Just as foundational illiteracy creates barriers across all subjects, foundational innumeracy limits a student’s critical thinking and problem-solving capacity. In the primary classroom, mathematics must be about more than just memorizing a sequence of numbers or completing a worksheet.

Utilizing structured mathematics frameworks, such as the principles found in the Kansas Math Project, my focus in the classroom is guiding students through the Concrete-Representational-Abstract (CRA) sequence. Before a student can understand a written equation (Abstract), they must be able to physically build it (Concrete) and draw it (Representational). This sequence eliminates math anxiety and builds true conceptual understanding.

How Parents Can Support This at Home: Mathematics is happening all around your house. You can build your child’s numeracy skills by integrating math into everyday routines.

• Make It Tactile: If your child is struggling with basic addition or subtraction homework, take the pencil away and get out the physical objects. Use dry pasta, buttons, or blocks. Have them physically build the math problem before they try to solve it on paper. This rebuilds the brain-hand connection.
• Talk About the “Why”: When your child gives an answer to a math question, ask them, “How did you figure that out?” Encouraging them to verbally explain their mathematical reasoning solidifies the concept in their brain and builds academic confidence.
• Real-World Sorting and Grouping: Let your children help with household tasks that require categorization. Sorting laundry by color or matching socks builds early data analysis and geometry skills. When cooking, let them help measure ingredients—fractions and volume are much easier to understand when they are hands-on!

In early childhood education, one of the most critical transitions a student makes is moving from a dependent guesser to an independent decoder. As an intervention specialist and elementary educator, my instructional framework is heavily grounded in the Science of Reading. We know through rigorous research that teaching children to rely on picture cues or context to guess words does not build lasting fluency. True reading comprehension begins with explicit, systematic phonics and orthographic mapping.

When we train the brain to connect sounds to letters accurately, we are building the cognitive stamina required for lifelong literacy.

How Parents Can Support This at Home: You do not need a curriculum to build foundational literacy at home—you just need to play with sounds!

• Focus on Phonemic Awareness: Before a child can read letters on a page, they must be able to hear and manipulate sounds in the air. While driving or cooking, play sound games. Ask your child, “What sounds do you hear in the word cat?” Guide them to isolate the sounds: /c/ /a/ /t/.
• Avoid the “Guessing” Trap: When reading a book together and your child gets stuck on a word, resist the urge to say, “Look at the picture, what makes sense?” Instead, encourage them to look at the letters and sound it out from left to right.
• Read for Vocabulary, Not Just Decoding: Read high-level, complex picture books to your children. Even if they cannot read the words themselves yet, listening to advanced vocabulary builds their background knowledge, which is a critical pillar of reading comprehension.