Y3 behind in maths, what should school be doing?

[LeonardoAcropolis]

Hello, my DS1 is in y3 and we have just attended parent's evening. He's very behind with maths - well below average.

I asked his teacher if he will be getting extra help but she said all he will get is a TA at his table to help him and the other children in his group.

A teacher friend of mine has said the school should be providing extra remedial help on top of this.

I wish to have another meeting with the teacher next week to discuss DS's progress, I want to raise the extra remedial group with her, but want to have my facts straight first!

Can anyone help me here? Thank you.

My kids are receiving additional intensive maths intervention outside of the maths lesson

Not all schools are able to provide this though. There is not funding for additional TAs in my school.

.

Chalk hearts, you're the one making an unsubstantiated claim that the OP might act on- it's up to you to provide evidence of effectiveness.

OP- you need to have a proper meeting with the school and find out exactly what's going on. If he was at a perfectly acceptable level at the end of last year and apparently massively behind now (even taking into consideration the assessment changes) then they have to have some idea about what's going on. If there are some basics he's missed then having a TA sit at his table might well be all that's needed. But you need to know what the issues are before you do anything.

Bert, Chalkhearts is only trying to help. Why do you always have to argue with posters with good intentions????

Because there is no evidence at all that I am aware of that diet changes have any impact on brain function at all. The Omega 3 link for example, has been completely disproved. If there is new, positive evidence, then fantastic, but the OP needs to evaluate it before she goes on a potential wild goose chase.

Just "having good intentions" isn't enough when an OP is worried about a real problem.

In yr 3, my ds started to slip a bit in maths so I started asking the teacher every Friday what the class was going to be doing the following week.
Every weekend I did a bit of prep work with ds to make sure he would know what he was doing that following week.

I used Bbcbitesize, education city and some worksheets.

We listen to a YouTube times table song every morning at breakfast.

This all helped to build his confidence and start enjoying maths.

Bert, everything chalk has suggested isn't harmful, or costly or time consuming. Simple things that may or may not help.
Of course OP should talk with school/teacher, but there is nothing wrong with trying those tips she gave on top of that. I would.

Thank you, there's been a lot of good advice here.

We already have in place a plan to help him, he needs to go over the very basics again in a way that makes it relevant to him. The brain train games idea was very good as he loves puzzles.

I will arrange a meeting with his teacher later on.

If schools were following the old numeracy strategy/framework often teaching moved on to a new concept before children were secure in the previous one (the idea being they would meet the concept again next term/year) whereas the new mastery curriculum requires children to be secure before making that next step.

The power of 2 books might be helpful

I second the power of 2 book!

Hello, I have an update:

I met with the teacher and she said that whilst the school has no extra support available, after a discussion we agreed that she'd ask the TA to take a step back and let him work by himself more.

For the last few weeks we have been doing extra work at home using a Schofield and Sims mental maths and times tables book, plus I found a nice Star Wars book by Scholastic. He plays games by Squeebles and Abacus (set by the school) on the tablet. A good friend of mine, a year 1 teacher, has sat with him a few times and reinforced some basics, and he enjoys this.

It has really paid off! He is so much more confident. He is able to add/subtract in his head and is even able to convert his times table knowledge into calculating a division problem . He is happier with maths too.

I spoke to his teacher briefly a couple of days ago, since last week she feels that she can let him work away from the support table during maths as he is showing progress, although she put him back on the support table on Monday as they started a new maths topic.

However, she said he still relies on help from the TA. How might we encourage more independence?