10yo struggling with maths

[GauntJudy]

DS is 10 and doesn't seem to be "getting" maths. I spoke with his teacher to explain that he won't ask for help but will just sit there pretending it's all fine. She said she'd keep an eye on him but I think she's just got too many kids to teach to devote time to one kid.

When I sit with him for homework it's clear he doesn't know how to do things. He shuts down, gets in a mood, cries - our evenings are ruined and he still doesn't understand.

I'm thinking of a tutor but from looking online in my area there only seem to be centres you can go to (rather than someone come to us). From previous experience of getting him to attend things I'll not be able to get him into the car, let alone out of it and into a classroom after school.

I'm a lone parent so no reinforcements to help in these situations.

I'm stressed about it as I think a burst of extra learning now would stand him in good stead. But I just can't get him on board.

We always taught our kids this as divide by the bottom number and then multiply by the top.

I don't think you need a maths tutor in primary school unless you're trying to take an exam for a specific secondary school

Just go through the workbook but look at the questions and answers simultaneously to figure it out

It'll all figure itself out in secondary school

And talk to the teacher as to why on earth your son can't figure out the homework. Ask her how she is explaining it in class.

Ask her what the expectations are of yr 5 pupils and where your DS relates to that and what is she doing to improve their understanding

Unless the child has dyscalculia perhaps. Or has had an epically crap teacher for a bit, or has missed time at school due to ill health, family circumstance or frankly general attitude/attendance issues? Covid at the wrong spot.
Lots of reasons to fall behind and for it to be a good opportunity to reset the basics before secondary. It would make a huge difference to confidence levels which I am finding is 90% of the battle.

There is no point in learning maths by rote, he needs to understand how it applies in real life, in practical situations. Like someone said with pizza, he'd understand half. But if some weirdo cut it into 100 pieces and offered him half a pizza, how many pieces would he get? Or a quarter of a pizza. He'd get 50 pieces, or 25...
Them move on to sweets, for instance. A bag of a hundred sweets and he gets half, that is 50. He gets 1/10, that's 10 sweets. He gets 1/100, that's just 1 sweet.
So a percentage is just a silly way of describing 100 pieces, which can be convenient, particularly with money. I have £1. I give you half, which is 50p. Or I could say, 50%.

However he could be like my daughter who refused to listen to my explanations and just announced she couldn't understand. It was REALLY annoying.

... She became an accountant...

While maths absolutely needs to be understood rather than learned by rote daily practice really helps. Get into the habit of doing a bit each day.

Clearly he has gaps/misunderstandings. A tutor could could work systematically through them IE number,place value, operations, Decs/fractions/percentages etc. But you could use bbcbitesize KS2 maths yourself to "revise" areas when they come up in homework questions. Although it's hard teaching your own child - they tend to resist!

Hi, if you were thinking of a tutor, my 10 year old is currently doing 11+ tuition with a company called stethoscope scholars and great so far! would recommend

Her confidence and ability have changed 300% in 12 months.

This amused me on a maths thread!

My son was similar from year 4-6. Crying every time he had maths homework. Spoke to teachers she said he was fine but he just seemed to have a block and couldn't get past him.
We found him a tutor. (Maybe speak to his teachers to see if they know of anyone). It really helped him.
He is now in year seven and in top set, flying away.

Just to add he no longer has any tutoring.

How did you go about finding a tutor @Newuser75?

We actually got in touch with one of his old teachers and asked if she would consider doing it. She agreed and it worked brilliantly for him.

When mine were in primary we moved back to the UK from another country and found they were well behind their UK classmates in maths. I used Carol Vorderman’s “How to be Good at Maths” books which seemed to help things click. I also had colourful wall-chart posters at home like the attached one from Amazon, so that when we cut something round (cheese, pizza, cake) or long (baguette, bar of chocolate) we could visualise the fraction and percentage at the same time.

Then in secondary I got them into the once-a-week habit of doing the CGP 10-minute maths workouts for their year group. They’ve sometimes grumbled but I think they would grudgingly admit that they enjoy being on top of their maths.

Maths tutor in person. Ask online in a local FB group.

They are worth their weight in gold but I know lots are often booked until May to get children through SATS (an utterly ridiculous thing). We found that going on a waiting list was the only way.

In case he refuses, I am 100% sure there are lots of his classmates who get tutored and just don't talk about it.

DD was lost as a perfect middle child, good enough to get by so nobody realised how bad she fell behind.
It only came out when we questioned her homework/saw her books at school.
Her tutuor then went back at least one year and checked how good her basic understanding was and worked from there.

Maybe look for an online maths tutor? I was also very slow at maths, I was lucky enough to have a patient tutor who helped me break it down in a way I could understand. Maths is a brilliant subject, but hard if you don’t ‘get’ it in class. It’s very, very easy to lose confidence and feel rubbish at it, when in reality you just need more time than is available to understand it.

My DD is dyslexic and struggles with maths as a result. School have started taking her out of class to do a maths programme called 'power of 2'. Maybe see if your school do this?

Power of 2 is good for reinforcing (over learning) the basics, but it’s very repetitive.

Kumon is very much based on learning processes to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and kids can be very good at this but not so much at the word problems etc that actually come up in maths class.

At ks2 they are expected to just know that three quarters is 75%, like memorising times tables. The full way to convert any fraction to a percentage and vice versa is slowly built up to by year 7.

Tutor seems to be the way to go.

Gosh he isn't stupid. I was brought up on a much less demanding and rigorous maths curriculum and am appalled at the new curriculum. If a child does not have a mathematical "bent" then they are put right off. And then you have lost them. Whereas before even those with no particular talent for maths could make a good showing and learn basic concepts in depth. And not feel stupid.

As maths went on up through secondary school then more difficult concepts were introduced.

But what we have now at primary level puts children off maths.

Do kids really do algebra at primary level these days? Long ago when I went to school, it was only at grammar school that 'Maths' was divided out into Arithmetic, Geometry, and Algebra.

@GauntJudy I'm a Kip tutor and some of my students are online. They have a log in and work through the learning programme based on their ability following assessments. I supervise this/tutor them on camera.

Number Blocks on iplayer is good for the fundamental principles of maths.

It might feel too young for him, but maybe worth a try or even watching yourself in the meantime. It shows how numbers interact with each other and work. Generally the maths gets more advanced through the series.

Duolingo also has a maths option, and that’s great for showing physically on the screen how the % and fractions relate.

Some options while you look for a tutor.

Friends I know who tutor tend to work on word on mouth, not online ads. So worth asking on local mums groups etc.

Another great way to start practicing math is through Beestar's math worksheets. They have a lot of great worksheets for different levels and the kids really enjoy them. The worksheets are also really good quality and really well thought out questions.