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When my children were young, I worked hard to give them all the things I thought they needed to be eager learners. I took them to museums. I planned trips to the library. I read to them every day. (Heck, I put board books in their cribs long before they could read.) They had educational games on our computer, and we watched lots of shows on PBS. I also prioritized doing math at home.<\/p>\n
As I was preparing to write this article, I started thinking specifically about how I engaged with them around math. Early on, we did a lot of counting. Later (and for many years), we made recipes together, giving us opportunities to work with fractions and, if we needed more or less of a recipe, scaling. Across all ages we did a lot of comparisons of how much ice cream cost at the local ice cream stand versus the supermarket. We had conversations about math and, unfortunately, some tears over homework.<\/p>\n
Now that my girls are grown and I have been in education for over 25 years, I find myself wondering: knowing what I know now, what might I have done differently?<\/p>\n
As a parent, I didn\u2019t consult research on how to support my child at home, but my instinct was that doing so had to have a positive impact. Thankfully, research has shown that parental engagement does indeed have a positive impact on student outcomes. On John Hattie\u2019s Visible Learning Metax<\/sup> database<\/a>, the results of 33 metanalyses and 2,970 studies involving over 4.5 million students indicate that parental involvement has a potential to accelerate student learning. Furthermore, the analysis has a robustness index of five, meaning that the average effect size is considered highly stable and that the researchers have high confidence the average effect size is not likely to change even if new metanalyses are added.<\/p>\n Parental involvement can mean a lot of things, from attending school events to helping with homework, so let\u2019s zoom in a little more on the research. A 2019 metanalysis of the impact of parents\u2019 involvement on children\u2019s academic adjustment<\/a> distinguished between school-based involvement, which includes things like joining the PTA or attending parent conferences, and home-based involvement. They further divide home-based involvement into three types:<\/p>\n I want to pause for a moment to talk about language. Although this metanalysis and many other studies refer to parental support or involvement, because home-based support can come from many people beyond the biological, nuclear family and can include community members, caregivers, extended family, and others, I will use the terms \u201chome-based engagement\u201d or \u201chome-based support\u201d for the rest of this article.<\/p>\n Getting back to the research, the 2019 metanalysis showed that in general, home-based support \u201cwas significantly associated with positive adjustment\u201d relative to the areas of achievement, engagement, motivation, social-emotional adjustment, and delinquency. Digging further, both discussion and encouragement and<\/em> cognitive intellectual involvement showed similar positive impacts on achievement and motivation, with discussion and encouragement resulting in greater positive impacts on engagement. The study also found that discussion and encouragement have positive effects from elementary through high school and that cognitive-intellectual involvement has positive effects from preschool through high school.<\/p>\n You may be surprised (or possibly happy) to learn that this and other studies<\/a> show there is a small negative association between homework support and children\u2019s achievement; however, homework support does have some positive impact on engagement. Don\u2019t get too excited just yet; you\u2019re not totally off the hook on homework. We\u2019ll talk more about that later.<\/p>\n Engaging in math at home has another potentially critical impact. It is estimated that over 90% of US adults experience some amount of math anxiety<\/a>. Data from the 2022 PISA<\/a> shows that nearly 40% of US students said they get very nervous when doing math problems. While some of this could be attributed to the impact of COVID on learning<\/a> and mental health, ten years prior, nearly a third of US students expressed the same anxiety.<\/p>\n While this may seem disheartening, engaging with math at home can give you an opportunity to shift children\u2019s attitudes toward math. Interestingly, research<\/a> has shown that what parents or caregivers convey about failure has the greatest impact on whether children have a growth mindset and a more positive attitude toward math. When a child is struggling to understand a concept or doesn\u2019t do well on a test, you can see this as an opportunity for learning or as a sign of failure. If you take it as a sign of failure, you are expressing a fixed mindset, thinking that the child \u201cjust can\u2019t get it\u201d or \u201cjust isn\u2019t a math person.\u201d Maybe you instinctively want to add \u201c\u2026just like me\u201d after that last phrase.<\/p>\n Parents and caregivers who position failure as a positive opportunity to learn, rather than as either a debilitating experience or as a measure of ability, help children develop a growth mindset. Your response can change a child\u2019s thinking from, \u201cI just can\u2019t do this,\u201d which has an implicit sense of finality, to, \u201cI can\u2019t do this just yet,\u201d which has an implicit sense of possibility.<\/p>\n Studies by researcher Carol Dweck<\/a> have shown that students with growth mindsets perform better than those who believe ability is fixed. Furthermore, other research<\/a> shows that positive, high parental support can even mitigate the negative effects experienced by high schoolers who perceive they are not getting enough support from their math teacher. Parents and caregivers have a powerful role to play in shaping a child\u2019s attitude toward math and their ability to engage with it.<\/p>\n Now that we see the benefits of home-based support on children\u2019s achievement, engagement, motivation, and attitude, let\u2019s deal with the elephant in the room: homework. Homework is often a cause of frustration and stress for families and caregivers. And as I mentioned previously, caregiver involvement can actually have a small negative impact on achievement. That said, whether you are checking in on a child\u2019s progress or they come to you for help, there are ways to approach homework that better support the child\u2019s learning, reducing stress for everyone. At a high level, the best way to support a child when it comes to homework is to encourage them, make clear that you trust their ability to wrestle with a problem, ask open-ended questions, and avoid jumping in to show them how to do it.