Is your child reluctant to go to school? Not bringing homework home? Refusing to read and write? Disliking mathematics?
Parental involvement in children learning to read, write, and do mathematics is a key factor in them doing well at school. Parental involvement shapes the child’s identity as a learner, and sets higher expectations for the child to do well with mastering reading, writing, and mathematics skills. I encourage you to become involved in your child’s learning so they can become excellent and confident students.
Involvement in supporting your children’s reading, writing and mathematics education requires a little time and patience from you, and the expectation that they practice at home skills they are learning at school. Perhaps you are thinking this involves hours and hours of extra work. On the contrary, regular short bursts of time practising reading, writing, and mathematics skills a few days a week will make a noticeable difference in your child’s performance at school. And you can extend and develop your child’s skills beyond what is possible at school where your child has limited one-on-one teacher time.
Tips:
- Keep checking and rechecking which reading, writing, and mathematics strategies your children are using.
- Be prepared to spend more time practising the skills you thought they had mastered.
- Respond calmly and without disappointment or any other negative emotion when they make mistakes or use poor strategies when reading, writing, and doing mathematics.
- Realise that making mistakes is part of the learning process and that if you spend time coaching reading, writing, and mathematics skills, you give your child the time and feedback necessary to change ineffective old habits.
- A coach is always checking ‘how’ their student completes their work. Whether they get the right or wrong answer is secondary to ‘how’ they do it. If they consistently use the most useful strategies when reading, writing, and doing mathematics, they will, over time, become very good students.
- I say to my students, whatever their age, that they have to create new memory patterns and allow the old patterns to grow over by not using them. I tell them that, “Practicing reading, writing, and mathematics skills is the same as walking regularly down a pathway so that any weeds are trampled under and the path becomes broad and easy to walk on”.
I like to share my coaching ideas with as many people as possible so share this post with other like-minded families so they too can develop the skills to create exceptional students in their families.
Warmly,
Families as Coaches 