Ideas to help DS present maths more neatly to avoid errors

[freshstart24]

DS is reaching the end of Y6. At parents Eve his teacher said his maths has come on really well and he's now very capable. However, he has an issue with laying his maths out messily, which means he makes needless errors, due for example to him getting columns out of line, or loosing his thread in a question with several steps.

DS has always seemed to struggle with laying things out logically whenever putting things down on paper. I have tried to help him but he doesn't seem to grasp it.

It seems a real shame for this to still be an issue- can anyone suggest how I could help please?

Are school maths books grid lined paper? Mine put in one number per square

Underline when doing word problems. And use grid lined paper for written calculations. Even if the school doesn't use grid paper, just using grid paper at home helped my ds to get a hang of it. Once ds realised the importance of lining it properly, he doesn't seems to make silly mistakes anymore.

Do you always use squared paper?

We get through reams of it. One digit per box, and very sharp pencils.

Practice & Nagging.

Showing where he lost marks due to daft mistakes due to layout.

In secondary, if given photocopied worksheets without sufficient space for workings out for homework then given him extra squared paper for working out so he doesn't get into bad habits.

Massively praise good layout.

Word problems. Use words in answer too, so
Discount = ……
Final price = …..
Helps them not get lost.

Thank you for the helpful suggestions.

School have not been using squares paper, nor was it used in SATs practise papers that DS completed.

I guess that because of this I didn't think to get some for him to use at home- I'll get some and we will use it at home in the future. I'll also see if he can use it at school....

Squared paper definitely! And then label the questions in their different parts.

E.g. Q1. Blah blah blah
(A) First part of working
(B) Second part of working

Q1 answer =

I used to do all my maths like this, I'm absolutely terrible at the actual skills of maths but labelling it up like this helped. Do the (A) (B) parts in circles or a different colour though to avoid confusing them with a mathematical a or b in an equation etc. Its also easier to correct if you make a mistake, underneath you can just write (B) - method wrong. Should be blah blah.

Once he's at secondary, he'll probably be using A4 files and pads, so squared paper for written maths will be much more common.

It's so much easier to teach algebra when they get used to presenting equations methodically and neatly.

And you can buy books of graph paper.

If you need specialist paper, triangular dots and things, you can download them for free from loads of websites and print a sheet as you need it.

It's partially being strict about how you do it.
I had a really strict maths teacher in year 7. If you didn't write it her way then you re-did it.
At the time I thought fussy, but I used the same technique right up through degree level and was always getting compliments on the way I laid work out although I'm not naturally a neat layer-outer.

In fact I changed school in the 6th form and the teachers were constantly saying "look at how you should lay it out..." and I was thinking "well you should have shown them before this."

Rules we had:
Never more than one equal sign on a line.
Equal signs go under each other:
Do one step at a time generally
Underline any part way through answers you need to use again to make them easy to find.
At the end write Ans = …….
Double underline the answer.

So you might get: Solve giving answer to 3 significant figures.
2x + 3 = 1 - x
3x + 3 = 1
3x = - 2
x = - 2/3 (single underlined)

Ans = - 0.667 (3.s.f) (double underlined)

Oh and another tip, possibly not relevant yet, but one that can help those who need it laid out well:
Write what you know in mathematical language:
So if it starts off with "you have a circle radius 4cm" You write:
r = 4cm.
Then if, say you need the circumference you write:
Circumference = 2 (pi) r
= 2 (pi) 4
= 8 (pi)
= 25.1327

Circumference = 25.1cm (3 s..f)

It also means that the marker can see what you're doing. So if you accidently put the radius in as 2cm, or forget what the formula for circumference is and put (pi) r then you may get marks as error carried forward.

If you just write 8 (pi)= 25.1cm if you have got things wrong then it's harder to tell why, making it harder to check for the student plus harder for the examiner to give you marks for working.

I will note that for above the computer has removed the spaces to keep the = signs directly under each other

Could you show him by getting his workbook from last week, covering the question and getting him to figure out what the question was by reversing his working.

Just to illustrate how unclear it is.

We were always taught, especially at GCSE that you should reverse the calculation to check your working before considering the question finished.

I'm very surprised that the school doesn't use squares paper when all maths SATS exams have squared areas for the workings. This school has not helped your son at all In this respect