Primary maths teaching - not enough practice?

[noblegiraffe]

Interesting blog post here on primary maths teaching

thequirkyteacher.wordpress.com/2014/12/06/put-down-that-measuring-cylinder-and-step-away-from-the-pond/

The gist is that "My point is that the children are struggling with formal methods because they have not committed to memory the basic number bonds and multiplication facts required. Those that have committed the above to long term memory certainly won’t have used that knowledge to then perfect subtraction and division fluency/facts in order to become competent at column subtraction and short/long division. My hypothesis is that children just do not practise anything enough, ever."

As a secondary teacher I certainly get frustrated year after year with Y7s who have forgotten how to do long multiplication by any method, can't remember (or were never taught) the bus stop method of division and struggle to borrow when doing subtraction. I'm thinking that children should be coming out of primary as likely to forget these methods as they might forget how to read. My suspicion is that they spend a week doing long multiplication and then it's done, on to the next topic. But, I don't actually know what goes on in primary schools. This blog seems to confirm my fears, what are your experiences?

Willingham has an article on that here:

Allocating Student Study Time: "Massed" versus "Distributed" Practice
www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2002/ask-cognitive-scientist

Little and often sounds intuitively right to me. I think my DC's school may intend little and often, but it sort of turns into little and not very often!

"Do children need lots of repetition and lots of examples to work through or do they need to do a lot less and repeat next day then a few days later?"

The latter, basically. There's really strong evidence that distributed practice is what aids both memory and understanding in the long run.

Massed practice (tons and tons of decimals for one day, then hardly any decimals after that) feels more productive to many people because it feels easier and this gives on the illusion of progress. But in terms of really remembering (and understanding), it's better to do a few decimals mixed in with lots of other types of problems that have been studied previously, and then keep on adding decimals into the mix day after day.

(Distributed practice is also more interestingalbeit harderfor the pupils; that said, "The kids just love it!!" should never be the "main" reason for doing anything in the classroom. I'm sure kids love Murder Mystery Maths, but I don't think they should be doing this in school time, EXCEPT as an end-of-term occasional type of thing.)

Interesting thread. Our DC have all been taught in the French system and I was initially extremely sceptical about just how little ground the DC covered in primary maths. DD (CM2/Y6) hasn't covered percentages or graphs and barely knows what a fraction is.

However, her arithmetic skills are superb and her ability to apply knowledge of arithmetic to complex measure problems both quickly and accurately in RL is impressive.

So there is evidence that "distributed" practice in beneficial.

I'm sure I also saw a TV programme which said that doing something else for 10 minutes also helped people learn. Basically, if you give someone some information then get them to do an easy task for a few minutes they learn better when they return to it. If this is the case, rather than having a numeracy hour, it would be better to have a numeracy half hour, break time, then another numeracy half hour.

Another reason I dislike long worksheets all of the same type of sums is because I want dd to like maths. I asked dd why she enjoys maths and the reason was much the same as I would give, it's that ping of satisfaction in your brain when you first understand something. I don't want her to have the Pavlov's dog response to maths of "that will mean a sheet of tedious sums to plough through". I agree the child having fun should not be the main reason for the method of teaching, but on the other hand, people do learn better if they are enjoying it. Again this is just my opinion and I was wondering if the were evidence to support this or not?

wp.me/pr7gf-Vh

Really disturbing mrz. But helps to explain what's going on at my children's school.

mrz I see now that for teaching maths teachers are being asked to eat soup with chopsticks. It explains a lot.

I remember as a child doing the fuzzy maths of measuring our school hall in straw lengths. I was supposed to get that anything could be used as a unit of measurement. All I learnt was that school could replace a succinct statement with an hours waste of time.

I'm not sure the practice has to be in a sheet of tedious sums. I don't think there's any reason why you couldn't have 5 or 6 examples of simple questions for children to work through followed by some increasingly complex problems that require using the skills being taught.

Possibly you don't need to completely split your maths lesson either, just think about how you plan it. So perhaps start off by teaching a new skill, then an activity that allows them to practice/explore the new skill, then a break from that but instead of doing something completely different, stick with maths but perhaps use it to practice something from a previous lesson. Then another activity linked to the focus of the lesson. A bit like taking the mental/oral from the old strategy but using it to break up the lesson rather than start it.

When my DD was in French Y4 she had multiplication homework 4 times a week for the whole year. 2 or 3 operations per night.

Her multiplication facts are ace.

"I'm sure I also saw a TV programme which said that doing something else for 10 minutes also helped people learn. "

I can totally believe that, based on what I've read about how memory works! There is even some really weird stuff in the studies that have been done, like position/location of the student having an impact; you will remember more of a concept if you study for a bit in one location, and then deliberately go to a different location the next time you go back to review that concept.

I'm teaching my daughter phonics and hiragana right now, and I'm trying to apply all these principles--like studying in different places, making sure she is exposed to several slightly different fonts and formats and so on. It's fascinating.

Phonics is the other area where we fall down on lack of practice. There was a move towards teaching it through lots of games, which collectively lead to the class getting practice but not so much practice for individual children. As a result I think there are a lot of children who 'don't get phonics' or who 'can't learn to read using phonics' who wouldn't have that problem if they had been taught well. They just haven't had as much practice as they need.

