Frank Ho

Ho Math and Chess Learning Centre

Canada, BC certified math teacher

Vancouver, BC, Canada

m/”>www.mathandchess.com

The other day, some one suggested to me that Ho Math and Chess shall also offer SAT course, I asked why? I was told that there is a demand and also many learning centers now offer SAT courses. The reason for Ho Math and Chess also jumps on the band wagon seems to be convincing but I would prefer to look at this issue in a long term view and this prompts me to spend next few days to ponder on a topic that is just how to run a math franchised centre and be successful? If I know the answer correctly then it will also answer the perplexed question if Ho Math and Chess should offer SAT and also many other similar type of questions?

A franchised math-learning centre will never make to the international stage if it just acts as a follower. Ho Math and Chess constantly evolves and innovates, many new workbooks were created because we know they are more efficient and will help children to improve math, much like the idea of pharmaceutics companies continuously looking for new and improved drugs. It is cumbersome that students have to work on different sets of worksheets to get a combined effects of improving math, fun with puzzles and brain power improvement so Ho Math and Chess invented multi-function math worksheets to not only improve student’s math ability but also improve their problem solving ability and all these are done in a fun environment.

A franchised math-learning center must have a clear teaching philosophy. All workbooks and teaching programs are developed based on its philosophy, otherwise, the franchised learning center may just simply become a tutoring center for marks, and that is all. With this kind of narrow pedagogical view, this kind of franchised math learning center will not have its uniqueness and one-of-its-kind teaching materials. Why Ho Math and Chess has to offer something just because others are offering? Ho Math and Chess stands out above crowd because of its uniqueness in recognizing a niche in tutoring and its most effective workbooks.

It takes time and efforts to develop teaching materials and comes up with standardized teaching system so that a good franchised math learning center will not just hastily jump on a hot product for a short term gain. What happens if SAT is no longer required for universities entrance requirement?

A good and successful franchised math-learning center must be unique and be different from others in its teaching philosophy and reflected its philosophy in its student workbooks or teaching materials. Not only students will increase math marks under guidance, they must also enjoy the program and feel it is really fun to work with and this cannot be achieved by having a snappy marketing slogan. This is the reason that Ho Math and Chess spend large proportion of its time and efforts in writing workbooks and creating programs, which are for long-term view. Many sustainable products like math, chess and puzzles integrated workbooks, Frankho Puzzle, Frankho Maze, Amandaho Puzzle, and Brainpower Math are all created for long-term view.

A franchised math learning centre’s brand name is most effective when students and parents can identify it through its unique teaching method and one-of-its-kind workbooks, A successful franchised math learning must be a leader and not a follower in creating innovative products and have a standardized teaching method.

About Author

Frank Ho, a Canadian certified math teacher, coined the learning centre term Math and Chess and he also founded the world’s first math and chess learning centre by creating the world’s first math and chess integrated workbooks for elementary students in Vancouver, Canada. He invented Frankho Symbolic Chess Language, intriguing Frankho Chess Maze, and also an unique new chess teaching set. He published math and chess teaching theoretic basis in a Canadian math journal. The USA Illinois research data has shown statistically significant that Ho Math and Chess teaching method increases children’s math marks and also improves children’s critical thinking skills. The Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set can improve children’s memory by playing half-blind chess. More details, please visit www.mathandchess.com.

Are you too one of those parents who often hear the comments from their child like- ‘I don’t like math’, ‘math is boring’ or ‘math is of no use in our life’? Age old Math teaching practices being followed by the classroom teachers and Pvt. Math tutors are largely responsible for lack of interest in math. Importance of math in our life can’t be neglected but many parents find it very tough to teach math to their child when she or he or hates math. But, thanks to the advance technology of Internet that has made Math learning to such children as easy as counting 1-2-3. Online Math tutoring provides much relief to the parents of those children, who are weak in Math but even then don’t like to study math.

