White Rose Maths For Y1 - what do you think of it?

[Movedtothedge]

Our school has put links to topics on White Rose Maths to do on the daily timetable. We normally only use Doodle Maths through the school so we have never used this before.

I can see that it’s good the way it explains everything, although I do feel that each video is quite long at 9-10 mins and after 3-4 videos per topic my Y1, nearly 6yo, has decided he absolutely hates it after Day 2. He says it’s too long, and I’d say as it’s different to Doodle Maths in that it ‘talks at you’ rather been more interactive like Doodle, is where the issue is.

What do other people think of it? I guess if we are going to get this every day for at least 3 months then he’s going to have to get used to it, but today he went mad when I opened the link to start it. We are still using Doodle Maths too.

The voice annoys me. I fast forward/skip through the video to get to the answers as it is far too long otherwise. I don't mind it otherwise, but that's only because I'm making it much much shorter.

It's completely different than doodle maths, isn't it? Unless I have missed something, doodle maths is only answering questions white rose maths videos explains the concept.
If you could explain the concept yourself, you don't really need to use the videos.

Our school seems to use white rose maths for all years and my yr 4 and yr 2 children both hate the videos with a passion. It is annoying that they are the only maths instruction that are offered - I think they would prefer either their teacher explaining the maths or something more interactive.

Min are year 3 and 5. I previously Home Educated.

I rate doodle maths for young children. It is more engaging. Very little help with concepts but the back end reporting indicates weaknesses and these can be worked on outside of the 7 a day or whatever. Little and often worked so well for mental maths. The main thing I felt was that the kids enjoyed it.

For concepts, try Oak Academy instead. The teachers are more engaging and the lessons are short.

The kids now go to school. We liked White Rose for about a two weeks in the last lockdown, but then learnt to hate it. It’s just feels like such a drag. Droning voice, too long and completely joyless.

I felt the kids needed to enjoy maths, whatever format they like, do that. We have WR linked too on e-school, I will be refusing to use it at all with my two and finding the Oak alternative. To be honest I have no idea as to why the teachers have linked it they both agreed with me last year that the children couldn’t stand it and Oak was preferable.

Still Oak is not perfect for younger kids, I will be employing a tutor for my youngest who does zoom lessons once a week. I have used him before and he brings the concepts to life. Unfortunately school won’t do any live lessons. I feel younger kids really need the engagement for subjects such as these.

White rose is the programme of choice for many primary schools. Doodle is just practice. White rose teaches the concepts. I think in many ways this kind of thing comes under the heading of what we need to do. FWIW I dislike the way primary education in particular is becoming quite standardised and this is a drive to make the curriculum stronger and the expectations clearer. This is good, but creativity and individuality then go by the wayside. The school however is not going to ditch their very good and expensive programme just because your ds finds the voice annoying. It probably is intensely annoying; he just needs to accept it!

Like cansu said, some programmes are just for practice. And some are actually teaching.
If the child is strong at maths and don't need explanation, then just practicing may work. But if you want child to understand the concept properly, maybe just doing exercise may not be enough.
I assume it was the alternative to the school and the teacher teaching. You need to listen to the teacher at school, not just doing practice and exercises, same at home school.

It's designed to teach your child the concepts something the other apps won't do. I do think it goes into too much detail and drags out the topics, probably because it needs to produce 5 videos for each school week. I

I wonder if the videos are looking because they are pitched at the 75th or 90th percentile (I.e that many percent should understand by the end) as there is no interaction. At least with interactive teaching the teacher can tell if the class gets it and not labour the point or go over the material again a different way with the subset of kids who need it. You can't do that with a video so maybe they just give you everything up front?

I always worry that sites like doddle maths don't teach children the reasoning but i guess that is not their purpose. I really wish something like doodle maths would explain the concepts before testing them. THis is why i like using white rose maths, atleast the concepts are explained so my son can understand what 4 x 2 and 2 x 4 means. even if he doesn't understand it, i atleast can and then i can try to teach him.
I think something like mathsfactor where the stuff is explained before being tested would be useful but i have heard its very rep heavy which might bore my son

OP if I were you I would stick with what he likes. When he seems to struggle because of insufficient support find the appropriate WR module and do it together. Then carry on with doodlemaths. He is so young, my thought is, best not to make maths a drag early on and turn him off the subject.

As a teacher, I agree that the videos are quite droning and long....BUT if you can stick with it they seem to get excellent results. When we returned in September we found lots of children very very ‘behind’ (relative concept, I know) with writing yet pretty much ‘on track’ for maths and we put that down to using White Rose for home learning right from the first lockdown.

As much as we’d have loved to have had the tech, time and resources to make our own videos it’s just not possible to do it as well as White Rose.

The only caveat to this is that I do think Year 1 maths should still be very practical and play based, with lots of repetition of things like counting and number facts...and that’s very difficult to replicate at home.

@confusedinlondon

It's designed to teach your child the concepts something the other apps won't do. I do think it goes into too much detail and drags out the topics, probably because it needs to produce 5 videos for each school week. I

It’s not that, it’s that the video matches the ‘small steps’ taught in school. On their scheme of work they specifically say that each small step is not necessarily a lesson - it might need 2-3 lessons, or you might combine 2 or 3 small steps in to one lesson. But each teacher makes that decision based on the class in front of them usually, when the kids are at home you have no idea who can do eBay so I’d imagine most teachers are just setting one video per day.

As a teacher I like them because they use the same visuals and models we use in class. I can see they are not desperately exciting, but unfortunately I’ve yet to find anything which actually teaches maths which is! I don’t know doodle maths but it sounds similar to mathletics, again potentially fun and good for practice, but no good for actually teaching new content.

OP you could always give your son the worksheet first and let him have a go, then only watch the bits of the video he is stuck on?