Featured Speakers:
- Dr. Kylie Flynn, Senior Research Director, Mathematics Education Team at WestEd
- Dr. Ashli-Ann Douglas, Research Associate, Mathematics Education Team at WestEd
Host:
- Danny Torres, Associate Director, Events and Digital Media at WestEd
Danny Torres:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the 15th session of our Leading Together series. In these 30-minute learning webinars, WestEd experts are sharing research and evidence-based practices that help bridge opportunity gaps, support positive outcomes for children and adults, and help build thriving communities. Today’s topic: Advancing Math Instruction and Family Engagement in Early Childhood. Our featured speakers today are Dr. Ashli-Ann Douglas, research associate for our Mathematics Education team at WestEd, and Dr. Kylie Flynn, senior research director at WestEd. Thank you all very much for joining us. My name is Danny Torres. I’m associate director of events and digital media for WestEd. I’ll be your host.
Now, before we move into the contents of today’s webinar, I’d like to take a brief moment to introduce WestEd. As a nonpartisan research, development, and service agency, WestEd works to promote excellence, improve learning, and increase opportunity for children, youth, and adults. Our staff partner with state, district, and school leaders, providing a broad range of tailored services, including research and evaluation, professional learning, technical assistance, and policy guidance. We work to generate knowledge and apply evidence and expertise to improve policies, systems, and practices. Now I’d like to pass the mic over to Kylie. Kylie, take it away.
Dr. Kylie Flynn:
Hi. Good afternoon, everyone. We’re so thrilled that you’re here. I’m Kylie Flynn, senior research director at WestEd. I’m also a former special education teacher and early education teacher for about 13 years before I began my research career. I just wanna give a little note here on our agenda and how we’ll be organized. I’m gonna talk briefly about the importance of supporting young children’s early math learning, and then I’ll dive right into some strategies for helping to improve math instruction in early childhood classrooms. And then I’ll be handing it off to Ashli-Ann, who will talk about partnering effectively with families to support math learning. So why is teaching early math so important?
Well, there’s been extensive research on this, very extensive and longitudinal research, that has found early math actually predicts students’ academic achievement all the way into middle school and even high school. So that’s incredibly important. And the great news is early math development in young children is malleable. We can do something about it. Unfortunately, not all young children get the same opportunities, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, to develop the math skills they’re going to need. And if they enter kindergarten unprepared for the rigorous math standards we have in place, they’re likely to continue to fall further behind. So what are the challenges? Why is this happening? Well, there are gaps in preschool curricula. There’s also limited math instruction in early childhood classrooms.
There’s been extensive observational studies done about this, and there’s just not a lot of minutes dedicated to early math instruction in classroom environments. And there can be disparities in the home environments and the family math practices. If you’re interested in learning more about this, Ashli-Ann and I have written a brief that Danny will put in the chat, and Ashli-Ann will share the QR code a little later on in our presentation. All right, so now let’s jump into those strategies for improving math instruction in your early childhood classrooms. But before we do that, I’m curious. For those of you who are either some sort of a supervisor or instructor in an early childhood setting, I’d love to hear about how you’re currently supporting your students’ math learning.
You’ll be able to pick more than one of these options. Perhaps weekly small group instruction, or maybe you have a math center, maybe you’re integrating math throughout the day, or you’re doing some combination of some of these things. Just give folks a few seconds. All right, if we’re ready to look at the results, Danny, if we’ve had some responses. Yes. I am not surprised by this, that integrating math throughout the day does tend to be the most common way that early childhood classrooms are currently functioning. But I am thrilled to see that some of you are already doing some small group instruction and have a math center. So let’s talk a little bit more specifically about some of these best practices.
I’m gonna get into each of these in a little more detail, but it’s obviously really important that you are familiar with your agency’s math standards, whether or not that’s a state pre-K program or a Head Start agency, and that you’re integrating practice opportunities throughout the day in really meaningful ways and that the activities that you’re choosing are aligned to those standards. Implementing small group instruction is key. Of course, monitoring and recording children’s progress so that you know how to plan for review or make-up. I’ll talk a little bit more about that. And that you’re providing scaffolding to children as they need it. And of course, then using that engaging math center. So familiarize yourself with the math standards.
These are examples from the California Preschool Transitional Learning Foundations. And it does look like many of you are from California, but I assure you, if you are in a different state or you are in Head Start, that one-to-one correspondence and cardinality are going to be in your math standards. These are critically important. I particularly chose these because they are so important in developing young children’s number sense. We have to push beyond just rote counting and, you know, that the child can count to 10, knows the sequence of the number names and really ensure that they are developing the one-to-one correspondence and the cardinality, which just means that after they’ve counted a set of five leaves out on the playground, that they know that the number five represents the size of the set of leaves that they counted.
