Helping with Homework

The help links below are tailored to your need. Helping with homework is difficult. Even if the parent is conversant with relevant mathematical ideas, the goal of helping the student become self-reliant is elusive. To successfully help with homework, parents must find ways to encourage persistence and reasoning, to build on what students already understand, and help them clarify their thinking.

Comparison with Conventional Homework Assignments
This page provides information on the goals of the homework tasks in the Core-Plus Mathematics texts.

Questions to Ask Your Student
These are general questions that will help students focus on tasks. The questions are provided in English and Spanish.

Using the Math Toolkit
Information on the how students build and use a personal resource of examples, summaries, definitions, and theorems and more.

Unit Overview/Summary
Each page provides an overview of a unit including the major learning objectives and the solutions to the final unit Summarize the Mathematics questions available in the student text. The unit summary responses should be similar to those your student has in his or her notes. Select by course and unit from the menu below.

Selected Homework Tasks
As you talk with your student about what he/she has learned in class, you are an active part of the learning process. You are one of the "knowledgeable experts" in your student's universe. By helping your student think about mathematics, you are part of the process that researchers tell us enhances achievement and develops the ability to learn independently. Try to:

• provide hints or ask questions when helping with homework, without taking away all the gains to be made from the student's individual struggle,

• encourage your student to reflect on what was recently learned, and

• ask questions that encourage your student to explain concepts.

Choose by course and unit to view sample solutions. You will need to have access to the student text for the tasks.