Literacy & Mathematics

Home reading experiences that support continued reading development at school.

Zoe Kaskamanidis

Home support of children’s literacy skills in the early years is a well-known indicator of their reading progress at the start of school. A new study has explored how different reading experiences at home have an impact on children’s continued reading development at school.

The small-scale study from the University of Melbourne found that factors such as the child’s own interest in language, frequency of reading with parents, and intimacy with parents, are potentially stronger indicators of reading progress at school than Socioeconomic Status (SES) of family background.

Honorary Professor in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education ­Bridie Raban reports strong relationships between family interest in reading and their children’s reading at age five. ‘In particular, hearing stories read aloud appears to enable these children to bring appropriate expectations to their reading activities in school,’ she writes.

‘Knowing about books, what they contain and their style of language use and form, gave these children an advantage when they began learning to read at school.’

The academic says, interestingly, the study found that ‘SES classification alone did not necessarily predict how well these children did or did not perform on reading assessments at the start of school.’

For the group with the highest reading progress from home to school, Raban shares: ‘These six children represented all four of the social class groupings included in this study. In each one of these homes there was evidence of books and writing materials owned by the parents and their children, and regular library visits were made by these families… These children were reported by their parents to ask questions about words, word meanings and how to spell them, and to remark on words they found in the environment.’

The findings also draw an important distinction between parents’ support of early literacy development as a ‘chore’, compared to a pleasurable activity in which intimacy and emotional comfort could be provided. ‘Importantly, reading stories to their children was not seen by these parents as a duty, it was a pleasurable and rewarding experience for them and gave opportunities to express their love and care.

‘Children also found great security in the mutual sharing and physical closeness, both of which provided a spur towards re-enacting the ‘reading’ of favourite books when they were alone.’

Raban concludes that building a strong conceptual knowledge of language at home, as demonstrated by the group with the highest scores in the study, is a precursor to the phonological and letter (‘item’) knowledge.

‘If the school curriculum begins with a strong focus on item knowledge,’ they write, ‘those children who have unstable or barely conceived conceptual knowledge will make little or slow progress.’

Building Understanding in Addition

Addition is more than just “putting numbers together.” It is one of the most important operations in Mathematics because it helps children develop flexible strategies for solving problems, see relationships between numbers, and make connections to real-world situations.

Here are the big ideas that support learning in Addition:

• Combining

  Students learn that addition is about joining two or more collections to make a larger total. For example, 3 counters and 4 counters combine to make 7 counters.

• Partitioning

  Numbers can be broken apart in many different ways while keeping the same value. For instance, 10 can be seen as 5 and 5, or 6 and 4, or even 2 and 3 and 5. This flexibility helps students build strong number sense and mental calculation strategies.

• Part–whole relationships

  Students learn to work with unknown parts or wholes. For example:

• 3 + 𝑥 = 7 (unknown part),
• 𝑥 + 4 = 7 (unknown part),
• 3 + 4 = 𝑥 (unknown whole).

This helps children understand how numbers relate to each other and prepares them for algebraic thinking later on.

• Role of zero – the identity property

  Students come to understand that adding zero does not change the number: 5 + 0 = 5, 0 + 8 = 8. Zero plays a special role in addition as the identity element.

• Commutative property

  The order of the addends does not change the sum. For example, 6 + 3 and 3 + 6 both equal 9. This idea helps students recognise patterns and reduce the number of facts they need to learn.

• Associative property

  Grouping addends in different ways does not affect the sum. For example, 2 + 9 + 8 can be solved as (2 + 8) + 9 or 2 + (9 + 8). Understanding this allows students to choose efficient ways to solve problems mentally.

• Relationship to subtraction

  Addition and subtraction are inverse operations. If 7 + 2 = 9, then 9 – 2 = 7. Recognising this relationship strengthens fluency and gives students strategies to check their answers.

By supporting these big ideas, we help students move beyond memorising facts to developing a deep understanding of addition. This strong foundation supports flexible problem solving and prepares them for success in all areas of Mathematics.