Maths Evening for Parents The aim of this evening To develop parental support for creativity in mathematics; helping children to apply their cross-curricular links outside of the school environment. To develop the fluency and reasoning skills in all of our children.

THE ROLE OF PARENTS “Parents are a child’s first and most enduring educators, and their influence cannot be overestimated.” Review of Mathematics teaching in Early Years Settings and Primary Schools, Sir Peter Williams 2008 “Perhaps the single most important thing that parents can do to help their children with maths is to pass on a positive attitude.” Tanya Byron, Clinical Psychologist “Students' motivation to learn maths is higher among students whose parents discuss with them how mathematics can be applied to everyday life or who obtain mathematics materials for them.” The Programme for International Student Assessment 2013

What Is Reasoning In Mathematics? Reasoning is fundamental to knowing and doing mathematics. Some would call it systematic thinking. Reasoning enables children to make use of all their other mathematical skills and so reasoning could be thought of as the 'glue' which helps mathematics makes sense. Progression in reasoning There is a five-step progression in reasoning: a spectrum that shows us whether children are moving on in their reasoning from novice to expert. Children are unlikely to move fluidly from one step to the other, rather flow up and down the spectrum settling on a particular step that best describes their reasoning skills at any one time.

Step one: Describing: simply tells what they did. Step two: Explaining: offers some reasons for what they did. These may or may not be correct. The argument may yet not hang together coherently. This is the beginning of inductive reasoning. Step three: Convincing: confident that their chain of reasoning is right and may use words such as, ‘I reckon’ or ‘without doubt’. The underlying mathematical argument may or may not be accurate, yet is likely to have more coherence and completeness than the explaining stage. This is called inductive reasoning. Step four: Justifying: a correct logical argument that has a complete chain of reasoning to it and uses words such as ‘because’, ‘therefore’, ‘and so’, ‘that leads to’... Step five: Proving: a watertight argument that is mathematically sound, often based on generalisations and underlying structure. This is also called deductive reasoning.

Can You Use Reasoning To Solve This Problem? Coded Hundred Square is an example of a task which can be solved in a number of different ways. This time, the hundred square is presented as a coded jigsaw and the idea is to complete it.

When there are different strategies to solve a problem One solution we received, from Anna, describes her method: I knew that the square went from 1 to 100. That meant there was a number that had 3 digits (100). I worked out that all of the numbers on the first row only had one digit so I started from the first row and worked my way on. By contrast, Rebecca used a completely different strategy: The way I worked it out was easy I just forgot about the numbers and the code and I just fitted the shapes in the way that they would go, and at the end I worked out the code and the numbers were right. Making the decision as to how to tackle the activity necessarily involves reasoning.

Building resilience It is important that children understand that there are more ways than one to solve a problem. Some questions are open ended, there may be a variety of responses. Most importantly all children must be allowed to make mistakes.

Where Did You Use Maths Today? You have definitely used maths today, but in what context? Discussion time.

Maths And Your Child It is vital that the children understand how to apply maths in everyday life, taking their learning out of the classroom. Maths is not just about answering a page of calculations!

This is where you can really help enormously. Every opportunity for real maths – grasp it Every parent and carer can do their bit to help inspire their children to be successful in maths. Show your child that you like the subject giving them the confidence that they can do it too. Time – please help your children to read the time on an analogue and a digital clock. Every day talk about the time. What time does Brownies start? Oh how long have we got before we have to go to....

The plane departs at.... And we need to be at the airport 2 hours before so what time have we got to be there? etc Cooking – measures, weighing food out, having a realistic idea of how much something weighs. Capacity also – how much liquid in the bottle, what unit of measure it is. Shopping – Go shopping with real money (not a credit card) so that children can experience using coins, paying bills and experiencing ‘change’ and using the right coins. Talking about discounts, profits, percentage reductions.

Help them practise their times tables. Remember to use a range of websites to help you- there are some times table songs, number bond games and with quick mental maths recall- little and often is best! Let children play maths at home- whether it is using litre jugs in the bath for measuring liquids or weighing ingredients in the kitchen- real life practice really helps children to understand how to estimate measures and apply knowledge. Play board games like Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Pop to the Shops, Top Trumps etc.

Help children to understand how to use bus or train timetables, maps, co-ordinates by playing ‘Battleships ’ Working with your child at home on real problems will help your child to tackle the complex problems they will face with the new curriculum. Measuring tiles for the bathroom. How much flooring will be required?

Working with your child at home on real problems will help your child to tackle the complex problems they will face with the new curriculum. Support your child by: Encouraging number fluency through playing games that require number facts to be used (including times tables) Help your child become fluent at written methods, using the method they are working with at school Use every opportunity at home to emphasise and use maths in the real world.

Websites The following websites are useful tools for embedding mathematical understanding, improving mental maths skills, supporting parental understanding and making maths fun. Please use them to support your children’s learning: – an online learning resource to which Holy Cross School subscribes. Your child will have their own usernames and password details to access designated tasks from teachers. – activities and explanations across the curriculum. – a variety of games and activities across the curriculum. – Fun games on a wide variety of mathematical themes with different levels of challenge. – more challenging investigations for the very keen mathematician.