What to do about Maths?!

[Hiddeninplainsight]

Right, I have been reading the very interesting thread on maths. So many interesting experiences. I am hoping you all can advise. My DD is in Y4. She is a bright girl, not exceptionally ‘gifted’ but is still a substantial outlier in her school. The main problem is Maths. She isn’t so exceptionally mathematical as some of your DC, but with that she doesn’t have an innate thirst for maths. However in Y1, and possibly still y2 it was her favourite subject and she has been bored in school since the beginning of y2 (with a brief respite when she was first introduced to fractions).

School are useless and have taught her maths is easy and dull. They want her to write out her workings but it is all so easy for her she can’t bring herself to explain (I think half the time she just knows).

It makes me really sad that they have turned her off Maths, but more than that I want her to know that Maths is hard, that it is about problem solving and the fun is in solving the problems. She loves a challenge so I think she would love it.

So, my main question is what do we do? I think she needs to have a focus and she needs to have something hard which she has to write out her workings for. We did an online maths thing which explored her knowledge and it said she was working roughly at the level of a y8 child (this was not based on what she has been taught, but what she worked out). My husband and I were wondering if we should get a tutor to teach her GCSE maths. I am worried she would then be bored in secondary school, although she is bored out her mind now (literally, she zones out for 40 minutes a day during the maths mastery whole class explanations). My thought is that it would challenge her, I think she would enjoy the challenge, I think it would provide a focus and I think she would enjoy it. But is it a mistake? Any other ideas?

My ds(yr5) mainly use Khan academy for self learning, but he uses many others as well.
He has been using these sites quite regularly.

uk.ixl.com/
mathigon.org/
nrich.maths.org/
www.geogebra.org/
www.mangahigh.com/en-gb/
diagnosticquestions.com/UKMT
www.supermathsworld.com/
mathsframe.co.uk/

For video:
artofproblemsolving.com/videos
www.mathantics.com/
And Khan.

So many interesting and helpful posts! I will download dragonbox algebra. She has done a little bit, and really liked it.

I don’t know what online maths thing you’re talking about, but I’m a bit dubious about this because there’s no such thing as ‘the level of a y8 child’. I'm confused about this Noble. I would assume (perhaps correctly) that there is a curriculum that is covered in Y6, Y7, y8 etc. If a child has covered half of the expected curriculum to an expected standard in Y8, you would say they are the level of a Y8 child? However, I think that essentially the accuracy of this is a red herring. She is well beyond the level that is successfully catered for in her school, and it is having a very negative impact. That is what I need to address.

"A gifted child who is not accelerated when it is appropriate may well experience educational frustration and boredom; have reduced motivation to learn; develop poor study habits; have lower academic expectations, achievement and productivity; express apathy toward formal schooling, drop out prematurely [...] YES! (and pretty much yes to everything you said gfrnn)

This is exactly the issue. This is what is already happening. She has developed poor learning skills because if she doesn't know it instantly, she has a tendency to to say she doesn't know, even though she could work it out. The school have taught her so far that maths is very easy, and it is okay for her to have to sit through hours of stuff she has already mastered. They school have also taught her that they don't listen to her, so there is no point in her telling them it is not challenging enough. She has two more years of primary.

The problem is that it is soul destroying to sit in a bog standard maths class and do the long boring homework, especially in senior school, if you have an real talent and instinctive understanding of maths. And YES again!

So, noble, here I'm interested in your perspective. From reading your posts on this and other threads, I get the impression that secondary school maths is different from primary school, in that they don't do mastery, and so acceleration (within the year group) may be possible. As gfrnn was describing, we are talking about a child who is within the top 1% of ability (and exceeding). She is picks up extremely quickly, and she wants to be challenged. In primary school, she has to sit through 45 minutes of explanation on work she has mastered, she has to wizz through the standard exercise, and then flies through the extension. Sometimes the extension is challenging (the school do try but often don't get it right), but she has already had to sit through 45 minutes+ of inappropriate work. So simply having a better extension is an inappropriate solution. She needs more from the start to the end of the lesson. I don't have a clue how secondary teaching works (and I guess it isn't the same everywhere), but is it different? Is that difference likely to be lost as maths mastery takes over the English system? I worry that she is going to be equally unchallenged in secondary school as she has been in primary.

For those of you who suggested other options - she does piano already (and that is good for knowing things aren't always easy!). She is an avid reader, but I'm not sure murderous maths will be her thing. She doesn't like the horrid histories, but I'll get her one and see what she thinks.

