She’s a celebrity mum who ‘has it all’, except the ability to help her six-year-old daughter complete her maths homework…
Jessica Alba has confessed that she struggles to help her daughter with her homework, particularly when it comes to maths.
High five.
Down low.
Sing it sister.
I feel your pain.
The actress told US Weekly, “Honor is reading chapter books and doing math – but it’s so different from when I learned math. It’s all about grouping numbers. I look at it and I’m like, ‘Is that algebra? In the first grade?’
In Australia, that dreaded maths is part of a new maths movement called ‘flexible methods’ that involve such concepts as the Ten Method (whereby you round the number to the nearest ‘ten’ before adding or subtracting) and I too have no idea how to help my kids do it. I was taught the good-old-fashioned rote learning (repeat, repeat, repeat!) method where you added and subtracted exact numbers, over and over and over again until it was drilled into your head.
These days children are learning that maths is ‘creative’ and ‘flexible. Mike Askew, Professor of Primary Education at Monash University, Melbourne explained the concept to planningwithkids.com, saying, ‘They are teaching the children that you need to adjust what you are doing depending on the numbers you are working with. The kids are taught that there is more than one way to arrive at the answer.’
