening. Try narrowing your focus to one distinctive sound and block out the others.
2. See. Being introspective can be enlightening, but to live in the moment, use your eyes to look outside yourself. What color is the sky?
3. Feel. On a sensory level, feel the environment around you. Is it warm against your skin? Feel the humidity in the air, note the slant of the sun's warmth or the briskness of wind in your hair.
4. Smell. Fill your lungs with the scents of the day. Pleasant aromas, sharp odors, even sensory hints that are barely there, like the smell of rain, are all part of what is happening right now.
5. Touch. Ground yourself in the moment by holding on. If you find your mind drifting back to its customary worries, touch a railing, pull a leaf from a tree, shake hands with a friend to stay current.
6. Taste. Rather than automatically downing that morning coffee, focus on your taste buds to experience all its nuances of flavor. Savor your toast. Living in the moment means focusing on what you are doing right now.
7. Create. Draw a doodle. Compose haiku. Fold that memo into an origami crane. Give your complete attention to the something you are making out of nothing.
8. Laugh. Do not let your enjoyment of the present be clouded by habitual worries about the past or future. If you see something funny, laugh. It feels great.
9. Run. Set your mind free by focusing on the physical. Run until you are out of breath.
10. Meditate. The secret is to discipline your mind to float freely. Do not allow it to tether itself to memory or anticipation. Meditate with your eyes on a focal point nearby and keep your thoughts untethered.
11. Communicate. One of the best ways to put down your mental burdens for awhile is to engage. Ask a question at a lecture. Join in a sing-along. Enter into a friendly debate.
12. Invest. Do not just observe the world around you; join it. Allow your mind to observe and interpret what you see, hear, and feel. Care about the moment.
13. Help. When you are helping someone else with a problem, you forget your own for the moment.
14. React. Living in the moment does not mean sailing through untouched. Respond to the here and now as it happens.
15. Be. Feel the effect of your own presence in the present, and refresh yourself with each moment that goes by.

Read, Learn and Flourish!

For your Success and Glory!

Eleven Self-Mastery Skills for Teachers

Teachers need to facilitate their own inner process so that they can better be present with their students. They maintain a learning longing orientation to life and remain open to new ideas and input. They are committed to their own self-care to maintain the high energy and awareness required of a facilitative leader, and as a model for students.

Self-Mastery Skills

1. Be Real. If you're not being real, then you're not being yourself; and you compromise your integrity.

2. See the Façade. Clean your own house so that you can see the dust in another's.

3. Be Here Now. The present moment contains all the resources you need.

4. Practice Emotional Mastery. Manage your internal world--quickly recover from emotional imbalance.

5. Care and Feeding of the Master Facilitator. Care and prepare yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to maintain peak performance.

6. Celebrate. Celebrate successes, challenges, wins and losses, friends, colleagues, children and bosses.

7. Time Doesn't Get Stuck, Have You? Stay in the flow of time to regenerate your reality every moment.

8. Why Are You a TEACHER? Knowing the true motivation behind your desire to teach will strengthen and clarify your conviction and your effectiveness.

9. Down But Not Out in DC. Prepare for contingencies, people are depending on you.

10. Facilitating Creative Genius. Learn to facilitate this genius by encouraging your students to say that magical, powerful, empowering 4-letter word when they get stuck or fail..."NEXT!"

11. Embrace the Plateau. Positive efforts to improve student learning do not always yield immediate observable results. This is called patience.

Read, Lean & Flourish!

For your Success and Glory!