The actual exam is irrelevant - what is important is the focus provided by a systematic curriculum. Ultimately, this is EXACTLY what I think, and why I think GCSE maths would be useful. What concerns me is that some of the UKMT challenges and the NRich stuff is still tricky because there is less focus to it. Although, having said that, if she did have a maths tutor (rather than us trying to get her to do stuff), it might possibly be different. It is certainly worth investigating.

And just to say, thank you all for your input and thoughts. It really is helpful to get other experiences.

Irvine I get the impression that your DS has a really strong level of intrinsic motivation when it comes to maths. Is that right, or do you help structure what he does? And have you managed to stop him from getting a long way ahead, or has he just taken himself there? I know that you have struggled with his school, but does he get any extension stuff in school? Or is it the same mind numbing boredom?

OH! sorry, where it says I would assume (perhaps correctly), it should say (perhaps INcorrectly!).

My ds has tendency to just go on ahead with things which are easy for him(numbers), so I steered him towards more problem solving type maths, find interesting topic from nrich for him, etc.

He is enjoying stuff like UKMT questions and mathigon at the moment, and forgot to add, parallel introduced by noble.
Lost hope with school for extension, but he isn't the type to complain boredom.

Hi hidden. I'm recognising some of your experiences here. I know sometimes an assessment helps give you confidence to point the finger and say yes it isn't working for my child and no wonder. But as you have seen here tends to also lead to people questioning the meaning of the assessment. And maybe doing year 4 work in a proper mastery sense is more of an achievement that churning the handle on year 8 work. The fact that she has inferred herself how to do the year 8 work is more impressive than the fact she can do it.

I think the thing to go to the teacher with in the first place is the child's perspective. DS is year 4 and after me being rather despondent at first parents evening about DS yet again coming home telling me maths was boring and easy and "place value agaaaaaain", teacher has really pulled it out for him.

DS and two other able kids do not have to listen to the explanation bit, they can just get on with the exercises. DS only does the hardest level and only a selection of those. Then teacher has evidence required to tick boxes and DS has had some speed and accuracy practice. Then he has some more investigation/puzzle type work to do, nrich etc. He's really being made to think. I'm very happy with that and more to the point DS is too.

I don't know if this would be enough for your DD but sounds better that what she's getting? I think don't listen to teaching input, miss out more exercises, and more time on extension / investigation tasks isn't a huge ask. Doesn't require much teacher input or different stuff. Worth a try? But I would base the asking on what DC is saying and what you're seeing of their work not assessments necessarily. Not all extension stuff will be perfectly pitched but the more open ended the more child can pitch it for themselves.

Don't dismiss learning how to explain what you have done though. It is an important step along the way to understanding why things work and being able to e.g. write the solution as computer code or generalise it to situations that are no longer intuitive.

I would assume (perhaps correctly) that there is a curriculum that is covered in Y6, Y7, y8 etc. If a child has covered half of the expected curriculum to an expected standard in Y8, you would say they are the level of a Y8 child?

No, there isn’t a Y8 curriculum so it wouldn’t be possible to do what you are expecting. There’s a national KS3 curriculum (which academies technically don’t have to follow) but KS3 means Y7 and Y8 in some schools and Y7-9 in other schools and in any case the KS3 curriculum is just a subset of the GCSE syllabus so where one ends and the other begins is rather irrelevant. Secondary schools tend to (although not always) set for maths from Y7. Top set students would cover the curriculum at an accelerated pace because they need to have finished and mastered the entire GCSE syllabus by the end of Y11 to get a 9. Average students would revisit and strengthen primary school topics and travel at a slower pace so that they will have covered enough of the GCSE syllabus by the end of Y11 to get a 4 or 5. There are lots of topics that the top set cover that they will not be taught at all. For example, top set Y8 in my school will learn right-angle trigonometry. The average student may not even meet that till Y11, by which time the top set student will have also covered 3D trig, trig graphs and the sine and cosine rule.

I'd just like to say that Noble has supported and advised me through similar dilemmas in the past and while there have been many frustrations on the way, I'm glad that we followed the path we did with no early exams and providing opportunities for enrichment instead. Noble gave me good advice along the way.

Primary was by far the trickiest time, but there are more resources around now.

We had this with son. We got a tutor for him who presented him with a different mathematical problem each week. None of which were based on any part of the curriculum he was, or would be working on in the near future.
She taught him that maths wasn't just about numbers, and some of the problems bordered on physics.
She also taught him that writing things down as he went was actually beneficial.

