Can you help your child to enjoy maths? | Integrated Learning Therapy

I attended a talk on the magic and mysteries of numbers recently. The presenter gave fascinating insights to the world of mathematics but admitted that too many people are wary of maths and tend to avoid the subject. It seems as though children need encouraging to look at the world of numbers with enjoyment rather than fear. How can you help?

Recently Dr Melania Alvarez of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences and University of British Columbia Department of Mathematics, and Dr Lindsey Daniels, assistant professor of teaching in the Department of Mathematics were asked how we can help children succeed at maths. Their answers to key questions are given below.

Why do you think some young people are scared of math?

MA: Most children like math when they are very young, but as they hear from their teachers, parents and people around them that math is hard or difficult, a fear of math or anxiety sets in.

It’s important for parents to instead talk about the importance of math and how fun and interesting it can be.

LD: One of the issues for students leaving high school and entering university is uncertainty. At university, classes are much bigger and the pace is often faster.

What can parents do to set their children up for math success?

MA: Parents can expose their children to fun and interesting math activities at all ages. For instance, did you know you can earn a living doing origami for NASA?

There are a lot of games you can play, and they don’t have to cost money. For example, when you’re out driving, use the numbers on license plates to get to a specific number. We’ve put together a resource with more of these sorts of games.

Lead by example and show an interest in math. When children see their parents reading, they read. Math is the same. Teach them how to think like a mathematician by asking them, how did you use math today?

LD: It’s important to be consistent. Math is like stacking LEGOs—it’s OK if there’s one missing brick when building a wall, but if there are multiple missing bricks, it will crumble. We want strong foundations before moving on to new concepts.

Be a cheerleader for your child: If they come home with a low test score, help them identify what topics they need to work on and a successful study strategy for moving forward. Everyone has gotten a bad grade—even those of us with Ph.D.s in math! It’s an opportunity to identify where there’s a missing brick and plug that gap.

How can parents help young people heading to university?

LD: Parents can support their kids in asking for help, whether that’s from the instructor, the teaching assistant or the math help center on campus, including UBC’s center. Offer to go with them, or to watch some YouTube videos like Numberphile and 3Blue1Brown and take notes together.

Encourage your child to set themselves up for success: They should attend class, take notes, go to office hours, find a study strategy that works for them and apply it consistently. This will look different for every student. It might take a term or two, so it’s best to start figuring this out early.

A great strategy is to ask them to teach the concept or terminology to you, because to coherently explain something, you have to really know it. Ask with enthusiasm to show you’re interested.

What can parents do if they notice their child is struggling?

MA: Making mistakes is part of learning. Talk about the mistake and work on it together to find a way forward.

LD: It’s 100-per-cent OK to tell your kid, “I don’t know, but I’m going to start asking questions.”

Validate your child’s feeling: It’s OK that this is challenging. Offer to work through a problem together, or find an easier problem to tackle first. Write out questions together for their teacher. And ask about available resources at school you can look at together.

Provided by University of British Columbia.

Image supplied by Freepik.

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Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.