The Lakes South Morang College Newsletter CURRICULUM
The nature of Mathematics has changed over the years, today students are taught to understand patterns, concepts about place value and problem - solving strategies. Students are encouraged to take risks, learn from their mistakes and come up with several solutions to a problem. They are also asked to provide reasons and evidence as to why their answers are correct. Gone are the days of rote learning and drills - based maths tasks. HOW CAN YOU HELP YOUR CHILD AT HOME? HELPING YOUR CHILD WITH MATHEMATICS AT HOME
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Expose your child to a wide variety of mathematical experiences at home such as cooking, counting objects, analysing shapes, estimating time, reading clocks, talking about the seasons, months of the year.
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Praise effort and try not to criticise errors.
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Encourage your child to show you how they worked out a problem. For example, you could ask your child, ‘ How did you figure that out? ’ or ‘ Is there another way to figure this out? ’ You could both do the same maths problem and compare how you worked out the answer. When shopping, observe prices, discuss rounding to the nearest dollar, ask the child to compare prices or to “ get the 2 L pack or the 500 g box ”.
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Discuss the dollar sign $, decimal point, % sign, ½ price sales etc.
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Encourage your child to identify coins, notes and make different amounts – e.g. What coins can we use to make $1 for Zooper Doopers?
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Do lots of measuring (spacing seedlings 30 cm apart), estimating lengths, half a cup etc.
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Encourage your child to play Card games to learn basic number facts, monopoly, snakes and ladders, share items equally, estimate length, height and weight of objects.
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Ask about the maths topics your child is learning at school and talk about how maths can help with everyday activities.
• Support your child to practise counting by a variety of numbers to support their development of counting and times tables knowledge.
• Encourage your child to try different ways to solve maths problems, especially when they get the wrong answer. Learning maths isn ’ t just about finding the right answer – it ’ s also about learning different ways to solve problems.
Your feelings about maths influence how your child thinks about maths. Even if you ’ ve grown up thinking that you ’ re not very good at maths, you can show your child that you appreciate how maths helps you to do everyday activities and things that you enjoy – for example, cooking, sports and playing card games.
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