The Piece of Maths Knowledge Your Child Is Missing
Many parents believe that improving a child’s maths is all about practice, repetition, and times tables.
While these are essential for building fluency, there is a missing part that is overlooked, and is what actually helps children progress through the curriculum.
Fluency vs Understanding
Fluency is the basic understanding of number concepts and the ability to carry out calculations. This is what many children can do, however, you may have noticed your child giving answers like:
“it just is the answer… I don’t know how to explain it.”
This is where the gap begins to show.
What’s missing? Reasoning and Problem Solving
The area many children struggle with is reasoning and problem solving. This means:
Understanding what the question is asking
Choosing the correct method to solve it
Explaining why that method works
Justifying their final answer
Without this, maths becomes about guessing or memorising and lacks true understanding.
How You Can Support at Home
There are a few simple ways to build these skills at home.
1. Ask “How did you get that?”
Encourage your child to explain their thinking step-by-step. This helps them process and understand their method, not just the answer. This will also help them to catch any mistakes.
2. Make mistakes on purpose
Solve a problem incorrectly and ask your child “Is this right? What did I do wrong?”
Children love to spot mistakes and be the one in the know. This will build their reasoning skills quickly and give them a confidence boost.
3. Use multi-step story problems
Introduce word problems that require more than one step to solve. This will help children break the problem down, think deeply about what the question is asking, and apply their knowledge in different ways.
Conclusion
Fluency is important but it is only one piece of the whole puzzle. By developing reasoning and problem solving skills, your child will build a strong, well-rounded foundation in maths that will support them as they progress through school.
