How to help children STRUGGLING with MATHS

“Be positive about math because regardless of your profession we are all math influencers.” – Dr Valerie Camille Jones

From the time they are born your child’s every day experiences – games, baking and arts and crafts activities, stories with numbers and songs and rhymes - provide many opportunities to build early maths and numeracy skills including counting, grouping, patterns and adding and subtracting numbers . Your role as their first “maths teacher” is an important one, and making numeracy activities and experiences playful, relaxed and fun for your child will help them to develop a love of and curiosity about numbers.

 “Teaching maths in a hands-on way is the key to understanding maths for a lifetime .” – Esther White

Being curious and enthusiastic about a subject, enjoying the “work” they are doing and hands–on activities using concrete materials helps children to absorb, understand and retain information. In Montessori, children learn math in three different stages: sensorial, concrete and abstract. Teaching is definitely rewarding career and over the 14 years that I taught Montessori maths, it was wonderful sharing “ the moments of discovery” when the children’s faces would light up having successfully worked out the answers to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations on their own using the beads, blocks, cubes and number rods and discovered that while they were having “ fun” they were actually doing mathematics.

“Why do children dread mathematics? Because of the wrong approach. Because it is looked at as a subject.” Shakuntala Devi

Many of the children I have taught, were ready and able to move confidently into the wider world of maths, having developed a solid foundation knowledge of quantity, place value and mathematical operations. However, for children who are struggling with the basic concepts, frustration can easily turn into fear and anxiety as the work becomes more challenging and confusing.

Maths is a subject that some of us love and others hate. Although I don’t remember finding maths difficult at primary school, by high school I did feel like the ugly duckling as my sister and brother sailed along while I struggled to make sense of algebra and geometry. Having extra help and support from a teacher or tutor can help your child to develop a better understanding of maths concepts and the right mindset. With some extra lessons I was able to overcome my maths struggles.

We all want our children to feel confident with numbers even if we struggled with maths ourselves. While “I also hated maths at school” may be on the tip of your tongue, you need to try to be positive about maths as if your child sees that you have a negative attitude towards maths they may start to think like that themselves . Our maths difficulties probably had something to do with how we were taught and these three words : slow , simple and supportive are a good guide to help your child to  develop confident numeracy skills which will help them to – catch up, keep up and achieve success.

“Maths is like ice cream, with more flavours than you can imagine – and if all your children ever do is textbook math, that’s like feeding them broccoli–flavoured ice cream.” – Denise Gaskins

Take things slowly

When a teacher’s meeting, low test and report marks or your child’s anxiety in class and when they are doing homework, alerts you to your  child’s struggle, take a deep breath and try to work an action plan which will help them to succeed .

Maths can be hard, because like a pyramid, it builds layer by layer on itself each year. To give your child a better chance at  sustained progress and improvement in their learning they may need to return to basic concepts to fill in missing the building blocks which will create a strong foundational knowledge before you move on to  more challenging mathematical topics at their current grade level.

Keep things simple

While many people believe that using concrete materials and  counting on your fingers are only supports and strategies for younger children making use of concrete resources like number-lines and charts , bond rockets , times table grids and counters to help them to work out  answers can help pupils throughout primary school to achieve success working independently.

Be supportive

Patience truly is a virtue when passing knowledge or a skill from one person to another. Helping with maths isn’t always easy and it can be frustrating when having explained a concept few times to your child they still don’t know what to do. Some children just need more time and practice or better instructions and handing homework over to a tutor and helping your child to improve their maths skills through day-to-day activities like shopping and baking and playing games will be more enjoyable and less stressful for both of you .

“Play gives children a chance to practice what they are learning.” – Mr Rodgers

Maths games are a great way to practice counting, number bonds and times tables and to reinforce mathematical concepts like place values. Swapping the computer and tv for  board and card games like Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, Battleship, Memory game and Rummy, playing a game of hopscotch outside or number plate cricket in the car on the way to school is not only a nice change from schoolwork, it’s also family fun and a maths confidence booster too!!

 To find out how Coach Caroline can help to transform maths into fun               WhatsApp 0609101851