So let’s talk about integrating practice opportunities throughout the day. Because many of you indicated, 76% of those who participated in the poll indicated that this is the primary way you’re teaching math. There’s obviously no shortage of things to count in an early childhood classroom setting, from fingers to toes to friends to snacks, napkins, things outside like leaves and rocks, things in other centers beyond a math center, like blocks if they’re in the block play area, or beads if they’re in an art area. So there’s endless opportunities for counting. So that’s great. I’m just gonna suggest that you’re really intentional about it.
So if you’re interacting with a child on the playground or in a classroom setting and they’re doing some counting or you ask them to count, encourage that one-to-one correspondence. And then when they’re done counting, make sure you ask that cardinality question: “How many rocks did you count?” when they finished counting. This will be critically important for preparing them for kindergarten. And another way to keep counting engaging and fun is to pick objects that align to your theme, so there’s always new things to count. Choose standards-aligned activities. I picked 10 frames here as an example for a number of reasons. First, 10 frames afford the opportunity to practice all three of the number sense principles of counting: knowing the counting sequence in numbers, one-to-one correspondence, and cardinality. And you can make this really fun and engaging.
I was at a conference recently where a preschool teacher was presenting, and he had turned his 10-frame into a monster. And so the kids got to feed the monster. It could align to whatever theme; you could mix it up. But not only do children have an opportunity to practice counting and one-to-one correspondence and cardinality, as they continue to develop, you can increase the set size that they count. You can have them create the set size, initial sets, when they are developmentally ready for that. So there’s just a rich number of opportunities for using 10 frames, and it’s a really great standard. It’s just one example of a really great standards-aligned activity that can be adapted for each theme.
Now this is the one I really want everybody to pay attention to: implement small group instruction. I can’t say enough great things about this and the need for this in early childhood classrooms. There’s a lot of advantages to working with children in small groups. I’m part of the pre-K mathematics research team. Two of my colleagues here at WestEd developed the pre-K mathematics curriculum. It’s been developed and tested in over seven large-scale studies and been given the highest rating of effectiveness by the U.S. Department of Education. And a lot of what we do is observe small group practices in the classrooms that aren’t implementing pre-K mathematics, as well as those that are. And we’ve learned that twice per week, at least twice per week, 15 minutes per group, is a good threshold to aim for.
Working with up to six children. We’ve found that if teachers try to push to larger groups of children and you’re using a lot of rich, engaging materials, it can get a little hairy managing all of that. And it also allows you the opportunity to keep the materials and the pacing engaging. And this is a really important opportunity for you to monitor and document children’s progress, not only to inform review or concepts that, “Whoo, the kids are really struggling with this. I need to review this.” It can also help inform whatever progress monitoring your program might have in place. Common ones like Teaching Strategies GOLD or the DRDPs, if you’re here in California. And it can be really great to report this information to your families and let them know, “Ooh, you know, Susie’s really struggling to count past five. Maybe there’s some things you can do at home.” And Ashli-Ann’s certainly gonna talk about that in more detail.
Those small groups also provide greater opportunities for scaffolding. If you’re working with smaller groups of children, for example, you can provide hand-over-hand guidance with one-to-one correspondence. You can reduce or increase set size based on children’s development. And you can model some really key mathematical terms and language, such as “how many,” “more,” or “less,” to support children’s, not only their math development, but their language development as well. And if you don’t have a math center, I encourage you to create one. Select high-interest materials. You can rotate those materials regularly, either monthly or with a theme. Whenever I introduced a new theme and new materials, I would introduce them at the morning circle so kids knew there were some exciting new things in the math center.
And it’s a really good idea to encourage, to get children to come to a center, they generally want a lot of adult attention. So, if you’re a teacher, maybe plan on visiting that math center once a week or having a volunteer or an instructional assistant give that math center some attention. You can also integrate math-related materials in other centers. For example, you can put math books in your classroom library. So, what are some ways that WestEd can help improve your classroom instruction? We have professional learning workshops and coaching cycles. We also have individual workshops that focus on enhancing math instruction in early childhood classrooms. And we also have a new cross-grade professional learning communities practice to support that important pre-K to K transition and alignment.
And finally, I mentioned pre-K mathematics earlier. That curriculum is available for purchase, as well as related professional development and coaching. And with that, I’m going to turn it over to Ashli-Ann. Were there any high-level questions that we have time for?
