Teaching Maths

[mrsblakies]

Hi everyone. I’m after a bit of insight into how you all view teaching maths for your primary aged children. Especially any opinions or thoughts around maths anxiety and how you feel about teaching or understanding it. If anyone would like to share their views and maybe answer any of the following questions I’d really appreciate it.

1)Who or what do you use for support with your understanding of maths?
2)What are your main frustrations when dealing with or teaching maths?
3)What would help you feel more confident in helping your children with their maths?
4)If there was a course you could complete that showed and explained methods or deepened your understanding of maths would you be interested?

Thanks again all!

I think maths anxiety is often an artefact of the school system. It's a consequence of children coming under pressure at school to engage in abstraction before they have a solid grounding in hands-on, real-world maths. That grounding comes from letting them acquire life experience, only moving on to formal maths once they are confident. John Holt's classic "How Children Fail" is a good read. Benezet's experiment suggests that premature teaching of formal mathematics does more harm than good.

Children who have never been to school don't tend to get maths anxiety, because parents see it is senseless to push concepts before they are ready. Outside a school setting, it's possible to meet their individual needs. Once kids have established the basis for a higher level of abstraction, and are developmentally ready, they tend to become interested and pick it up very fast.

For those recently removed from school who are still suffering the consequence of inappropriate teaching, it's usually recommended that parents remove all pressure by giving them time without formal school-style lessons. Playing video games, doing DIY, measuring for sewing projects, and earning/saving/spending money are all natural ways to let them build confidence while they recover. They do eventually realise that they understand more than they thought they did.

Thank you so much for your reply. Do you think that maths anxiety affects parents as the main educators in home schooling having been through the school system? As traditional maths teaching often left out the why and encouraged the idea that you are either good or bad at maths can you feel the knock-on effect on your teaching and support you give to your children?