S UPPORTING YOUR CHILD WITH M ATHS W EST L OTHIAN C OUNCIL West Lothian Numeracy Development Team 2016

E NCOURAGE PLAY WITH G AMES AND P UZZLES Puzzles and games or anything with a dice will help kids enjoy maths and develop numeracy and logic skills. Online maths puzzles for older learners Maths Apps

A LWAYS ENCOURAGE Try not to tell them that things are just ‘wrong’ Ask them to explain their thinking about how they got their answer. Draw a picture to check their work. E.g. 3 x4 = 7 - “Ok, I see what you did there, this sign (x) means groups of, let’s draw a picture to see what that looks like.”

A NXIETY ABOUT SPEED Reassure your child Talk to Class Teacher Beat That Challenge is only one form of assessment that teachers use.

B E WARY OF SHARING YOUR OWN NEGATIVE ATTITUDE OF MATHS Researchers found that as soon as mothers shared that idea with their daughters, their daughter’s achievement went down (Eccles & Jacobs, 1986)

E NCOURAGE N UMBER S ENSE Encourage number sense. What separates high and low achievers in primary school is number sense, i.e. having an idea of the size of numbers and being able to separate and put numbers together flexibly (Gray & Tall, 1994). For example, when working out , if you take one from the 56 and make it The flexibility to work with numbers in this way is what is called number sense and it is very important !

I CAN ’ T DO IT … YET – G ROWTH M INDSET Perhaps most important of all, encourage a growth mindset, i.e. the idea that ability and smartness change as you work more and learn more. The opposite to this is a fixed mindset, where the idea is that ability is fixed and you can either do maths or you can’t. When children have a growth mindset, they do well with challenges and do better in school overall (Dweck, 2006)

I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW MORE …. Ask your child’s teacher or a member of the management team. Maths for Mums and Dads – Rob Eastaway & Mike Askew Family maths toolkit Khan Academy