Worried about level of Maths for year 4

[PeppyBee]

My son is in year 4 and always tells me the maths is too easy. I have spoken to the school many times and they tell me that they have to follow the curriculum. I have attached a photo showing what he is doing as homework at the moment. I feel it is far too easy for his age range and it really worries me that he is not being challenged enough. I wondered what your thoughts were? Also wondered if anyone sends their child to private school and what their education is like compared to this?

It doesn't. It actually builds confidence.

I completely understand grammaninja it must be difficult trying to meet the needs of all different abilities. I really don’t know why children aren’t streamlined for English and Maths and then stick together for all the other subjects. It would make more sense to me. Thanks so much for your post, I will be asking the teacher if she can provide some harder homework for him.

I think the opposite actually. If it’s too easy, it leads to boredom. Children can then become disengaged and disruptive. Too hard and they can loose confidence yes.

It my experience with DS it did not build confidence. It built a why bother attitude.
Why bother listening to the teacher when I already know how to do the question?
Why bother concentrating for the whole lesson when I can do it all in the last 5 minutes?

When DS was faced with a tricky question and he couldn't instantly do it he would give up because he knew it was above what he was expected to know.

His confidence has increased now he is at a private school that will teach to his level and there are others at the same level. I put this down to he knows he has to concentrate in all lessons now not just some. If there is something tricky he can have a go as he is not expected to get it all correct.

It really doesn’t. it creates boredom and resentment.

Thanks for all your comments, it’s school pick up time soon, but I will look into all of the suggestions you have all made about extra learning materials and just want to say thank you, it’s my first time posting and you’ve all been incredibly helpful.

My daughter became very bored with maths when she was in Year 1, and complained every day thst the work was too easy. Her class teacher refused to differentiate the work and just told me that ‘she was so far ahead of where she needed to be’ and didn’t care about how bored she was. We went to a trial Kumon maths session, which she loved, and she then did Kumon every day until she was in Year 7, by which time she was working at GCSE level. The Kumon way of learning really suited her and she progressed through the levels quickly. I know it isn’t the way that some children like to learn and you have to really commit to doing it every day, but it was probably the most educationally beneficial thing she ever did as a child, and I would always recommend thst children who aren’t being stretched at school should give it a try.

@PeppyBee Have you asked about what he does in terms of questions after the lesson? Where I was a state primary governor, children had 4 levels of questions. Level 4 was Herculean! It was designed to extend the very brightest. A DD who got a scholarship to Wycombe Abbey wasn’t held back by the NC.

Yes, schools teach the curriculum but greater depth should be available and teachers should know who needs this. My DD had a primary friend who went to Cambridge for maths. She wasn’t taught outside the curriculum but had a much broader spectrum of questions that required much more depth of understanding. Teachers also get these dc to explain concepts to others. Parents don’t like it but using language for maths is important.

I’d talk to his teacher about what “Herculean” questions are on offer! Clearly a bright dc needs stretching, so how are they doing that? Some Sen dc won’t be accessing the same lesson in the same way so questions afterwards must be different. Whole class teaching has benefits but teachers must get progress from all dc.

Your comment did make me laugh MeetMeOnThrCorner just imagining myself asking the teacher about Herculean questions. To be honest I think I would just be met with a blank expression. But nevertheless I may give it a go! My son says all the questions set are the same.

I'm happy to share who we use if it's helpful. They were actually originally a recommendation off mumsnet that my DH found!

My DS is in the same boat and always complains about school maths. I have raised it with school and they say the right things but they don’t actually do anything. We do extra at home. I moved my DD from state to private in year 5 so have I experience of both. I would say they don’t routinely teach miles beyond the curriculum but they do give extra challenge questions to those who are coping well with the curriculum. I didn’t feel the need to do “extra” with her at home. We use CGP workbooks and he goes to a tuition centre once a week.

Should say he does the CGP workbooks for the year ahead of his current year for extra challenge

In addition to the ideas being given about stretching the maths being learnt in a formal setting, I wanted to add a bit about the informal stuff. We ended up home-educating, initially because my oldest was bored stiff in reception because everything felt too easy and they were extremely miserable. I also tutored children in maths, both home-ed and at school. One of the things that worked well with all of them was to apply school-type maths to real-life problems.

I remember one girl who was really struggling with maths at school but she was massively keen on ornithology and way, way more knowledgeable than me about birds, which was great because we ended up learning from each other. We spent a block of private lessons designing and constructing bird boxes for her garden. It covered a lot of number work, measuring and geometry and calculations about materials and costs but it had meaning for her. Although we didn't do it, we could also have easily moved onto things like exploring databases about bird populations or migratory distances of the birds she was most excited about and so on.

My own children went through a Dr Who phase and the geometry needed to construct a life-sized dalek out of cardboard was very challenging (still makes me shudder!) - there are billions of angles, hemispheres and 3D geometry in a dalek. Astronomy is a rich source for applied maths. So is looking at manufacturing something, maybe cooking something or making easily like Christmas decorations, and do the maths about the idea of scaling it up into running a small business - it links nicely with beginning book-keeping, business studies and profit margins for starters.

