If you’ve ever wondered: How can I successfully help my student with maths? This article is for you!
Author
Amber Watkins
Published
February 2024
If you’ve ever wondered: How can I successfully help my student with maths? This article is for you!
Author
Amber Watkins
Published
February 2024
If you’ve ever wondered: How can I successfully help my student with maths? This article is for you!
Author
Amber Watkins
Published
February 2024
Key takeaways
Helping your child with maths is similar to a building project; with the right tools you can successfully provide maths help to your year 5 student.
Your attitude towards maths is contagious. If you remain positive, you will help your child maintain a positive outlook on maths.
Taking advantage of online resources like maths apps can help your child succeed in maths.
Last year your child was introduced to their first multiplication facts. This year in year 5 maths, they must build on what they’ve learned. This can be a scary time for two reasons. First, it is common for students to progress to year 5 without fully mastering basic multiplication. Second, other challenging topics like fractions will be introduced.
Don’t fret, with the right tools you can successfully provide maths help while building your child’s confidence and enjoyment in learning.
The first tip when providing maths help for children in year 5 is to remember your attitude is contagious. If you show feelings of angst, frustration, or fear, your student will develop the same feelings toward maths and you can unknowingly “tear down the house.” What can you do? Try to remain positive! Here are 8 ways to have a positive experience helping your student with maths.
Maths help for year 5 students can be simpler than you think. It just takes time, patience, and a bit of creativity. Take a look at our tutor recommended goals and try them out with your child this week.
Year 5 maths help begins at the right time. Taking a break after school is refreshing, but try to begin working shortly after to keep your student in the “school mentality”. This will prevent them from losing motivation to do school work.
Goal: If possible, begin helping your child with homework within 30 minutes of them getting in from school or if your child is homeschooled, by the end of their last class.
Drawing pictures is one of the best ways to provide maths help. Pictures are less intimidating than words and are especially helpful when solving maths word problems, problems with fractions, and problems using area models. It’s like drawing the plans for a house; it can help your student see what they are trying to work on.
Goal: Next time you are reviewing year 5 maths problems with your child, draw a picture to illustrate the questions. If you’re stuck not knowing what to draw, reference sample maths questions as a guide and mimic what you see. Sample problems can be found in your child’s class notes, worksheets, or online in their class portal.
Regular practice of skip counting will help your child solve multiplication problems with ease. How do you skip count? When your student skip-counts by 5, they would say, “5, 10, 15, 20, 25…”
Goal: Have your child skip count using different numbers each day. First, practise skip counting by 2, 5, and 10; these are generally easier to learn. Next practise the more challenging numbers like 4, 6, 7, and 8.
“What is the product of 5 and 2?” The word product signals us to multiply these two numbers. However, a student who doesn’t remember what the word product means would have a difficult time answering this question. How to help? Review maths language with your child. The more maths terms they can remember, the easier word problems will become.
Goal: Review these vocabulary words and what operation they signal: either to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. Then use them in different maths questions to see if your child can remember what to do.
One of the best ways to make maths help enjoyable is to learn something new together. This allows you to model how to learn and how to positively deal with mistakes. It also helps your child see learning can be fun.
Goal: Before your next study session, learn this Nine-Times Tables Trick:
Here is a great way to check if your maths help is working. Next time your child completes a problem correctly, switch roles. Pretend your student is the teacher and see if they can “teach you” how to do the problem. While they are teaching you, they will be cementing what they are learning.
Goal: Try to switch roles once per study session to allow your student to teach what they are learning.
As you provide maths help during year 5, you may feel you need some extra support. That’s where their teacher comes in. Ask your child’s teacher what topics your student is struggling with and ask for recommendations. You may be surprised that they often just recommend more practice!
Goal: Search for practice problems that cover year 5 maths topics such as fractions, rounding whole numbers, place values, using maths operations, drawing and identifying lines and angles, and measurement conversions. You can find practice problems on maths apps or by simply googling year 5 maths problems.
The final tip when providing maths help is to incorporate technology in your lessons. Watching maths videos that cover year 5 maths topics helps your child learn difficult topics such as adding and subtracting fractions, multiplying using area models, and long division in an enjoyable way.
You will also find using a maths app is a very effective way to supplement classroom instruction. Our app for maths help provides year 5 maths help in a way that makes maths enjoyable, rewards effort over being right, and scaffolds learning. Plus, it keeps you updated the way a private tutor would, without the private tutor costs. You’ll get access to a dashboard that displays your child’s participation and progression on maths topics they struggle with. Check out our maths app today.
Goal: Check out our maths app to see if this could provide your child the extra help with maths they need.
We know helping a year 5 student with maths can be hard so we’ve provided a few frequently asked questions many parents have when their child needs help with maths.
You can help your child with maths by choosing the right time to study, drawing pictures to solve problems, practicing skip counting, reviewing maths language, learning multiplication tricks together, and incorporating technology in your lessons.
Year 5 students should be excellent multipliers, so they should know multiplication facts by heart. They will also learn other maths topics such as fractions, rounding whole numbers, place values, using math operations, drawing and identifying lines and angles, and measurement conversions.
Lesson credits
Amber Watkins
Amber is an education specialist with a degree in Early Childhood Education. She has over 12 years of experience teaching and tutoring elementary through college level math. "Knowing that my work in math education makes such an impact leaves me with an indescribable feeling of pride and joy!"
Amber Watkins
Amber is an education specialist with a degree in Early Childhood Education. She has over 12 years of experience teaching and tutoring students in maths. "Knowing that my work in maths education makes such an impact leaves me with an indescribable feeling of pride and joy!"
Amber Watkins
Amber is an education specialist with a degree in Early Childhood Education. She has over 12 years of experience teaching and tutoring elementary through college level math. "Knowing that my work in math education makes such an impact leaves me with an indescribable feeling of pride and joy!"
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