Can you learn swimming by watching videos?

Say that you want to learn swimming.

You sign up with a swimming school. And you turn up, all excited, for your first lesson. But to your shock, the school has no swimming pool. Instead, you are supposed to learn swimming by watching videos of other swimmers!

As bizarre as it sounds, this is exactly what happens when it comes to math learning. Our children watch math, whether it’s a blackboard class, or a video, or even a live online class. It’s always the teacher who’s doing all the math, while the student is just passively watching. 

This is outrageous, in my opinion. The only way to learn swimming is by swimming. Similarly, the only way to learn math is by doing math, not by watching math. 

What does that mean?

It means that the child must be actively solving problems throughout every class. And not just for practice, but even when learning a new concept. This is the approach we take at Cuemath.

Suppose that the child has to learn the formula of a cylinder’s total surface area.

In a typical math class, the teacher will teach the formula and use it to solve a variety of problems, while the child will take notes. The teacher will do, while the child will watch. 

In a Cuemath class, the child will solve problems at every step - even to derive the formula itself - as the teacher is on standby to help. The child will do, while the teacher will watch. 

In a one-hour Cuemath class, a child solves 23 problems on an average, and this accounts for more than 90% of the class time. The child is always doing, and rarely watching.

I have personally taught thousands of children, and have seen firsthand the immense power of this doing-instead-of-watching approach. I firmly believe that this is the only way for a child to truly master life-skills like math and coding. 

If this made sense, you might be interested in exploring Cuemath’s live online classes, where expert tutors teach math and coding by doing instead of watching.