It wasn't around when my children were young but Martin Lewis of MoneySavingExpert produced an online resource about money management for young people which can be downloaded for free from that website. There might be other mathsy ideas in there that could be useful for the long term. www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/financial-education/#download

@PeppyBee To expand further - hopefully to help! Our school had 4 levels of maths work after the lesson for dc to use their knowledge. So: Hard, Harder, Hardest and Herculean levels. By y4, teachers are aware who the dc are who need the breadth and depth of the most challenging questions. They can work in groups of 3 if appropriate. It’s about working out how dc might get the right answer as well as the answer itself. (Other low achieving dc work with a TA to recap the basics). If your school is getting many dc at the exceeding level, they are probably teaching well. We are a grammar county and dc achieve highly in “leafy lane” schools and parents know what dc can do. So yes, ask about breadth, depth and challenge! Ask about dc’s progress and how this is assessed.

I remember teaching primary maths home schooling during lockdown. It was horrendous.
What Maths scheme is your child using at school? We used White Rose maths. I really didn't like white rose maths. I remember doing bar graphs, fractions and common denominators.

As it was lockdown, all of the white rose resources were available free online, together with what exactly the child should be covering that week. The resources are no longer free, but they may be available if you pay. Important! You need to follow the same resources and methods as the school uses. I found white rose difficult, because it was completely alien to how I had been taught maths.

I also took out a Twinkl subscription. There's loads and loads of Maths resources on there. We particularly enjoyed the mystery of.... resources. The child has to work through several pages of maths in order to discover who committed a crime. They are given a list of suspects and have to eliminate them by completing various maths exercises. We also completed colouring sheets which involved doing maths to determine the colours needed. Twinkl provides age appropriate resources. I believe that learning should be fun.

We used white rose exercise sheets, with extension exercises built into them. We always did the 'mastery' exercises as well as the ordinary ones. I think the exercises were graded deep, deeper, deepest. I can't remember if they were from Twinkl or provided by the school/white rose.

I believe rock stars times table gets increasingly difficult, don't they move on to division and stuff and random questions? It is important to keep on top of it. You will notice a difference in speed if they stop doing it for a couple of weeks. Is your child a global superstar or rock legend with their own helicopter yet?

@PeppyBeeDC in a good school do receive the same curriculum but no decent teacher won’t set much harder questions and extension work in class for the bright dc as the lower ability dc get pre work to embed their knowledge before moving on. You really should talk to the maths coordinator at the school to understand how maths is taught. Do they give no info to parents?

Where I was a governor, 4 levels of questions were available, and dc mined up or went straight to Herculean! The maths co ordinator had extension work for the brightest that widened out the topic. It’s simply not true that schools cannot do this and often the ability range at primary is very wide. The best schools know not to bore dc! So my feeling is, I’m afraid, your school is poor, and I would be asking a lot more questions about how they assess ability and how they ensure dc work at the correct level because one size doesn’t fit all and he needs much greater depth. Ask how they provide it.

My DS complains about maths as well, even though his teacher does give him harder work (their textbooks have two routes built in anyway, easier and harder, but she also gave him work from the next year) to try to lessen the boredom for him. What I've ended up doing is just giving him my own maths homework to do, at a level that challenges him. He's even wanting to do it now while we're on holiday. But tbh its probably just going to make things even worse next year when he'll be even further ahead but its better than turning him off maths altogether, which is his favourite subject.

@Natsku Work from the year above isn’t delivering greater depth though. Why cannot the teacher or the maths coordinator deliver more challenging work within the curriculum? That’s really poor. I know dc who have gone to Cambridge to do maths that have been challenged throughout primary school. Occasionally schools do see exceptionally bright dc and should adapt the teaching as they would for other sen dc. Just saying do work from the year above isn’t good enough as they wi run out of curriculum! Ofsted might notice they aren’t challenging the bright dc too.

He already did the more challenging stuff from his year's curriculum but its hard to find a greater depth to adding and subtracting within 20! They do a really slow start to maths (not uk), which is great for really cementing numbersense but frustrating for those who already have it down (my fault for teaching him before he started school, although he seems to be like his uncle, with a natural interest in maths so might have figured it out quickly anyway)
They do get to do some maths in ability groups spread out over the 1st three school years though.

Our school did make more of an effort than yours but we still had the problem that because they were used to work that was easy, our kids never actually learned how to persevere at a problem that was difficult. When we tried to do more challenging things at home they would just want to give up. We kept at it and eventually they learned how to cope when the work was actually difficult. I like beast academy which is really good imo at introducing breadth and challenge to kids who like maths.

Most of the time in state schools, the teacher has to use the time available to teach to the middle and then give additional help to the weakest kids. They don't have time to teach more challenging concepts to the strongest ones. So you have to do this at home until they get to secondary, where they can be in the top set.

Just looked on white rose maths site. Pupils should be doing decimals and telling the time at the moment.

The differentiated worksheets which I used are on twinkl. Its worth taking out a subscription to white rose maths and twinkl. All the information and resources needed are available on those sites. Just check the maths scheme that the kids are doing first.
I think white rose maths has videos explaining how to do the work. Twinkl has fun videos too

Following and I'll read later. My daughter was been saying maths is easy and boring recently. She also doesn't think she's that good at maths and named a couple of boys who are quicker. She's in year 3 and follows white rose program at school. I don't think her maths is this easy. In year 1 and 2 they had challenge group she was in. They stopped this in year 3, I'm not sure why. She gets extra challange questions but not in a separate group.

Teacher did say she is now getting distracted in lessons.

My son is at end of Year 2 at a prep school. That is very easy compared to the level of maths he’s learning.

@Natsku They don’t take it quite so literally here. I assume that wasn’t year 4 work.

Its 1st grade maths, its very very basic