Ask your neighbour explain it to - maths GCSE

[ShouldersBackChestOutChinUp]

Dd is ding maths GCSE. First year of her course.

She was in bottom set, doing really well, predicted a 7.

She's been moved up to middle set which she hates and now her work is suffering.

She says she doesn't understand how the new teacher explains things to her. The teacher tells her to ask her neighbour to explain it to her.

To me this is weird. How does the teacher know the neighbouring student has got it right?

Shouldn't the neighbour be working on her own maths work?

Is t it the teacher's job to explain? Over and over if need be?

When dd asks for help, and is told by the teacher ‘ask friend’ can dd say ‘friend doesn’t understand x either teacher, could you please explain from y point as this is where it stopped making sense’
(I appreciate, you need a confident dd to be able to do this, esp if the teacher is a bit of an arse!)

Perhaps dd could ask more structured questions? (To her teacher!! Not friend) rather than saying “i dont understand.” saying “I don’t understand where the 4 has come from” “I don’t understand why we’re dividing by 2” [these are not questions, - I got you vipers :) - but you get my drift!]

Is it your dds job to have to ‘manage’ the teacher in this way? No! But. In all walks of life we’ll be working with people who respond better with a bit of ‘management’

i’m not saying this is the correct way to manage the situation, but if a mentee came to me with this problem, this is the sort of thing I’d advise doing (in completely different language! I wouldn’t be telling a pupil to ‘manage’ a teacher, but the ‘asking the right sort of questions’ I would be pushing!)

It sounds as though your dd (and you, for peace of mind and control of the process) might benefit from some one-to-one tuition.

It's interesting that she did very well in tests, when focusing alone but doesn't do well in the classroom. It could be simply that she's stuck with a poor teacher. But I wonder, is she easily distracted? Does the presence of other people (classroom noise but also awareness of a source of help, in the teacher) distract her particularly easily?

Also, 'learned helplessness' is a very real phenomenon, especially in maths. It is often heightened by having an audience.

If she was in the bottom set predicted a 7, then it's going to be either selective private or grammar.

As someone whose dc were used that way in maths, it can actually be very helpful, especially now there's a focus on showing how you did it and the reasoning behind. It's very easy when you're good at maths to understand enough and just plunge in and do it, without thinking much more.
By explaining to others you're forcing them to think themselves.

Khan academy is free (donate if you like) It's a see it done do it yourself and do a practice test, it's a great site. www.khanacademy.org

This happened to ds. he has slow processing & asd and was in middle set (selective school) but was always in trouble/struggling. He was sent down to bottom set as a punishment and even though he was more academically able than the rest of the bottom set he began to progress faster. He thinks it was purely that the teacher explained concepts at a slower pace which gave him time to process.

Unfortunately he was then put back in his normal set and had the same problems again. We asked for him to be put back down in to the bottom set but were refused. The teacher would not explain things to him when he didn't get it first time. Other students were no help.

In the end due to lots of other issues too we moved his school.

Well from your OP it sounds like the teacher did explain and your DD didn’t ‘get it’ so teacher asked her to ask another student which seems fair enough as sometimes other students have a different way of explaining things or may have had similar struggles to your DD which makes them better placed to help.

I mean, a teacher can go over and over the same thing a million times but if DD doesn’t get it, I don’t think this is going to help. Sometimes it just takes longer to ‘click’ with some children and sometimes it never does! It’s not like the teacher just hasn’t bothered from what you’ve said.

@NeededAction thank you very much for your constructive advice.

:) your username is my new motto haha love it