Achieving with Numeracy and Literacy
Literacy andnumeracy skills are vital to ensuring your child has the best chance to succeed in their schooling and life.
To be literate is to confidently and appropriately read, write, speak and listen in a range of contexts. This may include cultural knowledge, such as knowing the meaning of phrases like a task being "a piece of cake".
To be numerate is to confidently and effectively use mathematics to meet the everyday demands of life.
Literacy tips
There are a number of ways you can help your child to develop their literacy skills. These include:
- reading to your child as often as you can
- having your child read to you
- discussing favourite authors together and explaining why you like them
- talking about the things you read for different purposes such as newspapers, magazines and books
- encouraging your child to write letters to family members and friends
- encouraging your child to keep a diary or journal
- getting your child to write a play and perform it for you with their relatives and friends.
Numeracy tips
There are a number of ways you can help your child to develop their numeracy skills. These include:
- identifying and talking about the mathematics you use in daily situations such as cooking, reading maps and playing sport
- organising, categorising and counting collections of things like toys, books, clothing and shoes
- observing and using timetables, calendars and clocks found in lots of different places for a variety of different purposes such as planning television watching times or study periods, holiday planning and catching public transport
- discussing the use of numbers, patterns and shapes in your daily life
- cutting out items from junk mail with their prices attached for back-to-school items such as lunch boxes and pencils and letting your child add up the cost of the selected items
- asking your child to weigh fruit and vegetable items and seeing if they can estimate the cost when you go to the supermarket
- exploring situations like shopping and budgets which involve money.
Please print these useful Tips and Hints and keep them handy around the house to help you with your child/rens education.
