To agree with this article re. curriculum whilst home schooling maths and english

[fabulousspider]

www.theguardian.com/education/2021/feb/20/im-a-maths-lecturer-and-i-had-to-get-my-children-to-teach-me

Just read this, and have to say I agree with the maths and english sentiments from the experts.

Having been teaching my kid (age 8) english which involves "fronted adverbials" and all that malarkey whilst trying to encourage their creative writing seems backwards to me. Overcomplicating what should be an enjoyable experiment in creativity. Making the kids stressed out! Kids will learn appropriate language usage by default as they write. They don't need to know what a fronted adverbial is whilst they are trying to grapple with the creative side of writing. I believe that they will pick up the appropriate language by a process of osmosis whilst carrying out the creative writing.

And the number of times I've noticed that frequently the maths work set and the answers seem plain wrong! Like the maths teacher says, you teach them one thing when younger and then change this as they get older. I see that some concepts need altering for younger kids but I am honestly suprised at some of the ways the methods are put across. They don't always seem intuitive.

Do others feel the same?

Agree. Too much of the technical stuff and not enough freedom to write spontaneously. Let the story flow - none of this planning it all in advance - see where it takes you. Get it down. Spellings can be corrected later. I've done a lot of creative writing classes in my teaching life time and always took that approach. I'm horrified at what children are expected to do now. Yes, plan a factual report - but a free flowing story? Let the imagination go and the characters will go their own way - often unexpectedly.
I never learned a lot of the technicalities that my grandchildren have learned at primary school and I've managed just fine. Let them be children.

Pros and cons really. You can let children unleash their creative side but if you don't scaffold carefully, and model how to create complex sentences then you're likely to get reems and reems of badly written waffle. Which is fine from time to time as freedom to explore ideas is really important BUT once poor habits sink in, it is very hard to correct.

Reams and reams.

I agree. My DD isn't even at school yet, but it really annoys me that the early years curriculum teaches them things that are plain wrong. She's meant to learn the names of shapes (why?!) and has to learn what is a square and what is a rectangle.

So she will tell me a square isn't a rectangle.

It is.

A square is a type of rectangle.

Don't get me started on the English!

Put it this way. I have an A Level in English, I work as a professional writer, and yet a primary school English lesson would stump me. You can teach children to write without getting to absorbed in the technicality. I think if my English lessons had been like that when I was younger, it would have put me off writing. Let them write, let them create, let them enjoy. They don't need to know the specific label for every single word they use. I never learned them and I work as a sodding professional now!

I agree. Gove really fucked up the curriculum IMO.

A square is not a type of rectangle. Both are types of quadrilaterals which are shapes with 4 sides. A square is a regular quadrilateral whereas a rectangle/oblong is long and thin. So your little one is correct.

I don't believe that mistakes should go uncorrected, or that kids shouldn't be given guidance on sentence structure, but I think it's overcomplicating to explain fronted adverbials etc at this age. Correction should be part of the process, maybe even examining some sentences that are wrong as a class and asking what needs to change. But doing it in a way that's overcomplicating from the very start is I think overkill.

*overcomplicating the matter

I agree with some of what you say. But:

I believe that they will pick up the appropriate language by a process of osmosis whilst carrying out the creative writing

This is unfortunately not true for the majority, and is likely to be even less true those from disadvantaged backgrounds. We are looking for deliberate crafting and shaping and this doesn’t just happen. The teaching of creative writing in schools is quite contentious, as teachers try to match up policy, curriculum and exam syllabus, often without a strong creative background themselves (English teachers are more likely to have critical literature backgrounds).

Oo 100% op!

Obviously I concur.

So the school curriculum is wrong because your children outsmart you?

@Notanotherhun

A square is not a type of rectangle. Both are types of quadrilaterals which are shapes with 4 sides. A square is a regular quadrilateral whereas a rectangle/oblong is long and thin. So your little one is correct.

No, a square is a special case of a rectangle. They are both quadrilaterals, yes.

Flip side is, I am a secondary Maths teacher and have been homeschooling my Yr 1 and Reception children and I see a huge benefit in a lot of the, bizarre at the first time of seeing them, methods they are being shown.

At lot of it has been formalising the way in which lots of people will do maths in their heads, rather than the formal one size fits all some of us will have had - I am a massive advocate of not insisting students do things in a particular method if the one they are using generates the correct answer.

I can't comment on the English as what we have had set has not been the greatest and I only correct spellings if they are not phonetically correct, or my daughter asks if it is spelt correctly. One thing I have encouraged is getting her to use the dictionary if she isn't sure.

@Sapho47

So the school curriculum is wrong because your children outsmart you?

It's not about that, though. The man in the article who's a maths lecturer is making the point that what children are being taught is wrong, and then later on he's having to unpick those mistakes again. Same with English.

@Sarahandquack

I agree - I always explain a square is a special rectangle as it fits the description of a rectangle - 2 sets of opposite sides that are equal, 4 right angles.

My children have been taught the names oblong - what we generally call a rectangle, square and rectangle.

Rectangle is the name of the family of shapes, bit like a triangle can be right angled, isosceles equilateral or scalene.

Times have changed.

I was taught formulaically for maths, English everything and nothing such as phonics - it just didn’t exist. However I do think maths teaching is right in some parts and wrong in others. Teaching different method of doing multiplication - fine. You find what works best. But the expectations are high and yet they teach down to the lowest common denominator. So the system isn’t right.

