Why grade 1 maths is crucial?

Most learners get labelled for life either as clever or dumb according to his/her maths marks in grade 1. Keeping this in mind, it becomes crucial that a learner’s first experience and achievement of school maths is good.

How to ensure good results in grade 1 Maths?

Here are some important guidelines for grade 1 parents who wish success in maths for their children:

1. Don’t rely solely on the teacher to teach your grade 1 child. With between 20 and 40 learners in a class, it becomes impossible for a teacher to give your child the attention he/she needs. Your input is essential. The work is so simple at this level that most parents are able to help their children.
   
   
2. To ensure that you create the right attitude in your child towards maths, make it fun for him/her. This can be done with games and fun activities like draw-by-number. Here are a list of suitable games for grade 1 learners which are cheap and widely available:
   
   
   1. Any game played with dice such as snakes-and-ladders or ludo. Once the learner recognises the numbers on the die easily, the games can be played with 2 dice which have to be added.
      
      
   2. Tenpin bowling is a simple yet very effective way of making your child count to 10.
      
      
   3. Any game played with ordinary playing cards. These cards teach the learners to form pictures of numbers as well as recognize the shape of the numbers. Suitable games for grade 1 will be snap, rummy and uno.
      
      
   4. Dominos or tri-ominos provides excellent materials for number visualisation.
      
      
   5. Any simple scoring game, indoors or outdoors e.g. soccer, netball, hockey etc. provides excellent practice in counting and addition.
      
      
   6. During the second half of grade 1, parents can play bingo with the learners to teach them to read double digit numbers.
      
      
3. Make sure your child has mastered the addition and subtraction of the numbers less than 10 properly before venturing to do calculations with numbers larger than 10. These numbers from 1 to 10 form a basis for larger numbers and learners will not comprehend the calculations with large number if the basis is not laid properly.
   
   
4. Always keep physical counters nearby when doing grade 1 maths to illustrate any calculation that the learner might struggle with. Any small objects such as dried beans, flat seeds, coins, cardboard or plastic discs will serve well as counters. I like to use 1c coins as they are easy to stack but since they have been out of circulation for some time, parents might struggle to get hold of them.
   
   
5. Give ample positive encouragement. Don’t emphasize what he/she does wrong. Make a fuss of what he/she does achieve. Try to remember how you felt the last time you had to learn something completely new, like a foreign language. That is how your child feels.

Above all make sure you also enjoy the activities. Relax and enjoy your child as well as the games. Use the opportunity to have fun family ‘get-togethers’ with the numerical games.

Cecilia Rooke.

Posted: 15 January 2009

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