Mathematics can benefit students beyond the classroom, whether they’re predicting scientific discoveries at their future jobs, measuring ingredients in the kitchen or saving up for a new video game. However, some children face challenges in understanding math concepts.
Fortunately, as a homeschooling parent, there is much you can do to help your child. This guide explores several strategies to help students struggling with math.
Why Do Students Struggle With Math?
Math learning difficulties often stem from somewhere. Here are three core reasons a child may struggle to understand math concepts:
- Math anxiety: Children may feel anxious when trying to solve math problems if they lack confidence. This tension and anxiety may interfere with their efforts to solve problems, whether in academic situations or ordinary life. One study shows that 20%-25% of children experience math anxiety, often lasting into adulthood. This makes it important to build their confidence early on.
- Lack of foundation: Understanding the basics helps students grasp more advanced math topics. When children lack foundational knowledge, they may find advanced topics more challenging and have trouble making crucial connections. These students may need extra time with the basics before moving on to more complex concepts.
- Learning difficulties: Some children may struggle with math due to a learning disability. A common one is dyscalculia, sometimes referred to as math dyslexia. It can be impacted by genetic factors, development, injury or environment. Common signs of dyscalculia include struggling to process charts and graphs, difficulty judging lengths, frustration with games that involve numbers, and challenges with math homework. If you suspect your child may have a learning disability, speak with a qualified professional.
Signs Your Child May Need Math Support
Several signs can indicate your child is struggling with math:
- Expressing negative comments about math and trying to avoid math-related activities
- Finding it challenging to connect math families, such as the relationship between 3+2=5 and 5-2=3
- Using their fingers to count when they are past their early years of learning
- Trouble maintaining their focus and attention while learning math concepts or completing math tasks
- Test scores are lower in math yet higher in other subjects
- Difficulty applying math concepts to real-world problems
- Finding it challenging to understand and remember basic math concepts
- Issues learning advanced math concepts and facts
- Not hitting learning milestones that students of the same age would have already hit
- Not trying to find alternative approaches to reach an answer or not grasping that they can do so
3 General Strategies for Struggling Math Students
Certain techniques can solve some math difficulties, such as negative mindsets, math anxiety and trouble understanding complex concepts. Here are some things you can do for your child when they experience math learning challenges.
1. Create a Supportive Learning Environment
Children may be more eager to learn in an environment where they feel safe, supported and understood. You can build a supportive learning environment by encouraging and displaying a positive mindset. As a homeschooling parent, you’ll want to remember that your feelings about a concept or topic can rub off on children. If your child has a negative attitude toward mathematics, try to be more enthusiastic while teaching.
Show them the fun of solving problems and relate those concepts to real-life situations. Reward your child’s progress and celebrate wins so that your child feels good about their achievements. Praise your child often and sincerely. Some simple rewards may include finishing class early, offering an extra few minutes of break, getting their favorite snack or ordering their favorite takeout.
2. Address Math-Related Stress
If your child experiences math-related anxiety, try the following tips:
- Encourage more organized note-taking techniques.
- Replace negative self-talk with positive affirmations.
- Try additional resources, such as math game websites and YouTube videos.
- Recommend deep breathing exercises during exams or difficult assignments.
- Cultivate a growth mindset that tells students anyone can learn math.
You will also want to watch your language when discussing math concepts — saying something like, “Let’s move on and do something more fun” can reinforce that math is something to fear.
3. Implement a Personalized Math Curriculum
Sometimes, struggling students just need a personalized math curriculum that caters to their unique learning needs. A supplemental homeschool math curriculum usually includes resources that better engage your child based on their learning style. For example, it might include professionally filmed, fun video lessons, real-life examples of mathematical ideas, memorization drills and help videos for challenging concepts.
Children may also benefit from self-paced learning, which allows them to learn and progress at their own pace. This ensures they only move on to challenging concepts after they understand foundational knowledge.
3 Interventions for Struggling Math Students
A math intervention is a targeted approach to help students overcome math hurdles. It is typically used for students who are a few levels behind in a math topic. Homeschooling parents can incorporate this solution as a dedicated class tailored to address their particular learning gap.
Here are a few math intervention strategies you can implement to help your child get back on track.
1. Provide Differentiated Instruction
Differentiated instruction involves providing your child with multiple learning paths. This method allows your child to absorb, present, use and develop concepts in varying ways during their daily learning process. To develop instruction pathways, you should consider your child’s learning needs, interests and abilities.
You can achieve this by catering to your child’s unique learning style, whether visual, kinesthetic or auditory. Differentiated instruction may include hands-on teaching lessons or video demonstrations, among other options. You’ll also want to adjust the pace according to your child’s needs.
2. Incorporate Scaffolded Instruction
Scaffolded instruction involves gradually reducing your support as your child’s teacher over time. Giving students independence may help them learn to rely on themselves and their capabilities to solve math problems. Start by leading highly structured activities, and gradually shift to activities your child is meant to work through on their own. During this time, provide helpful tools and resources like help videos, reference materials and cheat sheets to guide them.
Remember to offer your guidance along the way when they need help. Gradually removing yourself from their learning journey may help them gain the necessary skills and confidence to master concepts on their own.
3. Build Math Vocabulary
Students need a solid math vocabulary to follow instructions, express mathematical thought processes and understand questions. For instance, they’ll need to understand that words like “sum,” “addition,” “total” and “altogether” mean the same thing.