When I went to primary my teacher said I had to do my x2 times table and my parent said - but she knows up to 15x15 off by heart. The teacher said - we don’t move on to the three times table until everyone in the class gets it - that was wrong.
But recently my eldest was refused permission to extend in maths despite scoring 100% on gcse papers as she needs to learn different methods and it was about her ‘breath and depth’ I raised an eyebrow and after some heated emails I just told her to start the a level course. Done. We do it in our own time and in a way that suits her.

[quote Noodledoodledoo]@Sarahandquack

I agree - I always explain a square is a special rectangle as it fits the description of a rectangle - 2 sets of opposite sides that are equal, 4 right angles.

My children have been taught the names oblong - what we generally call a rectangle, square and rectangle.

Rectangle is the name of the family of shapes, bit like a triangle can be right angled, isosceles equilateral or scalene.[/quote]
YY.

I wouldn't care what a preschool child calls TBH (I'd just gently correct) but it worries me that there's such a drive to make them learn these names, and it's not very accurate or helpful. She's also been told she's meant to know what a hexagon is, for goodness' sake. I've no issue with her picking up the word if she likes, but I would think it's a whole lot more important to get her secure on counting to six first!

With their English work, I've seen my children struggle with technical terms for things (like the dreaded formal adverbials). And then seen them encouraged to apply these... And you can see their writing improving. The process is painful at times, but there is a benefit.

With their Maths... Knowing theoretically that these laborious methods are worth it in the long term, but it's over complicating the basic at some points.

I've found out now why my youngest hates Maths and moans about it all the time... She's good at it and doesn't need the practice. She now looks at the worksheet, sees if she can do it and only watched the video lesson if sheisnt sure. Unfortunately she is slightly lazy as well as clever, so she coasts along academically. (Yr3).

The children 'learning by osmosis' are the ones writing 'could of' and 'would of' in their English GCSE papers.

I think people are misunderstanding my point. I should have clarified from the get go. I don't disagree with learning sentence structure nor correction of mistakes, but I do think that the over-scientification (if that's a word!) takes the joy out of it for a lot of creative children, even puts them off it! As per the experts.

Definitely, sentence structure, correct grammar is really important. But maybe there's a better way of teaching it that's less dry and miserable than learning about fronted adverbials and what have you, rather just focussing on the correct language and words, than painstakingly explaning what a fronted adverbial is and boring the kids or even putting them off.

As a highly educated primary school teacher, I completely disagree.
Regarding English, unquestionably the best way to learn to be a good writer is to read extensively (and be read to). Any teacher will agree. It is by reading that you pick the tricks, tone etc up by osmosis. Creativity doesn't ever come from nothing. It's only by absorbing and being exposed to similar things can you use that to create something (somewhat) original. Another factor is how much high level conversation you hear and contribute to. However, a lot of children do not read extensively or have high level conversations. Research has shown that these children are more likely to come from low income backgrounds. They are also the children who have worse educational outcomes - the gap between rich and poor children here is huge.
So as educators, we have to do our best to increase children's vocabulary and to circumnavigate their lack of reading. All in an effort to narrow that gap. We can do this a few different ways. One is very explicit teaching of devices such as fronted adverbials. Another is a programme called Talk for Writing which helps children verbalize and learn high level vocabulary and sentence structures so, just as if they had experience of reading them, they can innately use them in their own writing.
Another thing to bear in mind is that there are lots of children absolutely terrified by a blank sheet of paper. It can cause huge anxiety for the reasons I've already talked about - they don't have the tools they need to be creative. So we teach them the tools.
Regarding maths, the only thing that some teachers teach incorrectly is the rectangle thing. Yes we start by teaching whole numbers, but what an earth is wrong with that? We don't say "decimals don't exist", we don't need to because it doesn't come up until we introduce them to it. If they ask, we may follow their lead and teach them a bit about it or tell them theyll learn more about it later (usually depending on how much time we have). There is nothing in maths teaching that requires unlearning, just learning more about.
We also teach multiple ways to 'do an operation' like addition because maths isn't actually about a series of methods to get to an answer. It's a beautiful language that we teach children to visualise and manipulate, to fully comprehend and have command over. We show them the connections between things and help them.form their own connections, see patterns, solve problems and develop reasoning. Just teaching them a few column methods by rote and saying 'use these' doesn't allow them to develop that fuller understanding. Instead it leads to scores of adults happily declaring that they're no good at maths, and scores of confused children in classrooms.
So if anything that you've seen through home schooling has confused you or you've struggled to see the reasoning for, I empathise. You've not had training or years of experience of pedagogy (the science of teaching). But that doesn't mean it's wrong. Most teachers know exactly what they're doing.

So if anything that you've seen through home schooling has confused you or you've struggled to see the reasoning for, I empathise. You've not had training or years of experience of pedagogy (the science of teaching). But that doesn't mean it's wrong. Most teachers know exactly what they're doing.

Wow, you're patronising.

Did you not take on board that the article was written by people who are experts? They might well have considerably more expertise than you!

Thank you sausagesizing, it's good to get a teachers perspective. Maybe because I'm coming at it from a household that's big on reading, my child is more privileged in that respect. I do personally feel that some of it is too "dry" though and runs the risk of alienating some kids from the more fun aspects of, for example, creative writing. But completely agree re reading. I do understand you have to address the needs of all the kids though.

Regarding maths, I've been quite surprised about some of the videos we've had to watch, and the worksheet questions, some of which had nonsensical answers. For example, a times tables question the teacher set about finding even numbers in an "odd" numbers times table (can't remember what it was) but she taught that in that times table there are zero even numbers, even though when you go higher up in the times tables there actually are. Which I know is probably so she could teach the basics, but it was plain wrong. And a number of other worksheet questions and so on that seemed very questionable to me as an adult, logically.