2023April

This is an online cram school / mathematics & science specialist instructor KO-HEI popular among junior high school students. Today, I would like to talk about "choosing a cram school for junior high school students". In fact, junior high school students should be the most careful about how to choose a cram school, but they tend to be chosen easily, so I dare to limit it to "junior high school students" and give advice on how to choose a cram school. Most elementary school students choose a preparatory cram school on the premise of taking the junior high school entrance exam, and they attend a major junior high school entrance examination cram school or a major compliant cram school, and use the teaching materials of a major cram school to provide guidance according to the curriculum. The teaching materials are quite capable of thinking, and in extreme cases, as long as you ride the rails of the cram school, you can acquire and acquire a certain level of thinking ability. On the other hand, this is not the case for junior high school students to choose a cram school. This is because most of the cram schools for junior high school students are community-based, and most of them conform to the classes of local junior high schools. In the first place, the only yardstick for measuring the academic ability of junior high school students is a report card that emphasizes regular examinations. It is only natural that students and parents like cram schools that do well to prepare for the "regular exam". Therefore, I am familiar with the information of the school I go to, and I am preparing for the regular exam of 〇〇 junior high school (school I go to)! Attracted by such signs, there is a tendency to "choose a cram school easily". Of course, preparing for the regular exam at school is the basis of studying, but the question is whether the study method for the regular exam is really learning to acquire the ability to think! It means. I don't want you to misunderstand, but there are many wonderful community-based cram schools, and I do not deny "local cram schools" in any way. The "easy way to choose a cram school" that I would like to tell you here is ・ It is good if you prepare for the regular exam "for the time being" ・ "For the time being" your grades should improve ・ "For the time being" you should acquire the habit of studying There is a problem with letting them go to cram school. I am a lecturer specializing in science and mathematics, so I mainly talk about mathematics, but junior high school mathematics is a complete change from elementary school mathematics. In other words, junior high school mathematics begins with learning the contents of elementary school arithmetic as formulas, but "whether or not the learning is based on a firm understanding of the meaning of the formula" will have a significant impact on future science and mathematics subjects. To be specific, most students can do calculation problems in the first-order equations learned in the first grade of junior high school, but they struggle with "I can't solve it when it comes to sentence problems" and "I'm not good at sentence problems". In addition, even with the simultaneous equations learned in the second grade of junior high school, there are times when it comes to addition, subtraction, and substitution methods, but most students will be able to calculate with some training. However, it cannot be solved when it comes to applied problems. Most of these applied problems are "sentence problems". In other words, you can calculate math as a formula, but because you don't understand the meaning of formulas, you can't get your teeth when it comes to "sentence problems" and "applied problems". Why does this happen? The reason is that they do not understand the meaning of formulas, and it is a study habit that emphasizes only mastering (calculation) of formulas. These students have no idea what problem they are being asked about. Since I can't imagine the phenomenon of the problem in my head, I just try to solve it with the feeling that "I can solve what I don't understand by placing it with X". What does that answer mean? I don't know, so even if it turns out to be an impossible number, I will fill in the answer column without any problems. In other words, there is a problem with the manual method of studying mathematics that does not require any thinking skills and is just a calculation practice. Furthermore, if you get into the habit of studying manually, you will unknowingly suffer from the "just apply it officially for the time being" syndrome. For example, the function of the first and second grades of junior high school. What the graphs of Y=aX b, Y=aX2 mean! Without understanding at all, I feel like "the function should be assigned to this equation for the time being", and I calculate and solve the values of a, b, and X again. "Functions are easy!" makes you feel like you've done it at a level that is just a calculation exercise. You may be able to clear this somehow if it is about the regular exam of junior high school, but you cannot answer it in the high school exam. On the contrary, after entering high school, you may not be able to understand the contents of High School Mathematics 1A, and mathematics may become more severe than a mere list of symbols. On the other hand, students who have studied for the junior high school entrance exam in elementary school arithmetic have all kinds of 00 arithmetic such as "hanging calculation", "excess or undercalculation", "equivalent arithmetic", and "elimination arithmetic", and the X of the equation learned in junior high school mathematics,I have learned by replacing Y with "apple" and "tangerine" and embodying it. I don't use any mathematical formulas, I solve them by imagining apples and tangerines in my head. There are pros and cons to taking the junior high school exam, but at least you can say that you can understand the meaning of the formulas you learn in junior high school mathematics to some extent when you enter junior high school. Students who understand the meaning of mathematical formulas and those who do not will make a huge difference in future applied and sentence problems. This is a natural outcome. The reason why I say that "the most important thing for me is to choose a cram school for junior high school" is that it is necessary to teach the meaning of formulas firmly in junior high school, which is the start of mathematics, and receive guidance that allows you to embody the problem being asked in your head. However, cram schools for junior high school students tend to be aimed at increasing their likability by "improving their grades in regular exams", and tend to focus only on students' "preparation for regular exams" and study for the purpose of "getting as many points as possible". Of course, it is understandable that students are also limited in time because they are cram schools after exhaustion such as after club activities, but if you focus only on the results of exams and teach only solution techniques such as "solve like this" or "solve this way", you will definitely not be able to do mathematics. If students receive only this kind of guidance, they will unconsciously say, "I don't understand the meaning, but if I do this, I can solve it," or "If I do it this way, my score will increase," and ad hoc study will become the norm. If it is a regular exam, you can still get a certain score and pass it somehow, but this will have a big impact on the high school entrance exam three years later and the high school mathematics after that. Furthermore, we believe that this natural manual learning is "study" and do not know "what it means to think". Instructors often say, "Let's think and study more," but in fact, students who have become accustomed to manual learning do not understand "thinking" itself. Even if I teach "thinking mathematics" to students who have distanced themselves from "thinking" learning so far, they will not be interested, and they will stay away from "mathematics" only because of fatigue. They try to settle for "I'm not good at math, so I should be able to clear it somehow" or "I choose a school without mathematics". If you get into the habit of learning only solution techniques, you will not be able to get into that habit. Since you can get a certain amount of points manually without thinking, you will have a strange confidence that "this is good" or "you can get a score with this" and will not try to improve. However, most high school math students start lamenting that they don't understand math or can't do math, but by that time it's too late! The habits and habits acquired in the third year of junior high school cannot be completely abandoned, and as mentioned above, you fall into a phenomenon that you do not even know "what it means to think" in the first place. [...]