To improve your child’s math language and help them understand better, practice key terms together in context during lessons. You can also display visual aids of these terms on the walls of the homeschooling room setup. Encourage your child to use specific math language while explaining their thought processes and reasoning.
4 Ways to Help Elementary School Students With Math
The above strategies and interventions can work for children of all ages. Still, some strategies may be more effective for certain age groups. Let’s explore four strategies that may work particularly well for elementary school students.
1. Use Visual Aids
Visual aids and graphic organizers provide easy-to-understand visuals that may help improve your child’s understanding of complex math concepts. Some examples include charts, diagrams, posters and videos. Presenting information visually brings concepts to life and helps visual learners see the relationships between ideas.
For example, encourage your child to draw and color while learning fractions and geometry to enhance memory retention and comprehension. You could also make an activity out of creating handmade posters and diagrams to display on the walls.
2. Provide Gamified Lessons
Children may find math more fun and interesting if they see it as a game. Educational online games can enhance engagement and understanding. These apps cover mathematical concepts while providing engaging learning experiences, resources to support diverse learning needs and immediate feedback.
Integrate these apps into lessons by teaching concepts and allowing students to enjoy an educational game covering the same concept. This is a great way to ensure they practice regularly and improve their memory retention.
3. Practice With Your Child Daily
While gamified learning allows your child to practice and have fun, you may still want to sit and practice with your child every day. Doing so may help you find areas they struggle with. When this happens, you’ll know which concepts to focus on before moving on to other topics.
These sessions can also help strengthen a student’s math skills and enhance their self-esteem. You can also take this time to reinforce their math reading comprehension. By getting them to read questions several times and break them down, your child may be able to understand questions better and answer them correctly.
4. Try Hands-On Learning Methods
Some children may understand concepts better with hands-on learning, which involves manipulatives. Manipulatives are physical tools or toys children can use to visualize mathematic ideas. Some examples include beads, blocks, Play-Doh, counting sticks or Lego bricks.
When you see your child having challenges calculating problems, you can use these tools to explain concepts more clearly. For example, you can use Lego bricks to create a number line as you teach negative numbers or create greater-than and less-than symbols with Play-Doh.
3 Ways to Help Middle School Students With Math
Here are three strategies to help your middle school child understand math concepts.
1. Encourage Breaks
When your middle schooler has trouble understanding math concepts, they may become frustrated with themselves. Rather than letting your child sit and solve problems until they understand them, encourage them to take a five-minute break. Forcing it may cause negative feelings toward math to take over their mindset.
This break may also help you think of better approaches to the concept. Once the break is over, your child can face the challenge with a clear mind and fresh perspective.
2. Personalize Lessons to Your Child’s Interests
Does your child have any special interests? Try to incorporate these topics into the learning experience. For example, you could create questions in the context of their favorite show, animals or best friends. This might enhance their engagement in the lesson and make problems more fun to solve.
For example, if your child enjoys sports and athletics, you can devise questions based on these interests. You might ask them to create a pie chart of the most popular sports, create a word problem about their favorite famous athlete or calculate the area of different fields. This also offers a great opportunity to link questions in a real-world context, helping your child understand how math concepts might be used in real life.
3. Encourage Peer Tutoring
Create sessions for your child to tutor their siblings or other family members about what they learned. Peer tutoring is an excellent method for encouraging your child to explain their understanding aloud, reinforcing their own understanding and informing the person they’re teaching.
This is especially helpful when your child thinks they don’t fully understand concepts yet. In the process, they may find that they understood more than they knew, boosting their confidence. Even if they do get stuck, this helps them identify where their areas for improvement lie.
3 Ways to Help High School Students With Math
If you’re teaching a high school student, consider incorporating the following into their math lessons.
1. Connect Math Problems With Real Life Applications
High school students are already thinking about career paths. Often, they wonder how math will be relevant to their future. This makes it important for homeschooling parents to show their children how math is used in real life.
For example, if your child is interested in hands-on projects or fashion design, you might show them how math skills can help them take more accurate measurements. Similarly, children interested in sports might be surprised to hear that there are careers in sports that use math to analyze data during various sports events. Geometry, trigonometry and physics may also help athletes enhance their performance.
2. Use Engaging Materials
As math becomes more complex in high school, homeschooling parents should try to find ways to make it interesting and fun. For instance, you might leverage video lessons taught by entertaining instructors, play games like Jeopardy or create hands-on math experiments.
Using fun materials gives students a chance to see math from a new perspective, helping them stay engaged throughout lessons.
3. Take Time to Reflect
Factor time into your child’s homeschool lessons to reflect on what they learned. Reflection is necessary for evaluating how well they understand topics and possible improvement areas. For example, after completing a project or exam, your child can journal some questions and answers like:
- What worked?
- Did I use a new approach?
- What didn’t work?
- What could I have done differently?
Implement a Mathematics Curriculum With Power Homeschool
Implementing a math curriculum based on your child’s learning needs can be valuable to their success. Power Homeschool is the official provider of hundreds of Acellus® courses for homeschooling parents. Our homeschool math curriculum can work as a supplement program to help your child improve their understanding of math concepts.
We offer math courses for students from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade with resources like fun video lessons, memorization drills, help videos, real-life applications and interactive course materials. To learn more, view the benefits of our online mathematics curriculum today.
