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Communicating with Your School

Students learn best when their family and schoolwork together as a team for their success. Having a strong parent-teacher partnership will help your child be more successful in math. This partnership involves you as the parent sharing information about your child, and the teacher sharing with you what he or she observes and does with your child in the classroom.

What to Share with Your Child's Teacher

Families know their children best, including how they learn, their strengths, and their challenges. Sharing this information with your child’s teacher helps them teach more effectively. Here are some examples of what you can share:

  • Your child’s unique strengths: Pay attention to how your child thinks, plays, and solves problems, and share these insights with their teachers.
  • Observations from home routines: You have vital insight from home routines, which can help teachers co-develop knowledge about the child’s learning preferences.
  • Signs of math anxiety: If your child struggles with homework or shows signs of math anxiety, keep the teacher informed so you can work as a team to support learning. 
  • What strategies work best: Share if your child benefits from alternative strategies for learning math facts, such as songs, games, visual aids, or hands-on tools.

Questions to Ask

You should know how your child is doing academically, how they are being supported by their teachers, and how you can support at home. Parent-teacher conferences or email or phone calls are great opportunities to match your home efforts with the classroom.

These guides, Partnering for Possibility: How Families and Educators Can Support Children with Learning Differences in Math from the Center for Family Math and Questions to Ask Your Child’s Teacher About Math from the Virginia Department of Education and Learning Heroes, offer some great questions to ask to stay informed:

  • “Is my child at grade level in math?” Report card grades are only part of the story, so you should ask about benchmark tests to get a full picture of grade-level progress. You want to hear how the school finds out what your child knows, and if they are behind, how they are being supported with past skills (remediation) while focusing on current grade-level concepts (acceleration).
  • “Can you provide grade-level math examples like classwork?” Asking for these examples ensures that you know exactly what the work looks like.
  • “What else should I be looking out for as my child does math homework and classwork?” Modern math instruction focuses heavily on real-world application, so you should look for how your child shows they truly understand and can use the skills being taught. You should also watch for math anxiety and support them by celebrating progress and reminding them that making mistakes is how we learn.
  • “How can we work together to set and track goals?” Working collaboratively with your child and their teacher to set and track goals is a great way to support their math learning.

Tools You Can Use

Check out these other resources to learn more about how you can support your child in math by sharing information and asking questions.

Guide: Questions Parents Can Ask About Math Instruction

What You Will Learn: Specific, targeted questions designed to help you better understand the classroom’s instructional methods, available accommodations, and how to effectively advocate for your child’s unique learning needs.

Guide: Questions to Ask Your Child’s Teacher About Math

What You Will Learn: A foundational checklist of questions to ensure your child is on track for their grade level, along with practical tips to help build a “math mindset” and tackle math anxiety collaboratively.

Read: Parents: 19 Meaningful Questions You Should Ask Your Child’s Teacher

What You Will Learn: Open-ended, thought-provoking questions that go beyond just math and grades, helping you uncover how your child actually learns, how they interact with peers, and how they handle academic challenges.

Read: How to Talk to Your Child’s Teacher About Math Struggles: 4 Steps to Deeper Insights 

What You Will Learn: A clear, four-step framework for initiating a constructive, team-oriented conversation with the teacher when your child is experiencing math difficulties, helping you identify the root cause of the struggle.

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