Thank you to the families who attended our Math Fit evening on Wednesday evening.

Despite the rain, many took the opportunity to share strategies and to engage in activities that can be used at home to develop mathematical knowledge and skills.

If you were unable to attend, here are some key messages from the evening:

Model a positive attitude to math even if your own experience wasn’t positive.Math is everywhere.

Use the many opportunities to do math with your child and they will see the relevance of math to their lives.

Students at Year 7 and 8 need to use efficient math strategies (there are many ways to solve a problem).

They require a good understanding of math terminology/vocabulary (this is like knowing your basic facts).

They need to be able to explain and show their working (a lot of the math they will encounter at college is problem based and marks are earned for showing your working).

They need to be able to solve problem challenges (following a procedure only gets you so far).

Maths Buddy is an invaluable online resource (it goes all the way up to Year 13). It costs $28.80 for the year. If you haven’t yet paid for it, we highly recommend it. Your child will receive a password and you can use the tutorials to support with basic facts and concepts at home.

The nzmaths site has a wealth of resources for families: https://nzmaths.co.nz/families

I hope you find some useful ways to engage with math at home. The photos that follow certainly reflect the level of enjoyment and satisfaction that comes with parents and children ‘exercising’ together to be ‘Math Fit’.