Supporting Your Child At Home
'Maths for Mums and Dads' is a great book filled with some fantastic ideas to support maths at home.
Here are some top tips from the book:
- Praise ‘effort’ rather than being ‘quick’ or ‘clever’. This fosters a growth mindset and encourages perseverance and develops resilience when the maths gets hard.
- Don’t tell them they are ‘wrong’ when they make a mistake, ask them to talk you through how they worked it out. Often they will spot the error themselves. Or model making the mistake yourself and ‘noticing’ the error.
- When they get the maths right, ask them to explain their working then, too! This gives you a chance to check their reasoning (sometimes people come up with the right answer for the wrong reasons). If you only ask for an explanation when they get the question wrong, they begin to associate being asked to explain with failure, and so will start to clam up rather than reveal their mistakes.
A great resource to help with homework
Resources and links to maths games that can be played at home.
Maths opportunities in 'real' life
Keeping maths 'real' makes it more relevant. Chocolate and sweets provide practical applications for work on fractions and multiplication.