I spend most days and a fair bit of time getting my DC to do mathsfactor - as they weren't getting on with schools maths - and practising application of phonics via dancing bears and apples and pears.

I don't know if it's my particular DC, needing more practise than most, or their school - or as DH whose had some experience with teaching theory - maintains current fashions.

We as parents have had many of the same concerns raised here - not enough practise, rushing though of topics, forgetting very quickly prior topics. It has come as a bit of a shock how we've had to do so much of the practise at home rather than the inspiring and fun stuff as we expected.

Both DH and I remember having quite time every day at primary school sitting and working though doing sums - not long ( - 15 20 minutes for me before lunch) - but frequently.

I asked DD1 how often they do maths at school she said when ever they can fit it in.

I do wonder how much that plays apart in some schools - maths is a vital skill and doing well means better pay over lifetime but it gets squeezed in between everything else.

Most schools do 40 mins - 1hour of maths every day they do not do it when they can fit it in! I would be very concerned if this was happening in my child's school

The school does do big blocks of time on maths topics - half days and days - so it could be that so it could be I asked at a time when they hadn't done that for a while. They don't do daily maths - or they all tell me they don't.

I'm not concerned but mainly because we have been doing mathsfactor for considerable time and they have made massive progress and are now doing exceptionally well.

I am more concerned at the minute that despite that despite them dropping mixed methods my current Yr 1 is being encouraged to guess words still .

It's rated a good school, has ok sats results for the area has a very good local reputation and the DC love going in every day.

Still I do wonder if our lives would have been easier and they'd have encountered fewer problems if they'd gone to a different school. Though many of their classmates seem to sale though this school with none of the problems mine have had.

That is unusual, DazzleU. Even the schools round here that teach everything else through cross curricular topic work have a dedicated hour for numeracy every day.

Most schools would have a dedicated maths lesson and any cross curricular work would be additional to normal lessons.

Yep, literacy is usually easy to link, science can get a bit sidelined in some schools (but by no means all) and any maths in the topic is often taught over and above the numeracy lesson. I don't personally know of any school that doesn't teach maths daily. It is really rare.

My daughter really benefitted from Maths Factor, work and examples at home. There was no movement between the maths sets in years 5 or 6 in either direction. If I had not taken over my daughter's maths education she would have left primary school with a total lack of confidence in maths and probably a lifelong hatred. Instead, she finished primary scoring within the top 10% of her school for the maths SATS (she was in the lower set) and now enjoys it and does well at secondary school.

I would advise any concerned parents to do similar.

mrz - very interesting link to 'A Tale of Two Schools' and I think entirely sums up my view that a lot of schools are more concerned about what OFSTED will think and tailoring their work to please OFSTED than whether it's ultimately best for their pupils.

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I think this working to targets/ pleasing OFSTED culture has become a blight on English education.

I understand the pressures and I get that getting the majority of pupils to NC L4 has to be the priority (and for all of us is 'the greater good')....but....I do think it rather cynical that at our school, at least, when DD1 (now Y7) was in Y6, those pupils already securely working at NCL4 were left to substitutes and then a KS1 teacher from November - May, and the main class teacher + specialist teachers were brought in to focus on just English/ Maths for the lower ability group in the run-up to KS2 SATs so the lower ability group could go on to achieve NC L4. Post SATs it was endless field trips/ class play/ class business project & then end of year parties/ sports day/ school fair etc...

For DD1 Y6 at her primary was not an opportunity to learn more/ improve skills, but just marking time until senior school. I feel that was a waste. I understand why the school did what they did, but I personally would prefer a world where lessons (encompassing the full curriculum) continue as normal and SATs were just taken in a school's stride.

I did try to raise this point with Nicki Morgan when she visited MN - (perhaps as a wise politician) she dodged the question.

I do find it interesting that government/ business are clamouring for better educated, highly numerate and more resourceful home-grown employees yet simultaneously schools are warping young children's education because their prioity is getting x many to NC L4 in English/ Maths combined. (and it's clear this approach also follows at GCSE Level).

Does anyone look into how much lost learning time/ opporutnities this causes for more able pupils? Too many of us lowly parents are writing in here to MN about what a waste of time Y6 is for our dear DC's (and yes I get the teacher postings about us all have hyper intelligent darlings) - but as a society is it wise to squander learning opportunities like this?

By the end of Y6 DD1 was seriously turned off school. She started Y7 having had barely any homework/ research experience and suddenly had ~30 minutes+ a night. She didn't have any skills in place to cope with the workload, to prioritise, to plan or design, to research (internet especiallly)...it's been a very steep learning curve for her. We've got there - but as a parent I wonder why her primary didn't see it necessary to use Y6 to help prepare her for the general expectations on the local senior school.

If her primary had worked on that for the upper ability group - whilst also continuing lessons as normal - how well might those pupils be doing now? I'm sure they're doing fine - but this stop/ start education + cramming for the 11+ (as grammars are free in Birmingham/ but entrance is by exam score) seems a little crazy.

There is a great deal of variation in primary schools it would appear. I think repetition is essential to ensure the basics are in place, poor knowledge of tables or teaching it as 2,4,6 rather than 1x2, 2x2 etc might be fine at lowere primary not helpful by higher levels or secondary. Also the insistNce is the chunking and number line methods seems bizarre and just confusing might be ok for smaller numbers but for bigger numbers the,ore traditional methods are more appropriate