How difficult it is for parents to replace face-to-face teaching in school has been felt by many during the lockdown times. The Cologne math professional Torsten Landwehr has now put together an academy for you that brings fun to learning – even more without lockdown.
Mathematics is one of the school subjects that many children panic about. The material just doesn’t want to get into her head, every task seems to only be there to torment her. The math coach Torsten Landwehr from Cologne knows the problem. He is the founder and head of the Cologne Computing Therapy Center and head of Mathevision.de, a project for all students and adults with math stress. For more than 25 years he has been helping with his program, regardless of whether it is minor school problems or severe dyscalculia. His latest coup is a math academy for elementary school parents. He got the idea during the corona pandemic when he realized how far away from practice children have to learn in distance learning. Often times, they’ll be given to-do papers to work on, and that’s it.
Landwehr knows that understanding math has to start very differently: clearly and in the literal sense of the word. He finds his aids in the household: an analog clock, an analog scale, a mercury thermometer, a folding rule, for example. With analog devices, children learn to assess number ranges, but these are not visible in the digital world. What sounds time-consuming is quite the opposite. Learning with the parents then begins, for example, through integration into the household, from setting the table (counting plates and cutlery) to baking (weighing and measuring) to shopping together (mental arithmetic). “Even on every walk you can invent math problems that the children enjoy,” says Landwehr. Parents learn how to do this (and a lot more) in his academy. Of the stern spoke to Torsten Landwehr.
They put together a math academy for elementary school parents, online and in the form of videos. Isn’t it easier to reach children and adolescents than parents online and with videos?
Since the Corona period at the latest, adults have had a different way of accessing online videos and are much more open to it. They now appreciate the fact that they can also consume teaching content from the comfort of their own home. During the pandemic, we completely switched our work in the computing therapy center to online funding, so the response was initially a bit cautious, but now it’s completely normal and totally accepted.
Can parents calculate so badly that they need tutoring on primary school material?
No, I don’t teach parents to do arithmetic, but give them a foundation with which they can make math understandable. That saves time for them – that is the most important thing, because parents have been badly shaken in the past year and a half. They were used as auxiliary teachers without knowing how to explain math. I have seen many overwhelmed parents who said: “Although we practice every day, nothing works.” They put a lot of time, nerves and energy into it – which often led to stress.
In your videos you use the “Duess” of the parents and explain the access to the basic arithmetic operations in a very simple and visual way. Otherwise don’t parents understand what is important?
The Duzen has become so established in society that I decided to use it. Also because studies have shown that addressing you through you enables a higher transfer of knowledge. At first I thought about making videos for children, but an important component was missing: Math is actually learned through action, objects and illustrative material, and that has almost completely fallen under the table due to the school closings since Corona. So the children really only learn like machines – without understanding how a topic works. They learn arithmetic strategies, but do not understand them.
I would like to ensure that the children now have this vivid learning by their parents, because in my eyes this is the greatest deficiency that has arisen in maths due to Corona: being able to understand what is missing. That’s why I’m trying to get my parents on board. In my opinion, normal tutoring cannot fill this gap. This is where parents can get in and integrate math more into everyday life, which is why there are now videos for parents that explain how to do it very easily. In addition, since the pandemic, the children have been so saturated with sitting in front of the computer and watching video tutorials that they need to be addressed in person much more urgently.
Did the teachers teach vividly before Corona? In my school days I only saw this with a math teacher, in geometry.
Jein.There are teachers and schools who do an excellent job in math, but there are also many children who almost never get the benefit of vivid and hands-on math lessons. In large classes with 25 or 30 children, it is primarily a matter of the skill of the teacher: in. This is the basis for a real understanding of math.
Currently, however, I am seeing even more children who – especially in elementary school – write 1s and 2s in tests, but do not really understand how the arithmetic functions work. This is because it is primarily the result and not the calculation method that determines the grade. The ways are actually important. To find out whether a child really understands math, there are three videos in the math academy with relevant documents for a math check. Parents can use it to check that.
