An important point to remember in a helping role is ‘telling learners the right answer might get the homework done; however, a tutor helps them to learn for themselves and understand new ways of working'. This can only benefit mathematical thinking in the long run.
Usually children will only ask for assistance when they are stuck. Often it seems easier to just do the problem for them, but this certainly doesn't maximise their learning. Next time you have a plea for help, try asking a question such as, ‘What do you know?' or ‘What are you trying to find out?' and ‘What have you done so far?' Quite often actually talking through the problem will provide a prompt for moving forward.
Motivating learners is not an easy task. We all know as parents that there are many other more enjoyable pastimes for our children that prove an easy distraction. From an early age it is a good idea to involve children in as many family activities as possible that promote number skills and, most importantly, are enjoyable too. Easily available ones are - dominoes (especially the fives and threes version) and numerous family card games that involve scoring points in different ways. Both of these enhance children's learning in basic arithmetic and develop important aspects of mathematical thinking such as working out strategies and improving reasoning.
There are numerous books that have exercises you and your child can do together. However, kids are not always too keen working from books as it is very similar to what they have done for most of the week at school, so they are far more likely to be interested in a web based approach. An excellent web site for maths exercises, is nrich.maths.org, which covers all key stages from 1 to 6 with interactive problems, games and articles on all subjects with different degrees of difficulty. Just to ease your frustrations (should there be any!) the answers are included as well as hints. Also, there are activities involving geometric software, so for the learners it's not all pencil and paper!
If you become interested in assisting your children with their homework, as it really is interesting and rewarding, there is a very useful course offered by the OU, which is a Graduate Diploma in Mathematical Education. Another source of information and tips about helping children is the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, atm.org.uk.
Construct a grid of four circles. In each circle place a different arithmetic sign (add, subtract, multiply, divide). Try to find a way of getting each column and row to total the same amount by placing 12 numbers (a number can be repeated) around the circles as in the diagram.
In the example the rows and columns equal 7.
This exercise promotes further aspects of developing mathematical thinking, such as promoting the following:
These are just a few, but you can see how a simple game/exercise can start building for the future.
Endorsed by the Association of Maths Teachers.
