Math homework has been a challenge for families at least since the “New Math” curriculum was introduced in the 1970s. With math standards and curriculum changing in recent years, many parents are discovering that how they learned to do math is no longer how it is being taught. That frustration helped one Ohio father’s Facebook post go viral.

Recently, Chicago Parent shared three key pieces of advice to help parents help their child with math homework. These are:

  • Stop Teaching the Tricks: Teaching math has changed from following rules and algorithms to building an understanding mathematical concepts and reasoning. Teaching the “trick” that you were taught can undermine building that math foundation. Instead, have your child teach you how they were taught to solve the problem.
  • Stop Worrying About It Being Correct: Math homework is no longer just about applying the rules that were taught that day in class to several additional problems to learn the process by rote repetition. Homework now helps teachers understand what their students know and where they are struggling. Shift the homework focus from getting the right answer to working hard to solve problems. Mistakes and failures are an important part of building a growth mindset.
  • Stop the Negative Math Talk: Children look up to parents for a lot longer than their parents think they do. When you talk about being bad at math, your goal may be to create sympathy with your child and their struggles with math, but the message is that not everyone can do math, and that can make math an even bigger challenge for them in the future. Focus instead on how math, like anything that you are just starting out to learn, can be difficult, but that the harder and longer they work at math, the better and easier it will become.

Check out the full article for more information on helping your child with their math homework in a productive manner. Illinois PTA also has several additional articles on families and math here on One Voice Illinois: