"Math is a scary subject for me."
"I was never any good at math, and my kids aren’t either."
"I think math is important for my children, but I don’t know how to help them."
These are commonly held feelings among parents, especially parents of middle school children who are approaching more complex and potentially intimidating math.
In support of families and communities, the PRIMES team is developing a range of materials that will build parents’ math confidence and enable them to be supportive of their children’s math learning. Every day, people reason mathematically and use math to make decisions and find solutions to day-to-day problems. Yet, that mathematical knowledge remains invisible to many of us. PRIMES materials will make it visible and build on this everyday approach to math in the following ways:
Ten workshops that focus on real-world situations to highlight the presence of math, build parents’ confidence in their existing skills, and help find practical ways to support their children’s math learning.
A Parent Action Guide that provides a range of information from explaining practices like tracking, to helping parents arrange a meeting with their child’s teacher.
A documentary-style television special in which real families are shown using math in daily life, from budgeting to sewing costumes for a dance performance.
A Story from the Field
We field-tested our Shop Around workshop with a group of about ten parents in San Francisco. One of the parents in the community led the group through the activity which mainly includes playing a game in which the players go through a week of shopping, day-by-day.
One of the parents in the group had no confidence in her ability to understand math concepts and was extremely nervous about the workshop. In fact, she almost left before we got started. The other parents encouraged her, and she agreed to stay. The game was a challenge, but she played and even started to enjoy it a little bit. After the game was over, participants watched a video highlighting the math they had used. The nervous parent was surprised to realize she had successfully used math skills to complete the game. Before leaving, she shared with the WestEd team she had been so afraid of coming to a "math workshop" that she had to kneel and pray for the courage to attend. When asked if the workshop helped her feel more confident about math, she said she was still nervous but would probably be willing to come to another workshop now.
Director: Jennifer Knudsen
Contact: Jennifer Knudsen
Tel: 510-302-4273
Email: jknudse@wested.org
Link to our Web site: http://www.stanford.edu/group/primes
This project is part of WestEd's Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics (STEM).