A few more links:
various maths/science : brilliant
computational thinking : bebras
computer science: learntec

Totally agree with OhYouBadBadKitten. We had this problem, but followed noble's advice too. She is one who knows everything about maths.

Hi, she needs to be able to explain her workings out- talk is very important in maths. By showing her workings out, she can check for errors but it is also her acquiring the skills to lay out her work neatly in a different language- formal written maths language! It is very frustrating to sometimes teach bright children who are unable follow instructions (write your workings out). Often my G and T chn made silly mistakes because they don’t follow the correct procedure. Of course maths should be creative and fun too, and sometimes schools don’t do this well. Try NRICH problems, they are free flowing exploratory maths problems which use a wide skillset. Maybe do sone with her, encourage her to explain her reasoning. Maybe get her to join a chess club if yoy want to encourage more non verbal reasoning development. As has been mentioned, it is Mastery curriculum now, so no point pushing her firward to future years curriculum really only for her to repeat. Challenge and develop her understanding of appropriate maths topics, make sure she truly can articulate her reasoning as otherwise I’m not sure she really should move on to other curriculum areas.

Sorry loads of typos there!

When it comes to gifted education, the UK is an educational backwater, still irrationally prejudiced against acceleration, despite overwhelming evidence of it's effectiveness. see for example this , this and this.

It's hilarious to see people talking about "educational backwaters" while making displaying their grammar is so bad they can't figure out the difference between its and it's.

Noble thank you for that explanation. You have given me more confidence that secondary may be an improvement on primary. Honestly, it is hard to have confidence in the UK education system when you have only experienced the horrors of primary maths 'mastery'.

There are lots of things she can explore. Surfing it sounds like your tutor did exactly what I think my DD needs.

Also, just to clarify, I wasn't at all suggesting that she shouldn't have to write out her workings. Kind of the opposite. Writing out her workings is really important. However, I can understand the frustration at having to do it when the work is really basic. I think she needs to be given something challenging which almost requires her to write out her workings to work it out.

The problems with enrichment are:
a) people assume that because it sufficient for most students, it is sufficient for all students.
b) people also assume that one should choose between enrichment and acceleration, and that enrichment is the safer option.
Neither is true.
A choice between enrichment and acceleration is a false dichotomy. Both are beneficial. Both can be combined. But whereas enrichment benefits all students, acceleration only benefits a small percentage at the top of the ability spectrum. However, for these students, acceleration is twice as effective as enrichment.
The nation deceived report states that "enrichment is not sufficient for some advanced students". and "when enrichment for gifted students does not include a faster pace and higher level of work, it is simply not effective as an intervention".
Gross states that for the exceptionally gifted, enrichment without associated acceleration is "as effective as a band-aid on a shark-bite"
In a nutshell - one size fits all does not work. For some students, a bit of enrichment is probably enough. For others, acceleration is a fundamental need. You can't make blanket catch-all statements without knowing the student.

gfrrn again, I agree with you. your quote from Gross made me laugh. If I'm honest, I am not sure my DD is in the exceptionally gifted category. She is close. But I will see what happens with some proper enrichment.

Catkind I had the conversation with school about the explanation. I was excited because for the first time the teacher was receptive. But then my DD told me that they were still being given exactly the same work (e.g. the boring first set of stuff and the same extension - which she always finished early even without the extra 45 minutes). So they are part way there, but I need to find a way of getting them to provide more extension.

And maybe doing year 4 work in a proper mastery sense is more of an achievement that churning the handle on year 8 work

For me, every year is just easy as every other year, anything else in the curriculum would be absolutely setting people up to fail, the only difference in difficulty is because there's more knowledge that you need before, which also means more knowledge that you might not be secure in understanding.

Simply doing work from a later year is only harder because you've missed stuff out that you need to teach yourself or be taught. Of course lots of bright kids can teach themselves or be taught quickly, that's why they learnt their current curriculum quickly.

I did maths GCSE early many years ago, it was pointless, carrying on with the differenation I had had at primary school would've been more useful - there's a computer in the corner, we're not sure how it works, figure it out and let us know. That info should let you work out my age pretty accurately.

There's lots of maths related things not on the maths curriculum, but they are likely to appeal as much to a primary school maths "geek" as just carrying on with the maths curriculum, find something else to learn, that's not on the curriculum. It really is quite narrow, there's not even juggling!

Have you tried logic puzzles? What about sudoku? Both of those require accurate recording of progress as she deciphers clues, so that she can work out the solution to the puzzles. By moving sideways to those sorts of puzzles, you can show her that making a record of your workings is vital to finding the answer.

