Rather than just asking students to get an answer and the teacher telling them whether they are right or wrong, students today are being asked to not only provide an answer, but to also provide proof as to how they know they are correct. Parents can support this learning as well by asking the same types of questions of their children as they engage them in Mathematics activities. As children work ask questions like Why did you...? What can you do next? Do you see any patterns? Does the answer make sense? How do you know? This helps to encourage thinking about mathematics.

Parents can help their children with Mathematics by engaging them in a variety of Mathematics activities, especially by pointing out and solving the Mathematics that they use in everyday life. This could be scenarios like measuring ingredients while preparing a meal, estimating the number of free throws a player can make, the number of laps a swimmer can swim in a given amount of time. (Ex. If I can swim two laps in 4 minutes, then how many laps do you think I can swim in 8 minutes? How many in 10 minutes?)

There is often more than one way to solve a math problem. Encourage your child to experiment with different approaches to mathematics. Try to avoid pushing one way over another and honor the strategy that they choose to use. Ask your child to show his/her work in a way that anyone could understand. This could be done by drawing a diagram or showing the steps as they solve problems. Remember, we are teaching children to be thinkers and develop problem solving skills that they will carry with them throughout their lives.