AS a new school year starts, Rachel Carlyle finds out how parents can help their children make the grade – and learn a thing or two themselves.
To any parent who understands chunking, partitioning or who knows what a “number sentence” is – I salute you. But the mysteries of modern maths remain mysteries for most of us: more than a third of parents rely on Google or calculators when their children ask for help with maths, according to a recent survey – and the whole experience makes a third of us anxious. (Only a third?).
Yet as the Government warns that those who fail to reach the expected standard in the 3Rs when they leave primary school will have to retake their SATs test in secondary school, it’s all the more vital for parents to be able to pitch in to help.
Here we show you what does and doesn’t work:
Reading
This is the number one skill parents can help with: studies have proved that children who read well at seven do better in IQ tests and reasoning as teenagers, and children who read for pleasure do better in adult life, according to UNICEF.
Get them to read to you every school day for 10 minutes. There might be moaning at first but if you do it at the same time every day, it becomes automatic and they realise resistance is futile. Try not to continually interrupt and correct them when they’re reading – the chances are they will start the sentence again unprompted. If not, say, ‘Shall we have another go at that bit?’
Keep the session relaxed and praise even the smallest achievement and swallow any frustrations (such as, “I can’t believe you don’t know the word ‘said’. We’ve had it three times already!”) And don’t rush them: young readers need a minute or two to absorb the picture on a page before they read the words. Chat about the story afterwards to check they’ve understood, not just mechanically decoded.
Don’t stop reading to them when they are fluent readers: it’s relaxing, bonding and allows you to introduce trickier or classic books they wouldn’t have tackled on their own.
Don’t criticise what they read as there’s as much merit, practice-wise, in football magazines or Top Trumps cards as the Oxford Reading Tree series. It doesn’t matter if the book is too easy – reading it in one go will boost flow and confidence. It’s a love of reading that’s key to fostering the habit in the long term. “It’s important parents don’t choose the books their children read,” says Fiona Evans, educational consultant for The Reading Agency.
Encourage a love of stories by visiting the library and making up your own. Read books they’re studying in school so you can discuss them together.
Writing
Weekly spelling tests fell out of favour in many schools but are back with a vengeance now that children are tested on spelling and grammar before they leave primary school. This is tough on parents: a survey this summer by publishers DK found that almost half of us couldn’t spell embarrass or separate (words our children have to spell by age 11). Don’t be afraid of saying you’re not sure, and let them see you look it up, says Rebecca Cosgrave, co-author of the No Nonsense Spelling programme for schools (Raintree, £195).
With spelling tests, the trick is to find out how your child learns to spell a word: if the old “look, cover, write” method worked for you, it doesn’t mean it will work for them. Instead, try breaking up the word into speech sounds – fan-tas-tic – even cut them out and jumble them up. Or write the word in a pyramid shape (for “table”, write t on the top line, “ta” on the next, “tab” on the next, and so on until you make the word as a triangle). Use magnetic letters, or paint the word in water on the pavement. Do whatever works.
Short daily bursts of five to 10 minutes are better than a fractious hour the night before the test. Get them to put the words into sentences, as research shows they forget the spelling within days otherwise. Carol Vorderman’s new book, 10 Minutes A Day Spelling Fun (DK, £5.99) may be an interesting use of the word “fun”, but they’ll love the electronic timer.
Encourage a have-a-go attitude by coming up with several ways a word might be spelt and discuss which one looks right. “Stay positive – a word is nearly right not wrong. Tick each bit that’s right,” says Cosgrave.
Games are useful such as hangman or, even better, Shannon’s Game – where you have to guess each letter in order. Cosgrave plays a word guessing game in the car with her children aged eight and 12: someone comes up with a four-letter word (eg food) and the others take turns to guess by naming another four-letter word (eg girl). Girl scores zero because none of the right letters is in the right place, but “good” would score 3. Continue until someone guesses.
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| Reading is the number one skill parents can help with |
Arithmetic
It’s bad for children to hear their parents hate maths – even if it’s true. Approach the subject positively: say how proud you are of your child for persevering and trying their best – confidence is key.
The most important thing is to learn how maths is taught today. It’s very different to the way we learned and it’s never a good idea to grab their pen saying, ‘I know a much better way to do this...’ Instead, we need to understand terms like partitioning (splitting a number into 10s and units before adding them, eg 53 + 24 is 50 +20 and 3 + 4) and the much-hated chunking division.
Naomi Sani’s book How To Do Maths So Your Children Can Too (Vermilion, £10.99) explains all. And one south London school has produced brilliant online videos: see myattgarden.lewisham.sch.uk – click on parents.
Times tables are the number one priority for parents, as they are the key to fluency in maths at secondary school. According to the National Curriculum, children in Year 2 (aged six-seven) have to learn 2, 5 and 10; in Year 3 (aged seven-eight) it’s 3, 4 and 8, with all the rest done by the end of Year 4.
Chanting doesn’t work for all, so find the way your child learns best: raps and songs can work, as can games apps such as Squeebles and board games such as Hoo Ha! Keep practising: it can take six-eight weeks for each times table to become automatic.
Loads of board games involve maths so dig out Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and Uno and play as a family. Try the Best Maths Book Ever (DK, 9.99) – maths games that include dice and counters.
Use everyday activities such as cooking, counting change in shops and working out bus and train timetables. See the National Numeracy campaign’s parents’ website for more ideas: nnparenttoolkit.org.uk.
To order titles, see Express Bookshop (expressbookshop.co.uk).
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