How to know where your child needs help

Test scores come from testing something that’s easy to measure. However, that’s not always the best information on which to base decisions.

To get to the really good stuff, you might actually watch the student taking the test.

What you may see, in the midst of supposedly easy material, is a tiny hesitation.

Such hesitations are the key to finding the indigo ring, that learning zone where the material is familiar but not quite second nature.

You may also see, watching the test taker, more significant hesitations or even serious difficulty. If the student is able to get to the right answer, these struggles are invisible on the completed exam. That’s a missed opportunity, because such issues provide a map of exactly where the student needs to work in order to move forward most effectively. When you’re present, you see it all, and you can use this insight to plan future lessons.

It is certainly true that being watched or recorded while working has the potential to increase a student’s discomfort and increase hesitations and mistakes. While we don’t want to cause a student undue anxiety, a small increase in stress is a good way to tell how strong the material is and where support is still needed.

I came to understand all of this through more than a decade of teaching music lessons. When you’re playing a piano piece, each wrong note is a clearly audible indication that more work is needed. But even when all the notes are played correctly, the hesitations are just as clearly “wrong” as actual wrong notes. When you’re playing in front of an audience (the musical equivalent of a formal examination), these hesitations indicate the places where the piece is most likely to fall apart due to the increased stress of public performance. Targeting these areas is the logical next step.

Applying this idea to math, science, or history is a little more abstract but just as useful. You may find that going through flashcards is a good place to start. You can focus additional energy on any flashcard that has a hesitation associated with it, even if the student got the right answer.

Try it, and let me know how it goes!