My DD1 is now in P3 (Y2 for those south of the border) and despite having attended a workshop on Big Maths and tried to peruse their website, I am still none the wiser as to what "big maths" is or entails or what their goals are.
I know the weekly "beat that" and the "clic sheet", but that aside... what does it all actually mean? My understanding is that children are pretty much required to learn by rote all sort of sums under 20 (and that sounds to me like a waste of time, if I have to tell you the truth), and so far little else has been done.
OK, at school they do some other stuff. For example last week they talked about angles (but I am not sure it is part of Big Maths), the week before about 3-D shapes. In the past the talked about quarters and halves. However, nothing resembling a... multiplication. Some months ago they did sums with carry overs (we are in P3...) and that seemed like a BIG achievement.
Instead at home every week we are sent some "facts" to learn, such as
5+4
6+7
(this is from last week. In case you have forgotten, we are in P3...).
When I asked the teacher about it, the answer was that they are following what "big maths" (related to Big Brother perhaps) says to do. But how can you learn by rote 5+4 and 6+7 when taken in isolation? it makes much more sense to spend half an hour or more on Sumdog (big craze here now...) than to try and remember these weekly "facts".
Ah, the whole class is doing the same thing, so no differentiation work.
Note that where I am from by the end of Year 2 you are supposed to have done all the times tables and be able to do the 4 operations (add up any two numbers, take away almost any two numbers, multiply and divide any number by a 1 digit number), so perhaps this is what confuses me most...