<\/p>\n If that last statement sounded like a needle being pulled across a record, you are not alone. As a parent, I was guilty of this too. When a child is confused or frustrated it may be natural to want to step in to try to \u201cfix\u201d the issue by showing them what to do. Taking on the role of coach instead does two things. First, it helps you avoid any math anxiety you may have and don\u2019t want to convey to the child. Second, it signals to the child that you believe in their ability to persist and work through the problem.<\/p>\n Two recent metanalyses, one focused on homework in general<\/a> and one focused specifically on math homework<\/a>, confirmed what the previously referenced study found: overall, parental homework support had a weak negative correlation to student achievement. However, both studies found a positive relationship between a sub-type of homework support designed to reinforce the child\u2019s autonomy. What does this mean? A third study<\/a> defines environments that support autonomy as ones characterized by \u201cacknowledgement of children\u2019s perspectives, encouragement of children to experiment, provision of opportunity to make choices, and minimal use of controlling language and contingencies.\u2026 In an interaction about homework, for example, an autonomy supportive parent might ask for the child\u2019s input, try to understand their child\u2019s perspective on approaches for solving the homework assignment, and encourage their child to work in their own way.\u201d<\/p>\n So, what does this mean when a child is standing there asking you for help with their math homework? Instead of showing them what to do, you can try these approaches:<\/p>\n In general, the goal is to help the child access the knowledge they need while demonstrating your belief that they are capable of persisting and tackling the problem. As much as jumping in to help them solve feels like the right thing to do, in the long term it may inadvertently erode the child\u2019s confidence in themselves.<\/p>\n Supportive conversations about math that promote children\u2019s autonomy and help them see themselves as capable problem-solvers is a wonderful way to engage with math at home at any age. Parents and other caregivers can also provide examples and experiences of math in the real world, helping students see both the joy and relevance of math.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s dive deeper into some specific ways you can engage at each level.<\/p>\n Preschool<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Research<\/a> has shown that developing concepts of numbers, number relations, and number operations is an important foundation for later achievement in math. You can learn more about these three concepts in \u201cEverything you ever wanted to know about early numeracy but didn\u2019t know to ask.\u201d<\/a> Spatial reasoning and measurement are also critical for early math understanding. Supporting preschoolers in these areas is as simple as looking for opportunities to introduce mathematical language and concepts into daily activities. Highlights has a great site called Talking is Teaching<\/a> that shows you how to do just that.<\/p>\n While you may naturally be engaging in math-supporting conversations, there are ways that you can deepen what you are currently doing. Take counting, for example. Most people naturally engage in counting activities with children, but you can deepen a child\u2019s sense of number by modeling other counting concepts.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s say you are reading a book and there are five ducks in a picture. You can say, \u201cLook at the ducks! I see one, two, three, four, five ducks. There are five ducks in the picture.\u201d This last sentence helps children understand cardinality, which is the idea that the last number word said is the number of objects counted. You can count the ducks in different orders to show that that doesn\u2019t impact the amount. If more ducks appear on the next page, you can model counting on: \u201cHere are the five ducks from the other page. Now there are six, seven, eight ducks in the picture!\u201d<\/p>\n With older preschoolers, this can lead into the idea of composing and decomposing numbers, which supports understanding of addition and subtraction. You can count the total number of a type of object and then look at different ways to break them into groups, always returning to the idea that the total never changes.<\/p>\n Check out \u201cBuilding strong foundations for early math skills at home\u201d<\/a> for even more ideas and resources for engaging with math with preschoolers.<\/p>\n Elementary school<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Once your child enters school, be sure to give them plenty of opportunities to explain what they are learning in math at home. Recalling information can help cement it into memory.<\/p>\n You can also leverage the idea that they are learning different ways to do math than you were taught. Ask them to teach you how to do long division or multiply fractions. Just be sure not to impose your<\/em> approach; this is all about them and their knowledge. I encourage you to ask open-ended or clarifying questions, but avoid pushing them to do it the way you learned or introducing shortcuts. Current approaches to teaching math often focus on developing conceptual understanding before teaching the algorithm so that once children learn the algorithm, they understand how it works. So, while using the partial products method to multiply multidigit numbers<\/a> may take longer, it helps children understand what they are doing once they learn the traditional algorithm.<\/p>\n You should continue to look for math in your everyday life. Here are just a few examples of what you can ask a child to do:<\/p>\n Books are also a great way to engage with math with elementary school\u2013aged children. Mathical <\/a>is a wonderful site where you can search for math-related books for various age groups. On this site, you\u2019ll find books that directly engage with math concepts, like Greg Tang\u2019s The Grapes of Math<\/em>, and books like Madeleine L\u2019Engle\u2019s A Wrinkle in Time<\/em>, which contain math but don\u2019t make math the focus. Age-appropriate biographies and stories about mathematicians and engineers are excellent choices as well.