Year 2 struggling with maths

[confusedinlondon]

My son is in year 2 and although he is in the top set for maths he seems to find it a struggle at times. He had to stay in during breaktime to finish his work as he made a few mistakes during the lesson.

At home it takes a while for him to understand a concept and he will have forgotten in a few days for example he can count and write in 10s to 100 but when I ask him to do it from 24 (34, 44) etc he cannot ditto counting backwards in 2s from any given number.

I have purposefully been relaxed about teaching him maths, just doing some basic stuff for 10 mins when he is in the mood. I don't want him to lose confidence and start hating maths nor do I want to teach him incorrectly but he has starting to lose confidence already.

I was thinking of getting him an maths app but most of those don't teach the child how to work things out, they just ask questions. Is this the thing to do?

I was also thinking of getting him a tutor but I think that is overkill but I am worried he'll fall behind.
Any suggestions?

Talk to the teacher about keeping him at break to finish work after correcting mistakes. That’s really not appropriate.

During lockdown our school signed the children up to conquer maths. It's an Australian site I think, but our UK school used it.the little videos were very simply put together but brilliant at explaining things. Can you look into that or ask the school?

Also look up some videos on youTube. Get some worksheets from I think it might be sparkle something.

I wouldn’t get a tutor.

What will definitely help is improving rapid recall of basics such as number bonds and doubles and halves. Once these are secure, maths on the whole becomes far easier as the load on working memory is reduced.

I’d recommend daily ten, Ict games and also simple number games and songs.

The teacher will probably keep him back at break for a minute or two to give him individual help that cannot be easily done in the lesson. It's not necessarily a bad thing or a negative 'you will miss your break as you didn't do well enough.' The teacher will be giving up their own break time to do it.

I would talk to the teacher however and ask for some support about how to help him. In the past I have given parents a sheet about what we are covering in maths that week and the processes used so they can support at home.

Good luck

Hi - It doesn't sound like you should be overly concerned, especially if he's in the top set for maths. He shouldn't miss out on his breaks because he made a mistake but this might be slight misrepresentation of the facts (my daughter skews the truth quite a bit all the time - the teacher may have said something like "before you run off for your break just finish those two questions" and she'll report it back to me as being not allowed to play outside. ).

Also - in terms of extra Maths resources - I use Wide Awake Pip Maths Games. They're free and online with modern UX and clever games. The link is here: wideawakepip.com/math-games.