Where is your child at in form 2 maths?

[Ickythumpsmum]

I recently sat down with DS1 with some SATS past papers. His last school report said he was doing well in maths and no areas for concern, so I thought this would be ok for him. It wasn't. He cannot problem solve at all. If I say 'what's three times seven' he can give the correct answer but if the question reads 'there are three plates with seven cookies, how many cookies?' My DS GENUINLY HAS NO IDEA.

Same with questions like 'what's the difference' and don't even get me started on dividing.

I am happy to work on this with him in the evening but I am so concerned. Is this normal? His teacher thinks he's ok, what do you think?

I'd love to know how other form 2 kids are doing to see if my DS needs extra help.

What is form2? I'm sorry I am not English, but does that mean YR2?
Hopefully this will bump your thread.

My ds struggled with word problems. He just needed to practice on that.

www.mathplayground.com/wordproblems.html

www.khanacademy.org/math This site is great for maths. If you like word problems, use search. But this site has tutorials for every skill in maths subject, you can let your dc learn what he/she is weak at. My DS done it from very beginning, so he hasn't missed anything.

Sadly, I don't think that your DS is that unusual. Get him to draw pictures for the problems - could he draw 3 plates with 7 cookies on each one? Then try showing him a picture and making up his own questions for what he can see.

Thanks for the bump and the links. Form 2 is 6 and 7 year olds. My DS is 7. I'll let him try the links and hope they will help.

I am really interested in finding out how Serious this actually is. If all the other form 2 kids are answering problems without a care in the world, then my DS better get working.

toomuch he could draw the pics but he was reluctant to - he didn't think he was allowed to do workings on the paper. He thought he had to just come up with an answer and write it in the box. Ive now told him he can do as much working as he needs, but I'm not sure he will have the confidence to do it at school.

Keep working away at it - one of 2 things will happen (hopefully). Either he will realise how helpful it is drawing pictures, it will become second nature and he will overcome his resistance to it in school. Or, drawing pictures will help him to see what the questions are asking and so get to the point where he no longer needs to draw them. Either way it's win win! (And our year 2 teacher - 6 & 7 year olds - feels like she spends half her life telling the children that she draws pictures to help her work out answers and they should do the same, but they keep on resisting.)

HI there. I have a six year old in yr 2. The school started doing maths tests with the wording as you say at the beginning of the year. He started off getting between 3/12 and a max of 10/15. But the more they do these problems the more they understand that there are lots of ways of asking the same thing, and for the last three weeks he's got 12/15 and now 14/15. Same thing happened to dd last year when she was in year 2, but she cracked it a bit sooner.

So from experience, I think for your ds it's most likely just a question of familiarity - if he can do 3x7=21 (ie he is basically numerate, understands where 21 is on the number line in relation to 20 and 22 etc) he will eventually get that three lots of seven always make 21 (as do seven lots of three). Just keep on doing the problems and make sure you do all the different ways the same sum can come up, eg.

Billy has 21 sweets and wants to share them with three friends, how many do they each get?

There are seven ducks in the pond and they all have three eggs, how many eggs are there?

There are three cows in the field and they each eat seven daffodils, how many daffodils have they eaten?

etc etc.

He will get it,

Thanks toomuch - I only hope he catches on in time for the test. I just think it's such a pity that he can't answer the questions without help - we are now at the point where I can ask leading questions and he will figure out what the sum is. He still couldn't sit down and complete a paper on his own. In fact sometimes he feels like he can answer no questions at all, yet when I lead him towards what kind of sum they are looking for he is actually ok. He already thinks he's bad at maths and I try to tell him he's good at maths he just has to figure out the question.

Do you think we have enough time before his tests in May?

nicola sounds like your kids are doing great. Would you mind letting me know what resources / text books they use?

Hi icky thump. At school they seem to use sheets etc., not aware of textbooks. They use active learn primary maths online for their homework - lots of games to play that just get them repeating the same skills over and over.

At home we have used the letts books over the summer holidays to keep their eye in magical maths

But mostly we just do a lot of conversations about maths - we live in the country so have got in the habit of every time we walk past the local farm we start a long story about how many cows the farmer has and how she's dividing the field into three so how many cows are in each part of the field, and now she's investing in chickens etc etc. - can go on for ever but they seem to love it! It's good because I can make simpler ones for ds and more complex ones for dd within the same story - involving the farmer's children raising their own cattle and selling them on etc.

My mantra for them is maths is about patterns - spot the pattern and then you will be able to figure out the answer. So we look for patterns like the four times table is just the two times table doubled, two odd numbers have to make an even one etc. Etc.

Oh and I make up competitive games like when they were learning number bonds to 20 we made a set of cards and played the memory game with them (ie cut up some cardboard, each card write a number from 0 to 20. Lay all face down on the floor, then you get to turn over two, if they add up to 20 you get to keep them. Play till all pairs have been found then person w the most wins. I did lose pretty much on purpose every time we played but good time had by all!).

It sounds to me like his issue is with interpreting the questions in that form rather than with the mathematics itself. So I'd start with very simple worded problems such as "if Jane has 2 sweets and Peter gives her two more, how many will she have?" Then once he gets the concept of worded questions you can move on to multiplication and division ones.

It is Year 2 not Form 2? Did you go to school in NZ or Australia by any chance?

I didn't do any prep like that at all for KS1 for son. The SATS are there to evaluate how well he is being taught. This is an assessment of the teaching not the child. It isn't something they need to study for.

The government will expect the school to achieve a certain amount between KS1 and KS2 SATS. That is what the measurement is for.

I agree up to a point, but the SATS papers contain what the kids are expected to be able to do. If my DS can't do it at all, then I'd like to help him. Please bear in mind it's not just one or two questions he can't do - he's averaging 10/30.
Even taking the actual test out of the equation, he really needs help learning to problem solve.

If you're looking at past SAT papers I'm afraid they don't reflect the new tests that will be taken in May. You really need to look at the new national curriculum expectations for Y2.

An important change in the testing this year is that children will not be allowed number lines or 100 squares (or any other resources) 😱
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/497029/STA-Exemp2016-KS1-Maths.pdf

I had thought they would be similar. Are they very different? We did the 2015 test from the government web page.

I didn't even know there was a possibility of number squares or other resources. The one thing I have encouraged is to do as much working as he needs on the paper before writing his answer in the box. Is he still allowed to do this? He is fine with just numbers - it's the words that confuse him.

Do you know any other links where I could find sample questions for this years paper?

Not sure what you have been looking at but there wasn't a 2015 test. There have been no new tests since 2009 until this year and schools used either the 2007 or 2009 tests.

Blimey just looked at govt paper. That's a tough call for a lot of 7 year olds!

Mrz Bizarrely it turns out we were looking at the 2016 sample paper from the same government web page you linked to us- phew! I thought it was a past paper, but it was in fact a sample paper. Not as hopeless as we thought.

Thanks so much for all your help everyone. All advice is appreciated and I can already see a bit of an improvement from just asking him simple questions in the car.

Nicola that's the paper that freaked us out! Frustratingly if I told him what they were looking for he could do the calculation, but couldn't figure out the sum without leading questions. I'm so glad to hear he's not alone in finding it tough.

I just looked at the paper too. It's fucking mental and full of tricks (does 5/35 equal 7?) i do a lot of homework with dd but frankly, after looking at the paper, I just feel like giving up completely and downing all tools.

my friend got her ds interested in maths through a fun after school club in Hackney, I think they are all over. I always hated maths but thought this sounded good and would have put my kids in if it had been around then. He really enjoyed the club and would come home with leaftlets and tricks to do about numbers.