<\/p>\n Finally, playing math games can be a fun way to engage with a variety of math concepts. Regular playing cards<\/a> can be used to play games<\/a> that reinforce place value, estimation, operations with whole numbers, and fraction concepts. There are plenty of commercial board and card games that involve math as well. One of my younger daughter\u2019s favorite games growing up was Zeus on the Loose<\/em>. It\u2019s a card game that involves adding and subtracting within 100 and rounding to the nearest ten. As with books, the explicitness of the math varies across games. But remember, even non-math games offer opportunities to reinforce mathematical ideas. For kindergarteners and first-graders, counting steps along a game board is math; for second- and third-graders, games with play money offer opportunities to find totals and equivalent amounts and make change.<\/p>\n The site Artful Math<\/a> offers suggestions for fun and engaging math games by grade for K\u20135. My former colleague Kara Bobowski\u2019s article \u201cParent strategies for improving their child\u2019s math\u201d<\/a> has many other great suggestions for engaging with math at home.<\/p>\n Middle school <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Middle school is a time of huge change and insecurity for many young adolescents. They may be questioning their strengths and abilities in many areas while simultaneously beginning to internalize beliefs and motivations. It is also a time when they are becoming more independent, so the way you interact with them may be changing.<\/p>\n As researchers Nancy Hill and Diana Tyson<\/a> state, \u201cEarly adolescence is often marked by changes in school context, family relationships, and developmental processes. In the context of these changes, academic performance often declines, while at the same time the long-term implications of academic performance increase.\u201d Their research talks about the important role parents and caregivers play in academic socialization, that is, \u201ccommunication of their expectations for achievement and value for education, fostering educational and occupational aspirations in their adolescents, discussing learning strategies with children, and making preparations and plans for the future, including linking material discussed in school with students\u2019 interests and goals.\u201d Their review of 50 studies found that engaging in academic socialization conversations and activities had the greatest impact on middle schoolers\u2019 achievement compared to both school-based and other home-based involvement activities.<\/p>\n Your most critical role at this stage is as a coach. Here are ways to support academic socialization with young adolescents:<\/p>\n While academic socialization is most critical at this point, you can continue the home-based math activities that you started in elementary school. Just be careful to read the child\u2019s cues on what they do and don\u2019t want to engage in. For example, if they are still interested in playing math games, this can be a great time to introduce puzzle-based games like Sodoku<\/a>, Ken Ken<\/a>, Str8ts<\/a>, or toothpick puzzles<\/a>. These types of puzzles support perseverance, trial and error, and patience in problem-solving. Or, when it\u2019s your turn to pick the movie on a family movie night, consider movies like Hidden Figures<\/em><\/a> or documentaries like Underwater Dreams<\/em><\/a> that show math in action. Again, let your middle schooler take the lead, but be ready to engage when they show interest!<\/p>\n High school<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n As high schoolers move closer to life after K\u201312 education, the academic socialization that was so important in middle school takes on more specificity and urgency.<\/p>\n Older adolescents are increasingly thinking about the big \u201cWhat next?\u201d question. As they express their interests, make sure high schoolers are on the right path, mathematically, to pursue their long-term goals, whether they be college or career. If you aren\u2019t sure what type of math is needed for a particular path, AI can be a great tool for exploring this. You can also check out career sites together to see what basic requirements are listed for various jobs.<\/p>\n Keep in contact with guidance counselors to make sure the child is on the right path of courses for whatever they hope to pursue next. If your child takes MAP\u00ae Growth\u2122<\/a> at school, our interactive College Explorer tool<\/a> allows you to enter MAP Growth scores and see what schools or majors might be a good fit.<\/p>\n Engaging with math at home is important across all ages. It supports academic achievement, fosters a critical\u2014and often lacking\u2014positive attitude toward math, and helps reveal the day-to-day relevance of math. By creating a math-supportive home environment, parents and other caregivers are ensuring children develop the skills they need to succeed in whatever path they choose.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my children were young, I worked hard to give them all the things I thought they needed to be eager learners. I took them to museums. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":24787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_metadesc":"Engaging with math at home supports academic achievement, fosters a positive attitude toward math, and helps reveal the relevance of math.","footnotes":""},"categories":[649],"tags":[627,635],"grade_level":[830,831,832,833],"product":[],"theme":[],"coauthors":[{"id":104,"name":"Mary Resanovich, NWEA","link":"https:\/\/www.nwea.org\/blog\/author\/mary-resanovich\/","avatar_urls":{"24":"https:\/\/www.nwea.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","48":"https:\/\/www.nwea.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","96":"https:\/\/www.nwea.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif"}}],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n
Molding mindsets<\/h2>\n
Homework headaches<\/h2>\n
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Engaging with math at home at various ages and stages<\/h2>\n
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Igniting a love for math<\/h2>\n