How to help primary children with maths and other homework?

kittiej

I sympathise with you art, I've got a DS2 who always wants to do what his older brother is doing!

thegirlintheattic

artichoke wrote: »

Ever since in reception the teaches have commented that she lives in her own world and does not respond to rewards and is hard to engage /motivate.... I have always found it hard to get her to do homework especially as i have them in the same room and DS answers the question before she has read to the end of the sentence....

i can not separate them out as DH works in the evenings...

but she does respond badly to seeing he is ahead and she gives up and says "i am not good at school work, maths, writing or whatever it is..."

I had 5 very academic brothers and i know how she feels and am trying to sort it out before it gets out of hand...

art

In the short term is it worth finding something she is good at, even non-academically and focusing on that. It can get into a viscous cycle, especially if you focus on what she needs to improve on, and she sounds like she could do with a confidence boast.

From her teachers comments would it be worth having a chat with her SENCO to see if there is an underlying reason for her disengagement? Some kids are just like this but speaking to her SENCO could help even if it is just the way she is. SENCOs have lots of experience motivating hard to motivate kids.

At school I always hated English and maths and said "it's boring", "why bother" etc. when what was really happening was I was so bad at it, I didn't want to look like I was trying because I would just fail. Years after I left school I was diagnosed with a SpLD which explained why. My teachers always just said I was disinterested, no one looked at why. Which is why I always think that persistent issues, especially from a young age should be looked at.

gadjah543

We are currently working through the mathsfactor . My daughter has fallen behind in maths and I felt that she needed some extra structured support.I personally find Carol a bit annoying BUT she is very good at reinforcing the information given.There is a section for parents with games to print out etc but the majority of the homework is repitition until the child gets the basics. Hope that helps.

kymbo82

my ds1 was looking for these sort of sites today as he said to me yesterday "I havent learnt anything in school this week because the class is being so disruptive" going to have a word with the teacher on monday, he's a new teacher to the school and I think they are playing him

shirlgirl2004

The practical maths we use is things like if there are 20 strawberries left and we are sharing them how many will each person get. We stand with the bowls and count them out.

I ask her to add up small amounts in the shop. Initially she couldn't so it but she can do it with ease now. Then we moved onto how much change will you get. I pointed out this is why she needs to learn maths otherwise she doesn't know if she's getting the right change (we had the same complaints of "what is the point").

Yesterday at the zoo she had a discount card so we worked through together how to work out the 10% discount.

If your tape measure is too short then you need to add the 2 measurements together. If each icecream is £1 how much will 3 be etc.

I'm sure you do a lot of this but I find I have to say to one child that she has to be quiet and give the other a chance to answer. Maybe you could arrange to take her shopping, on her own, to practice these real life skills so she can see why she needs to know howto do various calculations.

ViolaLass

OP, I was thinking about this today. You mentioned in an earlier post that your daughter used a number line for a question online then got bored. Did she use the number line because she was told to or because she wanted to? If the former, then I would let her use whatever technique/method she wants to use - counting on fingers, doing it mentally, using a number line, counting coins, whatever she wants. I wouldn't worry about what method she uses as long as it's logical and she understands it. Different people respond to different methods.

Of course, if she used a number line because she wanted to, then you can ignore this post!

Also, not directly relevant to this thread but http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14804477 is worth a read. It's backed up by research going back to the early 80s (the question might be why it's taken the Institute of Education this long to realise). I think it's worth thinking about how we approach maths with our children (no criticism intended to the OP, just food for thought).