To ask for immediate help?

[youarenotkiddingme]

Sorry if title makes this seem interesting but it's really not!

Ds handed in his maths homework and had it handed back yesterday to re do and got told to show working out properly.

Except how the feck do you answer this?

*Some tins of beans are packed into 7 boxes of which there are 12 tins per box. If I pack them into 4 boxes instead, how many tins will there be in each box?
*

Developing his ability to "write down what the question is asking" may help. So not "write down how you worked it out" which doesn't help when the answer is something like "I looked at it and worked out the answer".

Depending on his language skills and where he is at in picking this sort of question apart, you/his teachers may be able to give him a set strategy - write down what is given, what you need to do with it, and then what you've done, then what the answer is. Properly thought out such a strategy should help him with more advanced "prove that ..." questions. I'm just at the stage of trying to start showing my son how to do that, he is also brilliant at maths but doesn't show much working. I went a long way in maths partly because I was good at writing explanations!

Youare my DD struggled with the whole "show your working" thing until I explained that in the GSCE/exams in a few years she will need to write her working. To get all the marks. So such a question will be worth eg 2 points.

1 mark for 21
1 mark for showing how she got 21 (7 × 12 = 84 84 ÷ 4 = 21).

This is so that if someone makes a small mistake (eg does 7x12=96 and 96 = 24) they will still get 1 point as the method was correct. Even if the answer was not 24.

I also explained to my DD that it also shows that she understand how to do the mathematical reasoning - which means she could solve the same issue with 16 boxes of tomatoes/16 bags of hand grenades etc etc

She seems to have understood the why and how for "showing your working" now and says it also helps her to work through these "wordy" maths problems - knowing there is just numbers under all the guff.

But it doesn't have to be the teacher that provides the feedback. Many parents are quite capable of doing it as well.

It's not like the OP is doing his homework for him, she's trying to help him see where his interpretation of the question is wrong.

he wording of the questions is causing him difficulty because he reads it as the box holds 12 tins

They do hold 12 tins, that is the point of the question.

She means the box can only hold 12 tins as a maximum, existential.

If a box holds 12 tins and you fill 4 boxes, then you have 48 tins in boxes and a fuck load of tins left over that you can't fit in the boxes. And the answer would still be that you have 12 tins in a box.

Pen he didn't show his working on the original work or make his answers clear. It was impossible to tell if he can do the maths when he just put a load of answers!
However when he re did it it became clear he needed to understand the questions and then he could do the work.
His maths teacher IS NOT the type that you don't even up with your homework for.
She is the type who expects you to attempt it early then find her if you struggle etc. Which is all fair enough and I agree with her strategy. When when you have a child who has severe difficulties with executive function and doesn't know he's misunderstanding the question because he reads if differently I need to step in. Any type of getting it wrong and punishment for ds causes massive anxiety that he struggles to overcome. When it's about a subject I prefer he learns that than learns to manage his anxiety/organisation. He learns this at other times through other inputs.

Considering I have a degree in teaching maths it's the one area I feel confident supporting him in

Nobody we did that with ds. He did an old style gcse paper and was shown the difference in grades between what he got and what he would have for if he showed his working. He just seems to struggle to write it down - I wish I knew why and then I can could help him through it.

If a box holds 12 tins and you fill 4 boxes, then you have 48 tins in boxes and a fuck load of tins left over that you can't fit in the boxes. And the answer would still be that you have 12 tins in a box

Not at all, since clearly the 4 boxes are different ones to the 12 boxes.

I don't see what people are struggling with here, it's a perfectly simple question.

You have a degree in teaching maths and you couldn't answer this simple question? My 7 year old managed it with ease.

Number of boxes x number of tins per box = total number of tins.
Number of tins/ the number of boxes to be packed in = number of tins per box.

Exist would have perhaps been better for you to read the full thread!
I have a degree in teaching maths.
I also pointed out I wanted answers to persuade my ds - who has autism - that my way was right and that the way he was reading the question and interpreting the question was incorrect.

It's a perfectly simple question if you don't have HFA, existential.

If you do, then the interpretation of the question can look slightly different, which is kind of the point of the thread.

I know that, but unless OP has HFA herself I don't understand why she couldn't understand the original sum.

She could understand the original question. She posted the thread to try and show her DS that it was meant to be read the way she had read it and not the way he was reading it.

She's already admitted that wasn't clear from her OP.

Yes it was a thread posted in haste to get what I needed to help ds at that time. I explained more after to clarify!

I read it the same as your ds. It took me 3 times to get that 'c' grade in maths.