Recently I attended an ALiM (Accelerated Learning in Maths) workshop. It's an approach to plan and teach maths and to boost the results and attitudes of the students. I am a staunch lover of maths. I have learnt skills and approaches that I wish my secondary calculus and statistics teachers had applied with me. I want to share with you some key ways to help maths learning at home as well as giving you a hint of how we teach maths a little differently now too.

Nga mihi ki a koutou (Greetings to you all)

Ko Whaea (Philippa Jackson) tōku ingoa.

Firstly, it is so important that we talk about maths in a positive way. Many of us have had negative experiences in our schooling or we just didn’t see the point of writing screeds of calculations down in a book to get to an answer. I got told once that I would need to know how to calculate this if I was ever going to think about flying to the moon! Really? I don’t think my teacher really knew me!

Now though, so much of maths learning is not just about writing the answer, it is how you got to that answer. It is about how you might represent that answer in a visual form. It is about how to explain to another person the reasons behind what you did. It is about making mistakes and it is also about questioning each other to learn.

If your child is learning their basic facts, what does this look like? How do they know this makes sense? If there is a word problem, how could they draw their strategy? Representing their thinking using materials can help engage their mathematical processing. Keeping maths alive in your home and speaking about it using a positive tone can make a huge difference to a child’s confidence, a growth mindset about trying to solve problems and to have a curiosity for maths. Here are some ideas you could try at home:

These things can help me at home – Mathematics

· Ask me to help with the shopping by comparing the brands of the things we buy to find the best value for money.

· Teach me a new card game we can play together.

· Let me show you my favourite app with some maths in it.

· Talk to my teacher about how I’m doing in maths and things we can do together so I can get even better.

· Help me practise the facts I’m trying to memorise at the moment - for example, forwards and backwards from 100, the 7 times tables or doubling and halving numbers up to 20.

· Ask me to help prepare dinner and talk to me about any maths involved - for example, halves, quarters, litres, grams, temperatures, etc. and get me to do any measuring or weighing needed.

· Teach me one of the games you played on the marae when you were young.

· Show me and talk with me about what the graphs and tables in our newspaper mean.

· Have a traditional games night at home where the whole family plays a board game like Monopoly together.

· Tell me about the games you played with your brothers and sisters before computers and TV.

· Keep playing with me, and encouraging me, in the hard games I’m learning, for example, chess, backgammon or mah-jong, even though I’m not very good yet.

· Try one of the internet maths games I’ve found, and try to beat my best score.

· Talk to me about the maths you use every day and at work.

· Show me the family budget and explain how you pay all the bills and save.

· Ask me to figure out how much change you should get back from a purchase. If I get the amount right, occasionally you might let me keep the change!

· Help me learn to estimate things like how much things weigh, how long they are, the cost of our groceries, or how long it will take to travel to a certain place.

I hope you can forgive your past teachers who may have turned you away from loving maths. Or maybe you could write to your past maths teacher a letter of thanks because you had a great school experience in maths class. I find maths creative and I think this is why I love it the most.

Nāku noa, nā

Philippa Jackson 

Deputy Principal - Tumuaki Tuarua

Māpua School - Kura o Māpua