{"id":4857,"date":"2019-07-28T08:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-28T13:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=4857"},"modified":"2019-07-27T20:53:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-28T01:53:06","slug":"when-parents-teach-reading-do-they-also-promote-math-skills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/when-parents-teach-reading-do-they-also-promote-math-skills\/","title":{"rendered":"When Parents Teach Reading, Do They Also Promote Math Skills?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Parents begin teaching children well before schooling starts. Obviously.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In fact, parents often teach children topics that we might consider “academic”: say, how to read<\/em>, or, how to count<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Researchers might investigate this parental pre-school teaching with some reasonable hypotheses.<\/p>\n

For instance:<\/p>\n

Presumably, the way that parents teach reading<\/strong><\/em> influences the reading<\/strong> skills<\/em> that their children develop.<\/p>\n

Likewise, presumably, the way parents teach numbers and counting<\/strong><\/em> influences the math<\/strong> skills<\/em> that their children develop.<\/p>\n

Let’s ask a more counter-intuitive question:<\/p>\n

Does\u00a0the way that parents teach reading<\/strong><\/em> influence their children’s\u00a0math<\/strong> skills<\/em>?<\/p>\n

In other words, does early teaching in one discipline influence understand in a different discipline?<\/p>\n

That question might raise skeptical eyebrows, for a number of reasons. In particular, most research that asks this kind of\u00a0transfer<\/em> question comes back with a negative answer.<\/p>\n

That is: learning in one discipline (say: playing piano) doesn’t usually make you better at another discipline (say: doing calculus).<\/p>\n

Today’s Study<\/h2>\n

Researchers in England<\/a>\u00a0wanted to explore this surprising hypothesis. They had hundreds of parents fill out questionnaires. Some questions focused on parental approaches to reading:<\/p>\n

How often does the child discuss the meaning<\/em> of a story with an adult?<\/p>\n

or<\/p>\n

How often is the child encouraged to name letters or sound out words<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Other questions focused on parental approaches to numbers:<\/p>\n

How often is the child encouraged to identify numbers in books or the environment?<\/p>\n

They then tested the children on a variety of number and math skills.<\/p>\n

Can you put two ducks in the pond?<\/p>\n

Can you point to the number 5?<\/p>\n

If two horses are on the path, and another joins them, how many horses are on the path?<\/p>\n

So, what did they find? Did either of the reading<\/em> approaches predict number and math skill<\/em>? Did they predict those skills better than the parents’ direct focus on numbers and math?<\/p>\n

The Results<\/h2>\n

Yes, and yes.<\/p>\n

The parents’ approach to reading predicted math success\u00a0better than the parents’ focus on numbers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

And, when comparing the two approaches to reading,<\/p>\n

A focus on letters and sounds<\/strong><\/em> led to better math performance than did a focus on the meaning<\/strong> of the story.<\/em><\/p>\n

In the dry language of research:<\/p>\n

Only letter-sound interactions could predict statistically significant unique variance in counting, number transcoding and calculation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What Should Parents Do?<\/h2>\n

This research pool is deep and complicated, and — as far as I can see — we’re not yet able to offer definitive parenting advice.<\/p>\n

So, this study found that parental focus on letter-sound interactions improved later math skills.<\/p>\n

But:<\/p>\n

Self-reports aren’t always reliable (although they’re very common in this field), and<\/p>\n

The differences weren’t all that great, and<\/p>\n

We have many different goals when we teach children to read<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: if our only<\/em> goal were to help students understand numbers, then this study would encourage parents to focus substantially on letter-sound relationships.<\/p>\n

But, of course, we want our children to think about the meaning of stories too. That’s one way they learn important developmental lessons. That’s how they think about meaning in their own lives.<\/p>\n

This study — especially if it’s confirmed by later research — encourages us to use several strategies to teach our children about words and reading.<\/p>\n

And, it gives us reason to think that those multiple approaches will help them with books, and with numbers too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New research from England gives parents insight into the relationship between learning to read and learning to count.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[65,64,63,47],"class_list":["post-4857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-math","tag-parents","tag-pre-k","tag-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4857"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4866,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4857\/revisions\/4866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}