By Davide Penazzi
School closures have left many parents in charge of overseeing their children’s education at home.
If you are one of them, you might be struggling with maths in particular – not least due to having to grapple with topics and techniques you are unfamiliar with, such as number bonds, abundant numbers, chunking and more.
But this is where a positive mindset, and the ability to accept that you are also on a learning path, can help.
Tips on the best way to tackle teaching maths you don’t know:
Think of yourself as accompanying your child towards understanding a new concept, rather than explaining it to them. As a parent, there is a natural desire to provide for and support your child with your experience, but this is impossible when you don’t know what you want to explain.
What you are able to do is to tap into is your experiences of having solved problems and managed challenges. Be honest and tell your child the method is new to you, too, but you will work to understand it together.
New concepts can be overwhelming. Start as small as you can, and play around with something concrete – such as buttons or coins or pieces of Lego – to help you both understand.
For instance, your child might be working on number bonds: learning the pairs of numbers that add together to make a particular total.
As an example, the number bonds of seven are two plus five and three plus four. Physically laying out seven buttons and splitting them into two and five, and then three and four, can help you and your child familiarise yourselves with the concept.
Learning maths might seem pointless, but this doesn’t mean you don’t need to do mental computation in life. Perhaps you have a budget of £50 (about R1 000) and want to know quickly if buying three items priced £13, £20 and £17 will push you over the total. Your knowledge of number bonds tells you that three plus seven is 10 – so 13 plus 17 is 30, which plus the additional 20 puts you perfectly at your budget.
Today the focus is on teaching pupils to become problem solvers: fluent in maths with the ability to reason and apply what they have learnt. In teaching number bonds, you are helping your child develop a numerical tool that can allow them to effectively process simple computations, which in turn make them more capable of dealing with problems in life or at work.
It is easy, especially if you have had bad experiences with maths in your past, to give way to panic. The risk is that this fear can be passed to your child. This can have consequences for their enjoyment of school – and even for the decisions they make in life.
A simple trick is to not think that you are doing maths, but that you are helping your child to learn useful life tools. Giving maths a more friendly name, such as “problem-solving tricks” or “calculation tools” – that better reflects your own abilities – can boost confidence and keep anxiety at bay.
Once you and your child have learnt a mathematical concept, try to make it more real and use it in everyday life.
Make number bonds with biscuits or pieces of fruit. Add up prices of supermarket items.
Be creative and make colourful number bond patterns with building blocks or objects such as sticks and leaves you find on a stroll.
Finally, don’t be discouraged if you sometimes struggle. And allow yourself and your child plenty of time to learn a new idea.
Davide Penazzi is a senior lecturer in maths at the University of Central Lancashire.
* The views expressed here are not those of The Star or Independent Media.
The Star