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[CURIOUSMIND]

My DS1 is very advanced on maths, he is working on L6-L7 in year3. I know the teaching for him is next to nothing although they said they will accommdate his ablity.

Anyway, everytime when the homework is maths, he was given a puzzle(I mean everytime).Well, some of them are logical and fun, you do need to work step by step in mathmatic method. (I pursuaded myself not to complain because it will only make DS1 feel bad although I really feel they are running out of idea to challenge a gifted mathematician).

It goes extremly far for a week.He was given a puzzle which has little to do with maths, but needs awful lots of trying.I agreed my DS1 to not doing this homework. He then wrote down on his book(He said he needed to tell the teacher why.) :I found this puzzle is not very logical, you need to try and try again.

The week after, The teacher left this msg: Thank you very much for your commments.However this homework is not optional.

My immediate feeling is to leave her: Could you please explain to Ds1 how to sort out this puzzle in mathematic method?

But, I think I would consult mumsnet first. Could you please show your opinion?

Yes, I interpreted it to be NC levels.

Colet Court gives out similar problems in Year 3-4, so this sort of homework at this age is not unheard of. Also, my understanding of this task is that the real learning comes from the trying to come up with a solution - which is the goal, and not the actual solution itself.

Perhaps the teacher thinks your son is very rigid in his approach to maths. Whilst he may be advanced on the technical side, perhaps he needs stretching on the Thinking side IYSWIM. If he sticks to an approach where he will only do things with a straightforward method and clear answer, the rest of his peers will catch him up. I have seen this happen to friends children. once their brilliant mental maths ability kept them ahead but the gap is narrowing.

Soupdragon,
You got an very good point.I hope this is what the teacher means to do,just unfortunately it is not.But I got your point. Seriously agree with you!

You previous post about the star shape ,position of the two numbers are all correct.

I sat down with the puzzle this evening. It is possible to do it entirely by logic and with no guessing. You use the fact that you have positions for 1 and 2 (although you don't know which way round they are) and extrapolate the possible positions for other numbers. You conclude that 8, 9 and 10 are on the triangle "opposite" the 10 and 11 after a process of elimination based on possible sums. You don't know what's where but you narrow it down to three possibilities for the "triangle" containing 1,2,11 and 12 and then only one of these can fit the criterion of adding to 26 when the other numbers are placed.

Quite a hard task for a 7yo but good to give him something he finds really hard. Clever children often need to work on sticking at difficult tasks.