Expectations of YR4

[breezyhen]

My DS is in YR4, after a disappointing few yrs at Primary,( YR1 was shared 2 teachers, YR2 was a fairly ineffective NQT, shared teachers YR3) I expected him to be doing more "academic" work in YR4. We have seen he is doing things like long division and large multiplication and subtraction sums, but then he appears to be missing academic lessons for dancing and making rather elaborate craft projects. With 2 years left at primary, it all seems a bit KS1 and frustrating, especially when it is obvious he struggles to learn the maths etc, and the teacher has moved on...any thoughts , thanks.

I think it's well worth him having a good grasp of primary maths even if you have to buy him a subscription to a website in order to achieve it.

We have books etc and are happy to go thru it with him and reinforce what he has learned. I don't understand how his teacher does nothing when he must have got lots wrong in his maths book !!! I feel he is not doing enough academic work and they do all this craft stuff. I am going to go in and see them next week I think

The year's nearly over. I'm sure the syllabus must be downloadable from the dept of Ed's website somewhere. When you test him against what he's supposed to know how does he do?

Y4 test resources.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/maths/wordproblems/y4matha.html

Another Y4 test www.galorepark.co.uk/assets/files/iseb-samples/Year%204%20Maths%20sample.pdf

I can't vouch for the tests, but if he does well generally in Y4 tests then maybe the teacher needs to be cut some slack and the crafts aren't a bad idea. If he scores badly on them then maybe she needs a grilling after all.

we have just done the first 1 and he got 9/10 so something is going in !!! I will have a word and await reports and parents evening...cheers

So, he is doing long division and multiplying large numbers? In what way does that mean that he struggles to learn maths? There are children in my Y5 class, who would struggle to tell you what they have to add to 7 to make 20. That doesn't mean that I take them out of art projects or refuse them participation in dance or PE lessons. It also doesn't mean that my class are missing out on academics (more than half my class are working at least a year ahead of national expectations...in a county that is supposedly severely underachieving). We are doing English and Maths every single day.
Art, Music, Dance, etc. are also part of the curriculum. A lot of the time, however, they get put together in a week-long project and don't get looked at again for the remainder of the year. Tbh, I think school should be a bit more than just English and Maths...and especially in Y4. They'll have enough to cope with when they get to upper KS2 and get someone like me teaching them...artistically challenged and not a great fan of dance lessons. (I love teaching core subjects...hate art and music.)

In an effort to not have a long rambling post I edited it right down, and comes across a bit muddled. I am all for the craft and dance etc. However it would appear the whole class is being taught methods of doing some sums, and not enough time is spent making sure it has "gone in" and some children, my DS included have not learnt the method well enough to do a few examples, without being "walked thru" step by step. I am guessing DS , left to his own devices has got a large majority wrong, as proved by him doing some at home with me. I don't expect him to be a maths genius or anything, and I am frustrated he doesn't ask, the teacher has not said anything either...I feel I cannot leave it to see how it goes, after we have been bringing up his writing issues for the last 2/3 yrs as well ... I just wanted to get a bit of feedback of how other schools operate in year 4 and am I expecting too much? Thanks sofunny for your view.

To be honest, I've taught Year 5 for several years now and I don't expect any of them to start off knowing how to do long division (ours do division by repeated subtraction of multiples) or how to multiply large numbers. I need them to be confident with multiplication and division facts at speed, place value of whole numbers, the ability to multiply and divide by 10 and 100 (without telling me that we add or take away a 0, because that gets them completely muddled once we move on to decimals), knowledge of time and basic vocabulary (I.e., a sum is the answer to an addition question, not just a random word we use for any calculation that may or may not cross our path; finding the difference means subtraction, not how one number looks different to another; names of 2d shapes, etc). I need them to NOT whine as soon as the word "fraction" is mentioned; I need them to understand how to lay out a basic bar chart, including the labels and intervals.
If your DS can do all of this, he'll have a very happy Y5 teacher. If he still has some gaps, this might be a starting point for the summer term.
Mine tend to get quite a lot of time to practise calculation methods, but we use small group teaching in Maths and not every school is doing that. We've just had some people observe our lessons and they said that their classes don't get that much time to consolidate, since it tends to be a bit restricted, if you teach according to the standard "input - independent task - plenary" model. I also tend to cover and recap calculation methods at least once every term. Target for me is to have them confident in all four operations by Christmas. Doesn't always work for all of them...

I didn't do long division until 5th grade (like y6 in UK), so doing it in yr4 seems pretty good to me.

I think learning is a spiral model? That's how all my learning has been, for sure, all the way into university. They visit something, move on, come back to relearn from a different angle, move on, etc. Little and often. I'm sure I read this is on average more effective than intensely teaching something then moving on almost completely, because they don't have time to teach it intensely every time and even intensely taught some children will forget or not quite get it. So they need repeat coverage.

Thank you lljkk and sofunny..I really do appreciate your comments, especially from a YR5 teacher...the school years go soooo quickly it seems that before I know it DS will be in YR6 and only be producing half a page of writing and not have a clue about mathematical operations I am relieved by your comments and I will stick with what we are doing