Dr. Ashli-Ann Douglas:
We do have about a minute, and so I’ll remind folks that if you have questions, go ahead and put them in the Q&A. We would love to hear from you and to address those. I will go ahead and dive into partnering with families to support math learning. We’ll get started with another poll, and I’d love to hear from you about how you are feeling about engaging or partnering with families to support children’s math learning. So another poll will pop up on your screen, and we’ll give you a few seconds to share how you’re doing. All right, let’s see what we have. And this is great. We have a large percentage of you that are feeling good about your family engagement, and that makes me quite happy.
As we’ll talk about in a moment, family engagement, family partnership, is so, so important. And then we have some of you in the space of, “I’m trying, but it’s not going well.” And of course, you’re in the right place. We’ll be talking about some research-based and developmentally appropriate strategies and resources that you can utilize to hopefully enhance what you’re doing. And then for those of you who don’t know where to start, you, too, are in the right place. All right. So as I hinted at, and as you likely know, family engagement is really important. I’m sharing here some tips from NAEYC’s developmentally appropriate practice statement on engaging in reciprocal partnerships with families and communities about how to frame or how to approach your family engagement and your communication with families.
And so the first one that I want to highlight is for you to take responsibility for establishing relationships with families. And that is really important, as we know that families come to school, they bring their children to programs with different feelings about schooling and all that. And so we wanna make sure that we’re taking some initiative to welcome families in and to let them know that we’re partnering with them. And this relationship, unsurprisingly, should be built on cooperation, mutual respect, right? And shared responsibility for children’s learning. That is why we’re partnering, because both schools, both early childhood programs, and families can… Whoops, I saw a note in the chat. Can support this important learning.
Then the second tip that I want to highlight is for us to maintain regular, two-way communication with families using a variety of methods. And I want to stress here two things. One, using a variety of methods, we know that one size doesn’t fit all, right? And so you might have families who are excited and interested, have the time and capacity to talk with you at pickup or drop-off time, while you might have other families that prefer a text or an email, or even to get something in their child’s backpack. So getting to know your families about what methods they prefer, and then trying as best as possible to use more than one method so that you can reach as many as possible. And the two-way part is so, so important.
This provides a really good opportunity for you to learn about families’ needs, maybe their needs for enhancing their own involvement in their child’s learning and development, that you can then try to meet, as well as you can learn about their insights into their children’s strengths and interests that you can then bring into the classroom. So maybe Johnny loves counting dinosaurs, and you’ve noticed that he doesn’t wanna do any math in your classroom. And that insight from the parent might give you some ideas about what you can do to help Johnny engage. And the second part of this two-way is then where you get to share some of your expertise and information and resources that you gather with families about how they can support their child.
The final tip that I want to highlight is for us to acknowledge families’ choices and goals for their children and to respond to these with sensitivity and respect, especially if they happen to share concerns. There’s been lots and lots of research showing that preschoolers whose families engage them in math activities and discussions have stronger math skills than preschoolers who do not receive this math support. And this is why we’re here talking about supporting families as they engage their children or getting them to start to realize that they do have an important role to play as well. We also know that family support is related to several factors. And thankfully, there’s been research showing that all of these factors are malleable, right? There are levers that you can change to help your families help their students.
So families’ math support is related to their beliefs about the importance of their child learning math and about preschoolers learning math at that age level. It’s also related to their expectations for their child’s math skills. So, how good do I want Johnny to be at math when he’s in kindergarten or maybe even in high school? Research shows a link there with how often families are helping their preschooler practice and talk about math at home. Families’ math support is also related to their knowledge about early math development. What are the math skills that we should be practicing? When should I move on to another skill? How do I know when my child has developed a skill? How do I challenge them and push them further? And then it’s also related to the strategies that they use to provide math support.
And importantly, one takeaway for you, I hope, is that research shows that what families do at home and in their communities to support their children’s math learning is related to how frequently their child’s teacher communicates with them about early math. And so families who receive more communication also do and talk about math more often to help their child practice those skills. And families have shared some of the resources that they would like to enhance their math support. They talk about materials such as toys or games, books, recommendations for apps, websites, or video games. Which of these apps, which of these educational apps, actually offer support for developmentally appropriate math skills, for instance?
The other large category is information. Families share that, like I mentioned, they wanna know what math skills they should be teaching, right? What’s developmentally appropriate at this age level? They also want to know strategies for supporting their children’s math learning while they’re at the park, during playtime, or during everyday routines. While we’re doing laundry or mealtime, what should I be doing to help my child learn? And then finally, families desire information about what is going on at school in your classroom. Like Kylie mentioned, this progress monitoring is something that you can share with families so that they can build on that at home. So here I want to flag one example of many resources that are out there that you can share with families.
