Parents Point of View: 106: How Is Math Related to Reading

Writing is vital in mathematics since it helps students clarify their mathematics understanding and sharpen their communication skills. Through writing, they organize their thoughts and ideas logically and structure a more coherent conclusion. Actively solving mathematics problems improve writing competence since writing improves with an active practice.

Most of the mathematics process skills are the same as reading skills. This means that the two subjects' skills can reinforce each other if taught together. Similar skills in reading and math include predicting, recognizing causes, communicating, affecting relationships, interfering, comparison, and contrasting.

To excel in mathematics, students should combine reading and writing activities. These activities help them to interpret, communicate and analyze mathematical problems or ideas. Reading and writing skills also help evaluate information sources and their validity, a critical competency for mathematicians.

Letters form words that symbolize actions, attributes, or objects. Numbers symbolize relationships, patterns, or amounts. Expressions in both subjects create a basis for information processing. Reading and mathematics are also similar since they both require the transfer of encoded information to readers and facilitate comprehension.

Yes. The problem of solving math word problems is mainly attributed to poor abilities to read. Improving your child’s reading comprehension can highly improve their math scores.

Math seems more complex than other subjects since it takes too much energy and time to solve. Most of the students don’t get enough time in class to understand math lessons, and therefore they remain with a lot of learning gaps in the subject. Learning gaps cause students to have a shaky foundation that hinders them from understanding complex and new concepts.

Learning math improves your child's brain performance hence enhancing their cognitive abilities. The subject also helps them to learn how to tell time and to create a budget. Math can also make them better bakers and solve their problems better. Significantly, math will help your child understand the world better.

Learning to write and read numbers helps your child understand how number systems work and the relationship between numbers. Children with a number sense also develop a broad range of mathematical strategies and learn how to apply them in different situations.

Make reading a priority in your home to strengthen your child's reading comprehension skills. Secondly, read loudly through the math word problem and break down the question for easier understanding. Lastly, you can enroll your child in a reading program to improve further their reading abilities. Our reading programs at Kid on the Yard improve children's preparation in math and English, among other subjects.

After years of research, teachers have found that students struggle with learning math because they don't have the underlying foundation of what numbers actually mean: number sense. All over the states, the common core is addressing this issue.

The Key Math Skills for school are: 

Number Sense
This is the ability to count accurately—first forward. Then, later in school, children will learn to count backward.

Representation
Making mathematical ideas "real" by using words, pictures, symbols, and objects (like blocks).

Spatial sense
Later in school, children will call this "geometry." But for toddlers, it introduces the ideas of shape, size, space, position, direction, and movement

Measurement
Technically, this is finding an object's length, height, and weight using units like inches, feet or pounds, time.

Estimation
This is the ability to make a good guess about the amount or size of something. This is very difficult for young children to do.

Patterns
Patterns are things—numbers, shapes, images—that repeat in a logical way. Patterns help children learn to make predictions, understand what comes next, make logical connections, and use reasoning skills.

Problem-solving
The ability to think through a problem, to recognize there is more than one path to the answer.

Both math and reading are critical to your child's intelligence. Abilities to read correlate with students’ fluid intelligence. Teachers and parents should work together to ensure that students receive excellent math and reading skills for better correlation.

Yes, we do. Not always, but in some cases, when Elementary school and kindergarten students struggle to learn math, it's an indicator for some sort of disability or late development. Our educator team teaches the skills until they master them, giving the students substantial experience with numbers and the more abstract lessons.