Your online course consisting of six modules with 31 lessons costs just under 150 euros and takes around three and a half hours. How does it differ from free YouTube videos?
I think there are so many very, very good things on YouTube. What I don’t find there is a certain chronology, so that you have a complete package. In addition, I have been working in this area for more than 25 years and work according to a concept that I have never seen on YouTube: The focus is always on the practice of working with concrete things in real situations, and that is then more and more abstracted. In addition, there is joint research with the child. That gave me the idea of turning it into a real academy that parents pay for. On YouTube, however, there are people like Daniel Jung or Lehrer Schmidt, who meanwhile also sell packages where you can buy something like “8th grade” or a certain topic. But everything I see on Youtube is too high in my eyes. This helps many students, but if they do not understand it, it is only for memorizing. I go one step deeper and want to take the children with me in a different way. I don’t know from other offers that you bring your parents on board. Tips on how to bake or cook with the children, which purely analog devices are needed to make proportions visible, or how to find word problems while going for a walk, in my opinion, do not exist anywhere else.
They recommend parents to integrate math and numbers into everyday life: when shopping, baking and playing together. Do parents have the time for it – besides their job?
That’s the big crux of the matter: you actually have to see it the other way around. Everyone should ask themselves how much time during the week they spend practicing math with the child. Or how much tutoring is there? The goal is to find out where it’s stuck and how to easily resolve ambiguities. And that can be implemented well in terms of time, even if you are at work and everything is very tightly timed. But I think my little impulses are very effective. I would like to achieve with the academy that math is not done for one hour a day with the child, but maybe half an hour a week and that on the side. For example, three stacks of glasses become a painting task when clearing the dishwasher. And in situations like this, children usually find it great, especially if you combine it with a game. That makes a lot more sense than a page with 50 plus or minus tasks.
Are there really that many children who need help in primary school?
The danger in elementary school is that you solve tasks by memorizing or using tricks, but you don’t understand what’s behind them. And that’s exactly where I try to start. Because even if the children get along well in elementary school, it happens later if they have not understood the basics: When equations, fractions or functions come up, they drop out because they lack practical relevance. In the first eight to nine years, math has a lot to do with real things around us. Even a first grader can solve this problem with an analog thermometer: Today it is three degrees above zero, tomorrow it will be five degrees less, i.e. two degrees below zero. We have students here: from the seventh grade and first of all show them what an analog thermometer is. They don’t check it beforehand and try to learn by heart how to calculate with negative numbers. Or if it is three degrees less at minus two degrees, they think: Ah, minus and minus is plus. It sometimes takes hours before they really realize this. The perfect way is that you know a thermometer and the teacher in the seventh grade says, “We are calculating with positive and negative numbers now,” and they think this is Pillpalle because they know the thermometer. And with the practical part of the academy, their parents give them a good foundation for later.
They warn parents not to teach their children tricks and donkey bridges. I find it very helpful to know, and just recently learned that 3 percent of 50 is the same as 50 percent of 3 – and that is true of all other numbers as well. What is the danger here with such “tricks”?
Everything has its justification. The tricks are great for calculating quickly later. The bottom line is that you get a feel for what 3 percent of 50 is. For example, if you have now calculated that 3 percent of 50 is 20, and then you don’t think that this cannot be the case, then it is critical. And that happens through what has been learned by heart and worked out without understanding. I try to get the kids to get a feel for it.
Aren’t you afraid of taking away customers for your computing therapy center with your parents’ academy?
That can be natural, but it can also complement each other.Everyone can decide which way is better. You can also accompany the work here, for which you may have completed a package of hours, with the Academy for Parents, then you may not need that long.
Has there already been any feedback on the Parent Academy? For example, that this has minimized the potential for arguments and stress?
There is still no feedback on the academy because it is still very new. But I have already presented some of it in lectures and heard a lot of positive things about the fact that parents can use it well and that it works well and stress-free. There was a test phase for the academy before the summer holidays, and now things really get going.
You can find Torsten Landwehr and his projects here:,,,,
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