As an encouragement, I was really far ahead, years ahead, in maths as a child. I wasn't allowed to do times tables tests in year 3 onwards, because I got 100% every time. I used to be told to do something else instead of maths during lessons, to let others catch up with where I was in the text books (90s). But I came completely unstuck at A level, because I was used to just 'seeing' the answer, and you really can't do that at A-level, where you have multi-stage problems, and you're dealing with imaginary numbers, vectors, arrays, functions, etc. If you don't have 'a tidy bedroom' as my tutor used to call our note taking, then you just can't do well.

If she can't do as she's told, and write down her answers, then however clever your think she is, she isn't ready to move on. She needs to learn that the only way to do something is to do it properly, no matter how smart you are. Reinforce that, and you'll save her a world of pain later .

Also, sometimes really advanced kids find having to explain how to work out a sum to another person really challenging. That can be really helpful.

The term "Mastery" got mentioned a lot on this board. What does it actually mean? How many UK teachers have actually been taught that way? A few CPD sessions here and there does not mean much.

If you have time, have a read through this
markmccourt.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/masteryfail.html

I have a slightly different experience as a student. As a kid, we were accelerated in certain areas in order to study an enriched Maths curriculum. It is possible to be stretched without having to take exams early or even study many advanced topics.

Take my DD for example. I have had to teach her some topics in advance of her class so I have enough materials to write questions for her to do. However, I am able to provide her with enough challenges until her class can catch up with her. Looking at her book, she is doing the same topic but the questions are much more advanced. Sometimes by setting an impossible looking task will teach the more able kids to appreciate the importance of recording work properly. DD's class was learning about 3D shapes in class. I took the opportunity to talk to her about measurement. I then gave her a standard puzzle "given a 5 litre can and a 3 litre can, get me exactly 4 litres of water". After trying and failing a few times, we talked about how to record her attempts so she did not repeat the failed attempts. She went on to think about the problem and an extension task for the rest of the next day so she was kept busy in class. I hope one or two puzzle a day will be enough to keep her busy and not getting bored with class work. Not sure when I will run out of puzzles and need to start teaching her some serious Maths though :)

That sounds just the sort of thing I think mastery should be ghgn. Is your DD allowed to bring home work into school or is this extra you're doing at home?

From a personal point of view - we found it relatively easy once we removed the school from the equation. They are taught maths at home - always have been and do the standard maths in lessons where the primary curriculum does not accelerate - we did. First did the KS3 course in year 4 I think and then GCSE by the end of primary. Now doing A level. Will be excused from maths at secondary and able to study OU credits after A level is complete. I have to say I was accelerated as a child (did O level at 12 and a level at 14) I enjoyed it. The school banged on about not moving to the next year etc until they took in gcse certificates. Personally I’d give her the KS3 revision guide etc and crack on. Mine were never pushed or forced - they just could do it.

Your dd is very fortunate to have you Ghgn (and I'd like to also thank you for advice and support you've given us in the past too)

I don't think people realise how unimportant gcse maths is for gifted mathematicians. It introduces a large number of topics but really doesn't introduce much mathematical thinking apart from a very few topics at the top end.

It must be harder to encourage depth of thinking if you don't have a student motivated to do so, but even gifted mathematicians should have a choice whether to pursue their abilities. Just because you are really good at something doesn't mean that you have to do it if you don't love it. All you can do is provide opportunities and keep nagging schools to do the same, the love has to come from them.

A choice between enrichment and acceleration is a false dichotomy.

It depends on what you mean by acceleration. A student who gets a 9 at GCSE and an A^ in Further maths aged 16 has been accelerated compared to the student who gets a 4 at GCSE. This is entirely reasonable and schools should be set up to provide this.

The student who is ‘accelerated’ to sit GCSE in Y6 instead of enrichment then turns up to secondary school to find that they are poorly equipped to deal with them (timetabling restraints meaning it’s hard to take A-level/taking A-level early meaning they then have a gap to fill before they can start university/starting university maths early meaning that they have to redo stuff at uni...) have not been well-served. There are a few schools who might be set-up for this, but they’re not common, and I know some top universities advise against it. It would have been much better for the student to veer off the extremely narrow school maths curriculum sideways and extend themselves in that direction.

It is very common for parents to think that the only option for bright students is acceleration to GCSE because they have no idea of the maths outside of the curriculum that could be covered. It’s also very common for primary teachers to not have the maths expertise required to facilitate this.

Lots of good links on this thread!