Mental Maths

[theweekendisnear]

Any tips on what to do to improve DC's (8) mental maths? DC's mental maths is getting worse, looking at the weekly class tests, and he has asked me to help.

Should I just fire random questions 3 minutes a day? Any fun ways of doing this? Any good game we can play while walking?

Thanks in advance!

We do bedtime maths, kids love it, there is an email thing you can sign up to if you google it. We just make up based on the days events.

I think it probably comes down to practice. set him 10 questions in a set amount of time.

see if you can find out what he is finding difficult. especially if it is getting worse. what has changed? Is it a concept he hasn't quite got yet? also there are different ways of working out maths mentally, the short cuts like if it is +9 then +10 and -1, that kind of thing which he might find work for him. They may have taught a new technique for something that he doesn't like. He might like picturing tens and units in his head, some people can do that, create a mental image. play around with some different ideas/techniques and see if that helps.

I think teaching different strategies can help. So for example, my DS can sometimes struggle with the bigger numbers so instead of 213-150 I ask him what would I need to add to 150 to make 213 - sometimes that is easier for him to figure out.

oh yes alma, counting up works much better for me personally too.

Thank you all!

Bedtime math: subscribed! Looks like fun!

I think the problem for him is keeping in his head all the intermediate steps, for ex:

Double 47: double 40 is 80, double 7 is 14, 80 add 14 is 94. By the time he gets 14, he has forgotten 80!

Or: 47 add 28. 40 add 20 is 60, 7 add 8 is 15, 60 add 15 is 75. Again, by the time he gets 15, he has forgotten 60. Sometimes, he forgets the question halfway through his working out...

For your second example, I would only partition the second number, so 47 + 20 =67, 67 + 8 = 75.

An advantage is that you can also do the same for subtraction, whereas if you partition both it doesn't work for subtraction.