yr3 struggling with maths

[popgoestheweezel]

dd is in yr 3. We have just completed 5 maths homework questions. It has taken 1 hr 40 mins of excruciating pain. She doesn't appear to have grasped some of the most basic maths facts. She cannot, for example, tell me what 80+20 is and when I asked how many you need to add to 300 to make 359 she guessed '100? 300? 8?' She has absolutely no idea and I have a headache!
At parents evening a couple of weeks ago we said we knew she was struggling and her teacher said they were starting an intervention which they have done. But dd says what they send for homework is much harder than what they are doing in class- I can't understand why they'd send her home with work that is way beyond her.
But, she really needs help. dh and I try but we are rubbish teachers! So, do we try some sort of online maths thing or do we get a tutor? We do know a yr 1 teacher who might well be prepared to do some work with her.

i would make an appt to speak to the teacher and explain your concerns and see what he/she thinks the problem is. find out what she can do and what she should be doing. ask what the intervention is and what the options open to them are.

i have the same with my ds but he has an underlying medical condition and we were fully prepared for him to struggle in maths. we have had homework this week on division with remainders and we had to get the pennies out to help!

Yes, I will go and see her tomorrow hopefully. She said they were doing an intervention but didn't give us details at parents evening. We had huge problems getting her to do her homework before Christmas but then she got better at it. Today was back at the worst times, she was getting really stressed out, pulling at her hair, breathing heavily and alternately crying and stropping- at times like that I just want to abandon homework altogether. we did stop for a couple of weeks previously, but dh thinks its a bad idea to let her think she just has to turn on the waterworks and she doesn't have to, but I just cannot mentally endure coercing her into it.

Homework is not supposed to be that painful! There's a problem there. You need help to find out what it is.

Try and make it fun for her and easy. Start at the basics and work up from there. Sounds like she's missing very basic skills. You could do worse than sign up for Mathletics online. DS's school pays for them but it's been good at reinforcing things like number bonds/ tables.

DS's school does Mathletics and I can strongly recommend it, but BBC Bitesize is also a good option and free. Find out what intervention they are doing. If it is (for example) Catch-Up Numeracy, this starts with an assessment so you could ask to see the assessment when it is completed which will give you an idea which bits she found difficult and which bits easier.

It may be, unfortunately, that her homework is hard because she actually has to do it, whereas in the class she keeps her head down, lets all the explanation go over her head, doesn't do very much and hands in an incomplete exercise, while her teacher is working with a child who is struggling even more to prevent them leaving the class/trashing the place. Just possible.

I would do some online ones for fun.
ICT Games is younger but might give her some success.
I would recommend [[http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/ Woodland Junior School site.
Play lots of card games.

Woodlands Sorry-forgot the end brackets-this should work.

yy re card games. Card Wars is a really good way of keeping it fairly simple (once you work out what the site is saying!) Don't rush through the different levels - let your dd gain confidence.

Thank you for those links. I tried a dice game with her last night for her 2, 5 and 10 times tables and she seems not too bad at those. It was her basic addition and lack of grasp of the 'architecture' of numbers that worried me. I have bought some cusinaire rods to see if that helps at all.

I have this with my yr3 DD as well. It is truly painful at times! In her case she often does know it really, but panics. Despite knowing and understanding different methods I think tying her hands behind her back would be the only way to stop her counting on her fingers! This morning she added 6+4 on her fingers...she has known her number bonds to 10 since Reception FGS!

We tried MathsWhizz at home for a bit but she didn't have much enthusiasm for it. She did love the competitive side of World Maths Day though so I have signed her up for Mathletics and she is quite enthusiastic about competing against others around the world, at least it's getting her to practice and try to get quicker....without it being too stressful for either of us!

She now thinks she's stupid at Maths because she can see the others in her class doing much better. I've told her it's like when she learned to read in her head and it all suddenly clicked, if she keeps practising and thinking about the easiest way to do things it will click in Maths too. I am clinging on to that theory!

Hi popgoestheweazel:

We had a very similar problem with DD1 (now Y4) when she was in Year 2. We also felt she had no concept of numbers. She was completely unable to take 1 from 10 and couldn't add numbers >20 together in March of Y2.

As my 'handle' implies - I'm well past 40 and my husband and I both felt that when we tried to explain things we didn't have the current terminology and our approach was hugely different.

We opted to use Mathsfactor - it's an on-line tutorial Carol Vorderman set up with her winnings from Channel 4 for being made redundant because she was over 40. More info here: www.themathsfactor.com/

There are other things you can try as well which others on MN have recommended: Mathletics, Maths Whizz and Kumon.

We found mathsfactor with its clear explanations, visual demonstrations and games format really worked well for our DD who is very visual and learns best through doing. We have faithfully done 5 homeworks a week (roughly 1 to 1.5 hrs extra work a week) since April 2010 and the improvement is unbelievable.

Anyway - give it a try (it's free for the first month) so there's no reason not to give it a go.

HTH

Thanks will look at mathsfactor, a free month sounds good.
Me and dh also struggle to explain maths, especially where it's just an inadequate grasp of 'number'.

It seems you DD doesn't really understand place value, e.g. 13, where the 1 stands for 10 and the 3 for ones and so on.

We had that with DS, it didn't seem to be as easy as I thought. We just kept practicing adding and taking away lots with games. I think partitioning numbers helped him a lot (421 = 400+20+1).

And when you say the nunber it tells you the value as well.

If she is having intervention at school then to some extent it is being dealt with but if they are still expecting her to do the mainstream homework - which she may have missed the lesson for if she is having intervention- you need to ask the teacher if she can have different homework perhaps from the intervention teacher if necessary- HW should be differentiated like classwork - it will be demoralising otherwise. Don't do it with her if it's causing upset it will only add to her difficulties.