Teaching parents lessons they need to help their kids
By Melissa Muntz Community Reporter

Westborough - Trying to understand third-grade math can be difficult, especially if you haven't been in third grade for 30 years or so.

Over the past few decades, there have been many changes in the way math is taught at the elementary school level. The methods that children are being exposed to now are completely new to most parents, which is why Liz Milhomme said she is working to make sure the parents at Armstrong Elementary School in Westborough have the information and skills they need to help their children with their homework.

"Before, math teachers just taught the steps and computations and kids were able to do the work, but they didn't understand what it meant," Milhomme said. "It's diff erent now in that the kids need to be able to explain their thinking and how they got their answers as opposed to just repeating the steps over and over again."

Milhomme said she was hearing the same concern over and over again during parent conferences - parents didn't feel they were able to help their children with their math work at home. When she found out that many of her colleagues were hearing similar concerns, she got the idea to hold a workshop for parents to answer their questions and give them the skills they need to assist their children at home.

Armstrong Elementary School teacher Liz Milhomme works to teach parents the skills they need to help their children understand their homework. PHOTO/MELISSA MUNTZ

"They were asking, 'What should I do when I don't know the answer?'" she said. "So we showed them some diff erent ways to talk with their children so that the kids will actually talk them through the process that they're learning in school."

One of the most important factors parents have to keep in mind when helping their child with math is their own personal outlook on the sometimes exasperating subject.

"When I asked one woman at the workshop what her memory of math was, she said, 'Crying,'" Milhomme said. "Math is a subject that's frustrating for a lot of people and if you're not so into math, your kids aren't going to be so into math, so we need to change people's attitudes."

Math is a subject that becomes easier with practice, so Milhomme said she encourages people to incorporate simple math into their children's day-to-day lives. She said turning math into a game is a fun and effective way to improve a child's overall skill level and level of understanding of how math relates to them in a real world setting.

"If you're going to the grocery store, you can do lots of different activities. For kindergartners, it's as simple as counting the items in your basket," she said. "For second and third-graders, you can estimate what the total will be, or determine how many of one item you can get for the cost of another."

The parent math workshop was so successful that Milhomme said she is planning three or four more that will take place throughout the year. Topics for these meetings haven't been determined yet, but Milhomme said she expects they will relate to other common parent concerns like behavior management and reading comprehension.