Good online tutoring companies like Tutorskingdom deliver math lessons with parental and personal touch. Use of latest technology, participation in online conferences, discussions and chat sessions, regular monitoring and progress assessment make the online math tutoring more effective than traditional tutoring. 1:1 attention and professionally designed tutoring strategies create the interest of students in math learning. Students themselves realize online ‘math study’ process totally different from the traditional Pvt. tutoring or classroom coaching. Once students start taking interest in Math learning, they learn very fast because at this stage they don’t shy ask.   

Though you pay part of the amount generally paid to Pvt. tutor but even then when you pay for online tutoring, you expect early results. Just hiring the best online Math help service is not sufficient to get the expected results within the remaining short period before examinations. As a parent, you also need to assist your child to develop some good habits to get the maximum from hired online math help. Here are certain valuable tips for the Math students that will certainly improve the results of online Math tutoring: 

• Try to see the importance of Math even in routine life.  
• Familiarize yourself with the software, hired online tuition agency is using. Test your perfection of using the suggested ‘system’ ahead of time. Better, you first try ‘trial sessions’.
• Familiarize yourself with the topic of upcoming tutoring session. This practice help you to point out your personal problems related to that particular ‘topic’.   
• Never consider a topic of your syllabus less important and attain ‘mastery’ over all the topics. Try to assess your weakness yourself and don’t shy to ask again and again till your doubts get clear.
• Frequently use the facility to access recorded session to revise the previous workouts.
• Use online question banks to improve your efficiency and capability of solving the Math problems. Some online tutoring sites offer this facility free of cost.
• There are many sites that offer free online tutoring video tutorials for Math help. Watch these sessions to check you subject knowledge.  
• Concentrate on applying the right formulae and solving the problems through right steps. Don’t develop the habit of using short cut methods to save time and efforts.  

To know more ways to learn Math without feeling extra ‘study load’ or disturbing existing daily schedule, you may contact the author at  http://tutorskingdom.com/.

About Author

Shubhranshu Agarwal is an 8 yrs experienced freelance writer. At present, author is working for Tutorskingdom.com as a ‘Freelance Business Development Consultant’. Contact: shubhranshuji@yahoo.com

Comparing Kumon Math to Ho Math and Chess

Frank Ho

Teacher and founder of Ho Math and Chess

www.mathandchess.com

Many have asked me how Ho Math and Chess is different from Kumon Math. Both Kumon Math and Ho Math and Chess use worksheets to teach math and get children to work on progressive math worksheets. The biggest difference is the way the worksheets are produced.

Ho Math and Chess teaching idea stems from its founder’s Mr. Frank Ho’s personal experience while teaching his son Andrew chess when Andrew was 5 years old. This is very similar to Kumon math’s founder Mr. Toru Kumon ’s experience in teaching his son math. Both Mr. Kumon and Mr. Ho have gained insights by teaching their own child in creating the franchise business in teaching math but in a very different approach of creating worksheets.

Ho Math and Chess was founded on the philosophy that math must be taught in a fun and cool way. Because of this reason Ho Math and Chess integrates game and math together and the game used at Ho Math and Chess is the international chess – an universal language which many kids in the world can play and enjoy while working on math.

Mr. Ho discovered the language which links between chess and math and thus patented his idea and created the world’s first math and chess integrated workbooks for elementary students. Consequently, Mr. Ho also created Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set so that children as young as 4 years old can learn chess with ease. Frank also created Frankho Chess Mazes, which is very different from traditional mazes in such a way that Frankho Chess Mazes improve children’s visualization ability and also their analytical ability.

The math worksheets at Ho Math and Chess integrate math and chess using new and patented applied technology with innovative teaching idea.

For children who do not just want to work on pure math worksheets only then Ho Math and Chess offers an alternative. Mr. Ho also created mathematical chess puzzles, which resemble IQ puzzles so children can have the opportunity to do brain fitness and improve their brain power at the same time. Ho Math and Chess is taking the leading role of integrating math, chess, puzzles, and brain fitness all into one workbook. Ho Math and Chess worksheets are fun, entertaining, and educational.

It is the teaching philosophy of having fun while learning math differs Ho Math and Chess from Kumon math and all other math learning centers in the world.

More details, please visit www.mathandchess.com. 

