We know that communicating with parents can be one of the toughest parts of being an educator. But as parent-teacher conferences roll around, it’s a great time to share the expectations you have set with your students for the school year. Especially when it comes to math!
In many states, shifts in math standards and teaching methods have left some parents bewildered. At DynaMath, our magazine that connects literacy with real-world math for grades 3 through 5, we frequently hear parents of kids say: “This isn’t the way I was taught math.” Fear and confusion can set in. These feelings can cause tension with teachers and leave students feeling negatively about math as well.
Parent communication can help prevent these situations. We’ve collected the following tips from math teachers across the country:
- Tell parents upfront that their children will be learning some problem-solving strategies that they may not recognize—and that’s OK.
- Tell parents where to go for help. Provide instructions for emailing or using a classroom-management portal if they have questions.
- Share DynaMath’s free video lesson on multiplication diagrams, or check out LearnZillion, where parents can see these teaching strategies in action.
- Banish negativity about math. Let parents know that such feelings can be self-sabotaging. We would never tell a child it’s OK to be “bad at reading.” Likewise, it shouldn’t be acceptable to be “bad at math.”
- Help parents make math part of their daily conversation at home. We recommend books in Marilyn Burns’s Math Reads collection or using programs such as Bedtime Math, which seek to make math talk as commonplace as a bedtime story.
Have fun!
-- Elizabeth Carney, Executive Editor, classroom magazines
