Oh God, I remember the fear as if it was yesterday...

Janepig

Maths homework is bad enough - I never got my times tables (my primary school didn't believe in teaching, but I can tie dye a t-shirt and mount some driftwood on a plinth for you ) so sin cos and tan are non starters for me.

But worst by far is anything arty. I haven't got an artistic bone in my body. Our art teacher in comp's nickname was "Hitler" so that gives you some idea!

Each term in DD/DS's nursery, parents and children had to make a model of that term's theme - I seem to remember they were emergency vehicles, a house and flowers. I kept the ambulance and house models safe and sent them in with DS when it was his turn and learned my lesson with the flowers when I proudly took our effort in with DD which was a little plastacine type sculpture thing that you bake in the oven which we thought was fab, and then we saw these enormous things everyone else (who had older kids in the school!) had done, which swamped ours. So when it was DS's turn we did big flowers with a photo of him in the middle of the petals!

I don't know why I always get lumbered with having to help with art stuff, DH just feigns disinterest.

Jx

bylromarha

Sounds like heaven to me Jo.

Logical, reliable maths with clear right/wrong answers unlike the subjective airy fairy english.

Should old Harry catch a herring trawling off America...

Opp, adj and hyp. Love it.:rotfl:

Janepig

aliasojo wrote: »

I made a stand in music once. We had to sing this....

http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/scotlandssongs/primary/genericcontent_tcm4555489.asp

...and I hated it. I just couldn't understand why, if they wanted us to enjoy music and really apply ourselves, they couldn't give us things that were more relevant to us, to sing. I refused to sing on principle. :rotfl:

I did make a rather fetching gym bag and cushion cover though.

Oh dear god, you've reminded me about needlework. I despised needlework and had no aptitude for it whatsoever. That and the fact that the teacher used to sit with her "pets" yacking at the front whilst neglecting the pupils who could have done with a bit of assistance.

Jx

Johnmcl7

aliasojo wrote: »

Well blow me down, daughter (who has dyscalculia and is maths phobic yet seems to be coping with this) has just shown me what to do and it's coming back.

She showed me soh-cah-toa which I have never heard of before, we certainly were not shown that. It helps tell you whether you need to use sin,cos or tan.

If i'd been shown like that years ago I might have got it sooner.

There was some maths test on the BBC site and there was a trig question and I could still remember how my maths teacher taught the trig formulae (for 90 degree triangles) - it's what you do before you go in a bath, soak-a-toe-a (soh-cah-toa). Sounds silly but I found it easy to remember and still do after many years.

I preferred maths over English but the difficulty I always found with maths was that it was taught in a very theoretical manner making it difficult to understand why you'd use the formulae and sequences. Then when you'd go onto the next stage you'd understand the previous stage better and why you'd want to use it. Trigonometry is an example of this and differential calculus more so, initially it just seemed such an arbitrary set of rules but once you start working with more advanced geometry and physics calculations it all makes much more sense. Imaginary numbers seem a completely absurd concept (the square root of -1 is defined as 'i') but then when you start working with them properly they seem to slot in very neatly.

John

Toto

I have never ever understood how a minus + a minus = a minus, but a minus X a minus = a plus.

Surely multiplication is just a quick way of adding up, so instead of saying 2+2+2 we say 3X2.

aliasojo

pukkamum wrote: »

Oh alias I have been reading about discalcius and am convinced both ds 12 and I suffer from it.
Has your daughter been diagnosed, do they diagnose it, will the school do anything if I approach them with my fears.
The maths teacher himself told me the difference in his cat scores for maths and english are way more poles apart than they should be.
I have read this is an idicator.
Sorry to bombard you with questions x

I got concerned about daughter as she just wasn't getting things. Even telling the time and simple tables were an issue.

She had no problems in other subjects like English, but Science was/is an issue because it's based in Maths iyswim.

It had been going on for a while and I don't know why it wasn't picked up in primary. They noted she struggled with maths but just kinda brushed it off.

After speaking to the Pupil Support teacher in her secondary (who agreed she had noticeable difficulties in maths), the school eventually tested her and she was found to be most definitely dyscalculic.

Having this confirmed took the pressure off her and made the teachers more understanding. After 12-18 month of tears and stress at secondary school, she is now able to understand it's not her fault that she can't just 'get it' like the other kids. The result of this is that she is now getting on better than ever, She knows she needs to put the work in but she no longer feels 'stupid' and she gets more help and she's allowed to use a calculator which has helped immensely.

I just wish she's been tested years ago.

If I were you I'd definitely approach the school and raise the possibility.

j.e.j.

S=O/H T=O/A C=A/H

Silly Old Hippo Tried On A Coat At Harrods

I remember it from school days but have never actually needed to know or apply this, in real life! :rotfl:

BitterAndTwisted

Trig. Quadratic equations. Ruddy logarithms. It's all gone and I'm not sorry. Strange thing is that most of my working-life has entailed using numbers....

ValHaller

skipsmum wrote: »

DS is doing negative numbers....I don't get them at all. Either you have something, or you don't - you can't have minus something.

DS says my logic is flawed

Go to Debt Free Wannabes - you'll find plenty of people there who are all too well acquainted with negative numbers.

jellyhead

WantToBeSE wrote: »

Algebra...the work of the devil, i swear it!
I could never understand why ANYONE in their right mind would introduce LETTERS into maths!
How could x or y equal ANYTHING???

As my facebook friends know well, algebra scares me I can do it myself, but trying to help children with it is a recipe for disaster. I actually like maths but I am hopeless at explaining it, and my boys have both inherited my limited spatial awareness

My eldest and I hated each other for a whole week after he asked me for help with a GCSE chemistry paper which involved ratios

Our school sometimes puts on college courses, low level stuff where you can sometimes take an exam up to level 2 (GCSE pass level, allegedly) and I always join if I can, not because I haven't got level 2 qualifications, but because it's so helpful seeing it being explained in a way that you can use with your own children. I just wish they'd do a maths course instead of all these literacy courses. Mind you, my 8 year old has 'practise and practice' and 'licence and license' in his spellings ... thankfully I learned that on last year's literacy course :T