About Author

Frank Ho, a Canadian certified math teacher, coined the learning centre term Math and Chess and he also founded the world’s first math and chess learning centre by creating the world’s first math and chess integrated workbooks for elementary students in Vancouver, Canada. He invented Frankho Symbolic Chess Language, intriguing Frankho Chess Maze, and also an unique new chess teaching set. He published math and chess teaching theoretic basis in a Canadian math journal. The USA Illinois research data has shown statistically significant that Ho Math and Chess teaching method increases children’s math marks and also improves children’s critical thinking skills. The Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set can improve children’s memory by playing half-blind chess. More details, please visit www.mathandchess.com.

My Experience of Using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set vs. Traditional Chess Set

Frank Ho

Canada certified math teacher and founder of Ho Math and Chess Learning Center, Canada

www.mathandchess.com

Toward the end of 2007, I released the innovative chess teaching set Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set using Geometry Chess Symbols to indicate each chess piece’s move buy marking GCS on the surface of each uniformed look of chess piece.

My idea of creating this set is to use the symmetry lines of a square to show how each piece is supposed to move – an idea of “what you move is what you see”.

After my use of this set and teaching children for several months, I have some surprising and interesting anecdotes to share.

1.     Old dogs can not learn new tricks.

I have used the symbols of my invented Geometry Chess Symbol in my workbooks and created math and chess integrated worksheets and most children found that they are far more interesting than traditional worksheets. The most interesting is I intermixed Geometry Chess Symbols and traditional chess fonts in one workbook and children as young as 4 years old have no problems to accept both “symbols”. Those children who have never learned chess are accepting Ho Math and Chess with no problems at all and they found it is much easier to learn.

In contrast, I have some teens who have been playing the traditional chess set for a while and frowned at my invented chess set, despite I assured that the difference is only the look and the moves of each piece is marked so it is actually easier. But some of them remain unconvinced and are unwilling to even give a try, why? Their minds have fixed and told them to reject it without even trying. The other problem is their brains have been trained to accept “figures” not “lines” so the adjustment perhaps is difficult for some who have been playing 3-D figurine chess for their life.

It is interesting to note that in the past Chinese had created 3–D figurine Chinese set just like the way western traditional chess set has been created but the 3-D Chinese set was never popular. Is this because we only like to use the “instrument” the first time was introduced unless a vigorous marketing campaign has been put on? I had brought on the question that why some children still use their first–learned language to do math computation even when their mother-tongue language is already very rusty? Is there a so called “imprint’ effect on this kind of learning process? Perhaps this will be interesting research topic.

2.     The effect of using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set is far more than a mere comparison of likeness or not to traditional chess set. 

When moving a queen using traditional chess set, children would have to “translate” the image of a queen to the “moves” of how a queen is supposed to move. So my belief is there is an information “translation” retrieval process in ones’ brain. On the other hand, when using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set, the moves are visually marked on each piece, the “translation” from a figurine to “moves” is eliminated, this perhaps explains why a child as young as 4 years old can learn chess much easier by using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set.

I have observed that those children who can come up with answers directly when working on multiplications without having to going through a thinking process of using “tips”, “skip counting”, or “fingers manipulations” can find answers much quicker and also they can do reverse multiplication much easier, i.e. to find the factors of a number such as to find the factors of a number 64. I believe this has to do how a human process information, to find answers of all factors of 64 by going through “tips” or “skip counting”, or “finger manipulations” then the information is processed in a sequential way and the repertoire of information between factors and products is not “imprinted” in children’s brain so the computation power is not as strong as one trained with “indexed’ information retrieval that is the children can recall answers instantly and directly without delay by retrieving information stored in their brain.

The reason I brought my math teaching observation is to say that there could be a hidden advantage for children who have used Ho Math and Chess Teaching set. They will be able to directly retrieve the information about moves without delay. The learning curve is cut dramatically when using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set.

3.     Why children have no problem to switch from Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set to traditional chess set? 

Children have no problem to switch from using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set to traditional chess set and I am not abandoning traditional chess set at all but only stress that Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set is very good in teaching children chess. It puzzles why children can adapt to the use of playing chess from Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set to traditional chess set so easily?

Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set are all about lines and line segments and traditional chess set are 3 D objects and their moves have to be taught and remembered. These two types of designs represent very different images in children’s brain. So what effects would have on children when they have been trained by these two very different types of instruments?  This again represents an interesting research topic.

There are now two types of Chinese characters writings and for those who were trained to read simplified version seem to have less difficulty to read the traditional Chinese characters. On the contrary, those who were only taught traditional Chinese characters would have more difficulty to read simplified Chinese characters, why?

From my point of view, it is not a decision to use Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set or not rather it is a decision to see when to use it. For example, for some children it is much easier to use training wheels to learn how to ride a bike. Ho Math and Chess Teaching set is like a pair of training wheels for children who find it is much easier to learn how to ride a bike by using training wheels.

In my own experience I find that it is much easier for young children as young as 4 years old to lean chess without pain by using Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set, so why not use it? Later on, if children decide to use traditional chess set, then it is fine too since the traditional chess set is an international standard.

Ho Math and Chess not only uses Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set to train children how to play chess, this set of patent applied Symbolic Chess Symbols is also integrated into its math program to make math learning much fun and interesting. 

More fun math and information can be found at www.mathandchess.com.

About Author

Frank Ho, a Canadian certified math teacher, coined the learning centre term Math and Chess and he also founded the world’s first math and chess learning centre by creating the world’s first math and chess integrated workbooks for elementary students in Vancouver, Canada. He invented Frankho Symbolic Chess Language, intriguing Frankho Chess Maze, and also an unique new chess teaching set. He published math and chess teaching theoretic basis in a Canadian math journal. The USA Illinois research data has shown statistically significant that Ho Math and Chess teaching method increases children’s math marks and also improves children’s critical thinking skills. The Ho Math and Chess Teaching Set can improve children’s memory by playing half-blind chess. More details, please visit www.mathandchess.com.

One area where many children struggle with learning is the introduction of the times tables. The whole concept behind multiplication can be confusing for young minds. Luckily, there are a few things parents can do to help their children to learn and memorise the basics of the times tables, a cornerstone of all future math study.

One of the simplest ways to aid your child when he or she is learning the rong>times tables is to add technology to the home learning environment. Software for learning can add important elements to the whole process of learning and memorisation.

How technology aids in learning the times tables

In William Bender’s book, Differentiating Math Instruction, he notes that there are many elements to effective math learning – support at home is very important, as is visual instruction and an interactive learning environment.

Technology can add all of the above to the learning process, as well as some other important elements:

1. A visual element: For some students, reading straight from the textbook, or just listening to a teacher, isn’t enough. With technology-based learning, the software, the colors and the different way of presenting the material itself all add visual cues that aid most students in learning.
2. Interactivity: An interactive learning environment, where the student can receive immediate feedback on his or her work, helps with faster learning. Technology-based learning usually includes this level of interactivity, without the need for parent or teacher intervention (although, of course, parental involvement enhances the learning experience).
3. Memorisation: Another benefit of computer-based learning is that it aids in memorisation. A study done with students in Korea showed that, once a student has a basic grasp of a concept, the best way to further aid memorisation is repetitive review and testing of the material. Most computer-based learning materials provide this element.
4. The fun factor: Finally, most children enjoy working with computers and technology. Using computer-aided learning tools adds the element of enjoyment which can help a child to develop a love for math.

When it comes to this crucial building block of all future math study, adding a computer-based element can help your child to learn and memorise the times tables faster. Tools, such as our own Times Tables Tutor, will help with this. Sometimes, real learning comes with simple methods. For parents who want to help their children grow in math, the computer can be an indispensable tool.

About Author

Greg O’Connor, a qualified teacher, runs a business consultancy specialising in designing and constructing very complex customised financial models for a wide range of businesses. He has combined his spreadsheeting skills and teaching experience to develop the Times Tables Tutor – www.timestablestutor.com – a highly innovative, fully automated, spreadsheet-based (Excel) times tables learning tool. With all features operated at the click of a button, Times Tables Tutor is incredibly easy to use, even for parents and children who have never used a spreadsheet before. This is the third in a series of five articles offering suggestions to parents on how they can assist their kids to master the times tables.