Year 6 maths - when can they use a calculator?

[WoodenCat]

DS has maths homework to work out percentage increases. He has been given and understands the method of multiplying by 1.xx where xx equals the percentage.

He doesn’t know if he may use a calculator. Any teachers able to advise please? He has 20 questions and it will take ages if he has to sit and work out eg 215x46% or 89x17% - unless I’m missing an easier method?

Seems perverse to just plug it all into a calculator and like torture to write it all out!

disconnect in what is required for KS2 SATs

I do think expectations can be quite low in Y7, but I look at the KS2 SATs paper and think it's really quite difficult stuff, then I look at a Y7 group in front of me, some of whom can't remember long multiplication or how to do the bus stop and have to teach them from their actual starting point rather than where the curriculum left off.

Interesting. Thank you.

noble - I am interested to see you said - knock up a grid for long multiplication.

I thought that by year 6 they had moved past the grid to the more traditional long multiplication method?

steppe I know you asked noble but my DD1 never moved off from the grid method, even for GCSEs, and my DD2, y8, uses the Napier(?) method with all the diagonal lines.

Thankfully secondary students aren't subject to the ridiculous rule recently introduced into primary that says they have to use the column method to get method marks.

It's not moving past the grid method to column, IMO, it's a sideways step that increases efficiency but often loses accuracy. If we are looking for efficiency and accuracy, the top choice would be Napier's.

Since the column method was mandated in primary I've seen weaker kids arriving in secondary with a weird expanded column method that's basically grid, but not in a grid. This is not progress.

That's interesting.
I tutor for the 11+ and I teach the column method for long multiplication because of speed.
There just isn't time to do grid method. I only started doing this when our primary published a guide sheet for parents for maths which showed that they moved from grid to column in year 6.

I have to teach them long division too, and sadly I have to tell them that they may not be allowed to use this in school, but they need to know it for the 11+.

I don't know napier at all.

I guess if you are tutoring for 11+ then almost by definition you are dealing with kids in the top 50% if not higher.

My (less able) DD2 was taught the Napier method in her first weeks at secondary and she took to it like a duck to water.

If you're tutoring for the 11+ then you're teaching brighter kids who will probably be ok with column. The main issues with it are kids forgetting to add the 0 when multiplying by tens, and by the issues with carrying - if you put them at the top, they can get muddled with other numbers being carried, if you put them at the bottom they can get muddled with the numbers when adding (or numbers that are carried when adding get ignored because they're seen as carries from the multiplication).

Napier's can be off-putting because the grids look complicated, but once you get the hang of it, it's way quicker and easier. As a maths teacher who is obviously able to do all the methods, it's my method of choice when doing calculations.

www.bbc.co.uk/education/guides/zvvg87h/revision/2

Thankfully secondary students aren't subject to the ridiculous rule recently introduced into primary that says they have to use the column method to get method marks.

More ridiculously, the correct answer will get you both marks regardless of method. And you can only get the method mark if the mistake in the formal method is arithmetic not place value.

I sort of understand why it has to be like that, but if you’ve got kids that forget to put the zero you’d be better off teaching them a different method that they can use accurately. Which makes a bit of a mockery of the whole thing.

It's like policy is being decided by ideology rather than mathematical sense!

It’s one in a long line of things they didn’t really think through properly.

It only really works as a way of insisting children use the formal method if you make the method mark independent of the mark for the answer doesn’t it?

yes, obviously I do have the brighter kids, I was just surprised that they didn't all have to learn it, a the impression I had from the primary leaflet was that they all had to move on to it.

They are supposed to now, but secondary kids from Y9 up followed the old curriculum where they didn't have to.

There is difference between what they are taught and what they learn .

DD2 was taught an enormous amount of grammar in y6. She learned practically none of it, and is still shaky on basic parts of speech. If she had been taught less she might have learned more.

Oh yes TeenTimesTwo, you are so right!