Research taster

Parents can often feel unable to help their children with their maths homework because the children are learning different ways of doing maths from the ones they are used to. Many parents feel that they will confuse their children if they also show them other methods of calculation.

Your evidence  

When you set maths homework, you could ask your pupils to chat to their parents about how they do the tasks, and whether their parents do it differently. In the next lesson you could ask the children to explain to others in their group the alternative approaches they have found. Encourage them to discuss which ways they prefer and why. You might like to keep a record of the different ways of doing maths your pupils discover.

Moving forward

Now you have a clearer idea of the approaches to maths your pupils’ parents are familiar with, would it be worthwhile to work these into your planning for future years? You could, for example, produce a sheet with worked examples using different approaches and ask your pupils to decide with their parents which approach they would like to use.

Find out more

Find out more about the TLRP Home-school knowledge exchange project at: http://www.tlrp.org/project%20sites/HomeSchool/index.htm

Find out more about effective home-school liaisons at: http://www.gtce.org.uk/policyandresearch/research/ROMtopics/parentalrom/ or

http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/research/themes/parents/