Best Maths Apps for Yr 5 - Using Maths in the 'Real World'

[wheresthebeach]

Hi - Any advice welcome. DD is quite good at what I'd call straight maths. Times Tables, Adding, Mults etc. However she's not good at applying maths in 'real world' situations with word problems. Ask her to add up three number is no problem; phrase it with Jack as X pocket money and wants to buy ABC - how much more does he need? and she is stumped. We are taking her around shops and getting her to add up/subtract but I was wondering if there was a maths app that might be good at that sort of thing. We use Squeebies already but it's all straight forward which is good; but not what we now need.
Thanks.

Hi I am a teacher and this is usually more a problem with reading comprehension than maths skills.The best way to target this is frequent practising of word problems and how to approach and solve them and to try to improve her
Reading comprehension through targeted questioning on any reading she does. The more reading she does the better and generally speaking children with higher reading comprehension levels tend to do better with maths word problems. Hope this helps

www.worksheetworks.com/math/word-problems.html to generate oodles of word problems :-)

Do you know what method her school promote for approaching word probs? My school uses RUCSAC:
Read the problem (twice!)
Understand it - what is it actually asking you to work out?
Choose your method of Calculation
Solve the calc.
Answer the question (ie "Jane will have 6 books left" rather than just writing "6")
Check your answer by doing the inverse operation.

Thanks for your help.
Belle that's a really interesting point and not one that we've thought of so we will approach it from that angle.
Sir - thanks for the web site - will take a look. I've no idea what approach the school uses. They aren't great at communicating. It took a meeting and a request to get feedback that we could act on. I think that structure looks really good and will use it when practicing with her.
Cheers!