Year 5 maths

[Bitlost]

Bit worried about DD, a very young year 5, whose maths grades (reasoning) have dropped by a good 15-18 points between this year and last. And they've gone down since September.

She seems to have a problem with decimals and asymmetrical drawings in particular.

Is there a massive gap in what's expected of the children between year 4 and 5? Do children start struggling without prior warning signs? How are your year 5 coping with maths?

Thank you!

Yes, there's quite a big leap in curriculum terms. At the end of year 4 she will have been assessed on a curriculum she has been fully taught. At the start of year 5 she will have only been taught part of the curriculum so her scores may well have fallen for now.
On a SATs test, she will only get 1 or 2 questions on symmetry. She will get lots of decimals questions on the Arithmetic paper.

I think what children are expected under new NC is way harder than old NC. Have a look at these, mastery is what they are expected at the end of year, and greater depth for more able.

www.ncetm.org.uk/public/files/23305622/Mastery_Assessment_Y4_Low_Res.pdf

www.ncetm.org.uk/public/files/23305632/Mastery_Assessment_Y5_Low_Res.pdf

Does your dd's school subscribe to any online resources? I think it's worth doing it regularly to revise what they have learnt.

Thank you both.

The only online resource available from school is a multiplication app which DD uses every day religiously and is very good at.

Maths homework is always arithmetic, which is a bit too easy for DD. So I had no idea they had done asymmetrical drawing for example.

I’ll have a look at online resources. Any you’d recommend?

Thank you.

Online apps can really help 'fluidity' and I'd really recommend them. The pupils I teach have built so much confidence in mental calculations this way. There's plenty of free or very cheap ones out there. You may also find your child's school already pays for Mathletics, TT Rockstars or something similar.

I wouldn't recommend them for building reasoning/problem solving skills though. These questions often have multiple steps, required workings and the like which don't tend to fit very well into online resources. For this I'd use a book or past papers. The Scholastic books are very good, as are their practice papers.

This website has the year 5 sats papers from 2006 which are still 95% useful (just ignore questions about probability or mean/median/mode). Alternatively, just use the old Year 6 SATs papers they have and be aware that the odd question might not be answerable quite yet. It doesn't stop them having a stab!

My ds uses lots of different maths sites. One we use for keeping up with NC is IXL, which is paid site. But if he only had this one, he would be totally bored of maths.

Sites like nrich is great for problem solving. He does parallel which he started in yr5, and it's out of box maths.
Greatest site for maths is khanacademy, you can learn anything you want up to high school maths with great tutorial videos and practice. Maybe the basic geometry section would help her.
There are many other sites my ds uses and all have different features.(all free sites, we are only paying for IXL.)
I maybe able to recommend you some if you let me know what kind of things your dd likes.