How to help your child learn math

Even if you’re not a math teacher

This year, many families have started playing a bigger role in their children’s education. We did this out of necessity, but many of us found that the process was actually quite rewarding and we were able to guide our children’s education better than we expected. Some of us found the process extremely frustrating and felt at a loss as to how to support their children’s learning without it becoming a full-time job. In the latter case, parents were often forced from a role of being excluded from their children’s education to being asked to become their child’s teacher overnight with little guidance or support.

I believe the right tools and a few strategies, any parent can support their children’s learning well, whether or not they have teaching experience or more than 20 minutes a day to be involved.

One of the subjects where parents and caregivers can make a biggest impact in their children’s learning is in math. That is because math is a subject that lends itself particularly well to independent study and one-on-one instruction.

And this is regardless of the parent or caregiver’s own proficiency in math. In my 20 years as at teacher and running a platform where we’ve trained 400 tutors, I’ve learned that teaching is much more about attitude, then subject expertise. Believe it or not, I’ve even taught children foreign languages I don’t know by encouraging them and guiding them to discover answers on their own.

A few “teaching” strategies

1. Modeling learning. We often suggest to parents that the best way to support a child’s learning in math is to learn along with them, modeling a process of finding tools and working through frustration to arrive at a solution. As children watch you learn, they’ll learn how to learn by observing you.
2. Trusting the process. Even better, a parent can demonstrate confidence that their child, when given time, will find the resources to solve the problem. You might be surprised by how far the words, “I believe in you. I know you can figure this out” can take a child in their learning process. Children are capable of incredible ingenuity when left to their own devices.
3. Don’t help. Oddly, by helping a child too much, we sometimes send them a subconscious message that they can’t figure it out themselves. When you trust in a child’s process and give them time, they learn that they can figure out any problem they set their mind to. Conversely, when you step in to help, you send them a message they can’t figure it out on their own. Rather than giving the child a fish, rather than teaching a child to fish or even showing them how to fish, we can take the metaphor a step further and have confidence that the child will teach themselves fish if they are hungry enough!
4. Long pauses. Generally, whenever I ask a child a question, I give them a very long time to respond. Actually, I give them infinite time to respond. I can see the wheels in their brain turning and it would be very wrong of me to interrupt the action going on there. Often, when my students ask me a question, I’ll respond, “I don’t know. What do you think? ”Followed by extremely long, patient and loving pauses full of confidence and present awareness.
5. Student as teacher. 95% of the time, when given enough time, trust, motivation and gentle encouragement, children will figure it out on their own. For the icing on a cake, have your child teach you the concept once they’ve mastered it. Student-as-teacher is one of my favorite teaching tools. This gives the child the chance to better understand their process and retain it next time. If you don’t understand, definitely ask clarifying questions. Don’t just pretend you get it.
6. One-on-one learning. Just by being one on one with your child, you are accelerating their learning, regardless of whether or not you apply the above techniques. When you give your child one-on-one attention or even when they’re engaged in independent study, they are able to move forward at their own pace, mastering each concept before moving on to the next. This approach of learning concepts sequentially and making sure each concept is mastered before a new one is introduced is referred to as mastery learning, a term joined by Benjamin Bloom in 1968. Bloom found the average tutored student performed 98% better than those in a control group.

Why does mastery learning work?

In a group lesson, a child may get be forced to skip an important concept when the rest of the class is moving ahead. Likewise, the same child may master another concept more quickly and be ready to learn the next, but have to wait until everyone else masters it until they can move on, therefore slowing down their process and interrupting their natural rhythms. When children learn in their own rhythm, they learn faster overall. Imagine if babies took group walking lessons and each baby had to wait until the next baby learned how to take a step before they could practice their next move. I imagine all the babies would take quite a longer time to learn. Likewise, babies who learned to walk slower generally walk just as well as adults as babies who learned to walk more quickly. What’s important is that they learn the skill, not when they learn the skill.

The other benefit of one-on-one instruction is that it gives the teacher or caregiver the opportunity to personalize instruction, making it relevant to a child’s interests and presenting the information in a way that makes it fun and engaging for their particular learning style.