This website is called Count Play Explore. One of the things that I love about this is that it is organized by age level. And so maybe you are teaching a three-year-old class or a four-year-old class, but your families have younger children or older children. This is a nice website that they can go to, and they can get some materials, some resources for their entire family. And Count Play Explore includes books that have math content, activities like games, and then they also have videos to help families build their knowledge and confidence. I do see this question about the open-access link. It should be available, but I can certainly pass that on to Danny to send out when he sends the recordings and things. So moving on to… I’ve shared a little bit about materials.
Let’s turn to information. Providing families with information about early math leads to them increasing the frequency and complexity of their math support. Families want to be partnering with you, and it’s been a joy working with families to see how excited they are. And even when they’re nervous about math, they’re wanting some support so that they can help push their children forward. Some successful efforts have included information focused on the importance of preschoolers’ learning math, different math skills that preschoolers can learn, and strategies for providing math support during their everyday routines. And we’re sharing the link to one of the studies that I did with a program that I designed for families focused on numeracy learning and patterning learning.
And it was so fun and so rewarding to see how they used this information to increase their math support. Here’s a quote from one of the parents that participated in the program. The parent said, “The program gave me some ideas and made me try to be a little bit more creative so that I don’t have to try to carve out as much structured time to get things done. But just kind of weaving math into our daily lives and sprinkling it in here and there, so she doesn’t realize she’s learning, but she is learning, and then it becomes fun for her.” And of course, I love that last part of the quote, but I also noticed that, you know, the parent talks about potentially a challenge they were experiencing where they’re struggling to find structured time.
And now they know that, you know, in addition to that, they can weave math into all the other aspects of life, and they can support their child’s learning and also their child’s sense of math being a fun and applicable thing to everyday life. So I want to wrap up this section by sharing how we can help you improve your family math partnerships. We have some workshops for families that are based on that research study that I shared with you, and some other research studies as well, that we can come to your program to work with your families to give them this information and help them practice this with their children. We also have workshops for early educators to equip you to do some family engagement. And then finally, like Kylie mentioned, we also have a really comprehensive program that looks at both classroom instruction and family engagement, all focused on early math.
All right, we have maybe a minute for questions. So again, if you have any others, do drop them in the Q&A or the chat box. Are there any that have come up so far?
Dr. Kylie Flynn:
Yeah, Ashli-Ann, and they all seem to be family-related. So one is, “How can we ensure that families are using the same math instruction that we use in the classroom? This particularly for parents who are time- and otherwise-stressed.”
Dr. Ashli-Ann Douglas:
That is a great question, and we know that alignment is really important. And so I think just talking with families, whether it’s sending home something in the backpack or actually talking with them about what math skills you are working on in the classroom, is the best way to start with that, so that they can align in that way as well. And if you are emphasizing certain strategies, like Kylie mentioned, hand-over-hand scaffolding to make sure they’re counting each object and they’re not skipping any, then that’s something to share with families as well, so they can align. Let’s see.
Dr. Kylie Flynn:
You can also send out newsletters that talk about, like, what you’re doing in the classroom and give the parents some suggestions for things that might be related to the theme or the content that you’re covering. Doesn’t have to be formal activities.
Dr. Ashli-Ann Douglas:
Yes. And while there are a couple other questions, thank you all for adding them in, I wanna keep going. Like Danny mentioned early on, any questions that we didn’t address during the call, we’ll be sure to send over responses. Here on the screen is that early math brief that Kylie mentioned earlier. It talks about the importance of early math, some challenges, and some potential solutions, some things that research has shown can help. It’s nice and concise. And so if you’re having conversations with others about early math, that’s a great resource to have and to share. We really enjoyed talking with you about research-based, developmentally appropriate strategies, resources, and professional learning services for advancing math instruction and family engagement in early childhood. So thank you again. With that, I’ll pass it on to Danny to close us out.
Danny Torres:
Well, thank you, Ashli-Ann and Kylie, for a great session today. And thank you to all our participants for joining us. We really, really appreciate you being here. Please feel free to reach out to Ashli and Kylie via email if you have any questions about the work we discussed today. You can reach Ashli at [email protected], and you can reach Kylie at [email protected].
And there’s still time to register for our upcoming Leading Together webinars. We’re covering a range of topics, including literacy, AI, and more. During these webinars, we’re sharing insights and evidence-based practices to improve teaching, leading, and learning. For more information about our Leading Together webinar series, visit us online at WestEd.org/leading-together-2025. And finally, you can also sign up for WestEd’s email newsletter to receive updates. Subscribe online at WestEd.org/subscribe or scan the QR code displayed on the screen here. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Bluesky. With that, thank you all very much. We’ll see you next time.