Math Homework Tips for Parents Homework is an important part of your child’s learning process in math. To help support your child, here are some helpful tips…
Staying Organized
Staying consistently organized is an important structure in doing well in school, in any class! You can help your child stay organized by doing the following:
Helping With Homework
When your child gets stuck, encourage your child to figure out as much as they can by themselves. You can do this by suggesting the following:
More Math
In addition, there are plenty of other ways that you can support your child’s math learning at home:
Staying Organized
Staying consistently organized is an important structure in doing well in school, in any class! You can help your child stay organized by doing the following:
- Provide a consistent study place for your child to do their homework.
- Have the following materials available: paper, pencils, calculator, and ruler.
- Encourage your child to write down assignments in their planner while at school (we do in class every day!) and to look in their planner at home.
- Check the Source with your child to be sure that assignments are being turned in and to look at upcoming due dates.
- Help your child maintain an organized binder. Some kids need a lot of help in this department, but all kids need an organizational system to be successful!
Helping With Homework
When your child gets stuck, encourage your child to figure out as much as they can by themselves. You can do this by suggesting the following:
- Look at the work that was done in class. The homework is always practice of the skills we learned in class!
- Look at the notes we took in class. Every unit we study has a sheet of notes where we write down step-by-step directions and examples.
- Look back at the corresponding section of the book (with the CMP curriculum, this may not be as helpful). If your child still needs help, you can ask the following questions to guide them through the problem solving process:
- Gathering Info: What do you know? What are you trying to find? Have you solved problems similiar to this?
- Starting: How can you organize the information? What strategy could you use to start solving it?
- While Working: Do you see any patterns or relationships that will help solve this? What assumptions are you making?
- When Solved: Is your solution reasonable? How can you check to make sure it works?
More Math
In addition, there are plenty of other ways that you can support your child’s math learning at home:
- Middle school students are expected to know the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts. If your child is still struggling with these, help them master them with flash cards.
- Talk about how you use math at home and at work.
- Look for activities which require your child to use their math skills. For example, a trip to the grocery store could be filled with math (estimating costs, price per ounce, price comparisons, discount prices, etc.)
- Encourage your child to talk about the math that they learned in class.