How can I help her understand the questions?

[SammySays]

My DD is about to go into yr 3 and her teacher last year pointed out that she was having some difficulty with understanding the work assigned to her. She is completely able to do the work once someone has spoken to her and helped her interpret the question, however, just reading it alone to herself is never enough. This is especially apparent with Maths.

Her reading is exceeding expected level and she has no problem reading the questions/instructions. Likewise, her communication skills are higher than expected so I don’t believe there is an issue there. She simply reads it and then looks blankly at the page until someone tells her exactly what to do.

How can I help her? Is it just a case of practice and she will learn to interpret correctly in time?

Facing the same challenge. I'm exposing mine to a range of types of instructions. I'm getting her to read and teen me what she thinks is being asked of her. Do you use any CGP books?

Not CGP as yet, but we are working our way through another workbook at the moment. I think as you suggest, it’s a case of persevering and asking her to explain to me as best she can. It’s nice to know someone else is experiencing the same thing! I am going to order some CGP books now 😀

Unless there's an underlying communication or processing issue then it sounds like it's a case of keeping on practising. Doing problems and tasks in school is very often a case of learning the 'right' way to approach it. Just give lots of practice with breaking the instructions down and getting her to tell you at each stage what she thinks she should do. Hopefully this will build her confidence and then she can progress to breaking it down without needing to articulate to you

Thank you, I think you are right. We practiced again today and I will say that I think there was an improvement so fingers crossed!

Word questions in maths can be a struggle for lots of children. I’d suggest highlighting or underlining the numbers, then doing the same for the words that explain the operation.

So if Jim has 6 apples and Jane has 3. How many more apples does Jim have than Jane? More than means take away or subtract. 6 subtract 3 remembering to take the smaller number from the bigger.

If Steve has 5 sweets and Chloe has 7, how many do they have altogether? Altogether means add. 5 add 7.