Not every family has the luxury of a private tutor or the time to do one-on-one math lessons with their child.

When Benjamin Bloom did his research, there were not adaptive learning apps. Some bright , independent, visual learners taught themselves through books. However, adaptive learning apps have opened the way for children with other learning styles to teach themselves and have a lot of fun doing it. In fact, we’ve observed adaptive learning apps can work as well as a tutor (though even better if a parent, teacher or caregiver engages with the child while they are doing the app).

Our favorite curriculum tools

At Modulo, we like to incorporate fun, adaptive learning apps that make sure children learn at their own pace and don’t miss concepts. Generally, we have groups of 3–4 kids who work on an app together and get support from a teacher or peers when they get stuck. Through this approach, our group of kindergarteners who started with basic number sense this year are now performing 5th grade math level, simply by doing adaptive learning apps in a small group every day with the support of a virtual tutor. We had a small control group and our research methods were imperfect, but it is still pretty astounding to us how far the children came. We find that allowing children to go as slow or as fast as they’re ready ensures that everyone moves much faster (overall) than they would if we have to wait.

We tested several different tools for learning math. These are the ones we liked best.

1. Prodigy is a really fun, online game that is aligned with state standards and really fun to play. Students start with a problem and then can watch videos or get hints to learn to solve problems. Even better, basic membership is free. While it’s designed to be a supplement to learning at school, we’ve found that it works well as the main math learning tool, provided children watch the videos and use the hints to solve problems.
2. Math Tango is a delightful app for younger children that has multiple levels and kids can learn as they go. It’s currently available on IOS only.
3. Did you know your child can learn math through comic books? Beast Academy is a really fun tool for kids who love comic books, puzzles and games. The entire learning tool is actually comic books about math. We’ve also been told that this program has worked really well for families with children on the spectrum. If your kid loves comic books, Beast Academy is a dream come true.
4. For children who prefer more hands-on activities, Right Start math is a wonderful curriculum that incorporates physical materials and has a guide that’s easy for parents or caregivers to follow. Families have said that this has been a great choice for their child with dyscalculia, dysgraphia or ADHD.
5. Math-U-See is a favorite choice for children with dyslexia.
6. Singapore Math is an extremely solid curriculum for children who are gifted in math or enjoy workbooks. Singapore has a teacher’s manual that’s designed for parents or caregivers to use easily, even if they’ve never taught math before. Make sure you buy the teacher’s guide if you or a caregiver plan to use this program.
7. Dragon Box Algebra is a fantastic app we recently discovered that encourages problem solving skills, is really fun and really gets children thinking in a mathematical way, rather than just teaching them math standards.
8. For families who want to keep things offline, love nature and the outdoors, another program we love is Wild Math. It’s a 100% nature-based curriculum for learning math for K-5th grade.
9. For kids who like videos and YouTube videos, we absolutely love Math Antics. For some reason, this guy cracks us up while explaining concepts so clearly. Who knew someone could make math funny?
10. For younger children, Numberblocks is a delightful show to introduce math concepts, available on Youtube or Netflix.
11. Preschool children who love apps and interactive games may also love Homer, which has a great program for math or literacy.

Even if you use an all-in-one or a core curriculum (like Khan Academy), we recommend you choose a math supplement (a program that’s specifically designed for learning math). This is because math is a little more complex to teach than other subjects. We’ve generally found if the creators were focused specifically on developing a tool for learning math, the tool is better quality and more effective and teaching kids.

For families looking to take their child’s math skills to the next level, Modulo offers one-on-one and small group tutoring that combines adaptive learning apps with virtual tutors. If children are struggling with confidence in math or lack motivation, working with a Modulo child life specialist can also be a great way to tap into their intrinsic motivation, figure out their learning style and get them passionate about learning math again.

If you’re unable to afford private tutoring, we also run a non-profit called masteryhour.org that provides free math tutoring to K12 students, run by volunteers from top colleges and universities.

Have you used any adaptive, mastery-based apps that you love? Please let us know in the comments! We’d love to know about the latest apps you love so we can recommend them to the community and use them with our students!