HISD’s Curriculum Department hosted a Partnering with Parents to Prepare Students for Algebra workshop at Helms Elementary School recently, and nearly 90 parents attended the event, which was designed to help them learn some of the same instructional strategies used by HISD teachers to convey various mathematics concepts to their children.

Attendees engaged in a number of hands-on activities using beans, counters, and many other materials in an attempt to see addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division through the eyes of their children—all while connecting those skills to algebra.

“I learned the properties of multiplication and the rules for division,” said Helms parent Karina Antunez. “Now, I can help my child understand the math behind the problem, versus just getting an answer.”

“My team and I absolutely loved working this event,” said Elementary Curriculum Manager Dana Enriquez-Vontoure. “It was both exciting and powerful to see parents solving problems using the same instructional strategies that their children use in the classroom. Parents approached us to say that they thought they would have been better math students themselves had they learned the concepts using the instructional strategies that we modeled.”