Y3 really struggling with maths - SEN?

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Hi all.

My 7 year old DD is in y3. She has always come across as a bright girl, reading and writing came to her quite quickly but maths has always been an issue.

She absolutely hates it and progress is so slow. Every year we have been told she is below expected and then she apparently 'scrapes' the standard at the end of the year.

She is in a focus group for which they pre teach the maths each day. She also has a workbook that comes home which we do a page of most evenings but it doesn't relate to he class content and tbh I don't think it gets checked by the teacher.

She just doesn't seem to retain info. I have gone through addition and subtraction with her so many times. Number lines, column method, partitioning.. it doesn't seem to matter the method we use, when we come back to it it is like she is seeing it again for the first time.

We have been told she needs to know her times tables and related division facts. She is hugely stressed about this. I have decided to focus purely on 2s, 5s and 10s. She doesn't understand division at all despite me explaining it in so many ways including physically with sweets, cubes etc. Understands in the moment but not when we come back to it. So we are working on 2s 5s and 10s. She can do 10s but not the division facts. She can only do 5s and 2s in order. We do them every night with flash cards and we play times table rockstars. She struggles so much with mental arithmetic that if I say "9 x 2" and she doesn't get it, I might say "we know 10 X 2 is 20, so it is one less 2. What's 20-2?' and she not only can't calculate that in her head (sometimes she can but might take several solid minutes of processing silently) but she doesn't understand how that relates back to 9x2.

Anyway, I'm getting little help from school. Just keep being told they are offering support and we need to keep practising. And if we do then that's fine, but does this sound typical for a 7 year old? At this point I'm wondering if there could be undiagnosed SEN. I would just like to know how best to help her, I feel so sorry for her because she says she is feeling stupid so I need to balance teaching her with preserving her self esteem!

Prob just need a better teacher?

I’d ask school to screen her for dyscalculia. I’d also ask the Senco for an IEP which is short term and focuses on 1 target at a time.
Eg
“DD will be able to recall her 5 x tables facts out of order within 4 weeks using TT rockstars, oral and written rehearsal. She will have 3 x 10 minute sessions 1:1 daily with an appropriate adult. She will practice 1 x 10 minutes daily at home”.
Stick to a method. Use post it notes on her bedroom wall with one fact per post it. Put them in a vertical line. Hide a post it - which one have I taken?

It could be that’s she’s blocking it out of her mind due to her experience or because she just hates it … try to make it really massively fun experience to see if she ll start to retain the info

She might just be not very good at maths? Why SEN?

Not necessarily. My Dd is the same and year 3. This cohort have missed a huge amount of school so don't have the foundations to start with.

There is normal! I’m a year 3 teacher and while I would expect most children to be able to retain 2, 5 and 10 x tables facts it could be that she needs more of the same or that she needs a different approach. Some children and adults just find certain things harder. The hard part is figuring out which. I would arrange a meeting with the teacher and SENCO and ask for an IEP. Search YouTube for multiplication songs, some children remember more in rhyme. You can sing them with her too. Also keep practicing with physical items, she needs to see it to understand it. There could be a special need there but she could just find math’s particularly difficult.

Some people are just not good at some things. We can't all be good at everything, doesn't mean she's SEN

You could try with practical resources like numicon or cuisinaire rods, and then keep going with what you are doing. Some of it will sink in at some point if she rehearses it enough.
Keep talking, keep sharing out sweets, biscuits, peas into equal shares for different numbers of people. Talk about things like "granny is coming for tea so we'll have to share this cake between 5 of us, we'll get a fifth each. Look ,that means we get smaller slices than when we share between 4 of us.
Get her helping with weighing, measuring, shopping, keep showing practical applications.
Talk about "1 more or less" "10 more or less", practice counting, particularly across tens, eg 49,50,51.
It sounds as if you are working really hard with this. Don't worry if it doesn't happen overnight, just keep the number chat continuing.

Could you maybe book her some sessions with a tutor at home?

Even a few sessions might help, and you would also gain an independent opinion on the situation from a tutor.

Thanks for all this great advice!

Totally agree it may just not be her strong point, the only reason I mentioned SEN is that she seems to specifically struggle so much with it in comparison to everything else. The processing speed just seems really unusually slow to me. I agree it could well be a feedback loop though where she has decided she doesn't like it and therefore isn't taking it in.

Will follow some of the great pointers on this thread, thank you.

It sounds like her basic number knowledge isn't that secure yet, so times tables might be hard at this stage. Sometimes you can work on the rote memory of the times tables (singing songs or whatever) just so that she can get confidence when doing the tests at school, but then work separately on the understanding, which might take longer. She may need to concentrate more on building a mental sense of the number line - even having a physical one up in her room (even a tape measure!) or something so that she can see it a lot, get a feel for how numbers relate to each other, practice counting on by 1, 2, 10 etc, and then backwards, not just a few times but constantly, so that she really gets an intuitive sense of numbers. Get her working out 'how far' 18 is from 20; or 34 from 40; or 32 from 100 or whatever so that she really sees it as a sequence that she is 'jumping along' (physically jumping can help too!). Then practice jumping by other numbers - not just for memory or learning the table, but for the idea of how the numbers increase, where is the next one, how much is 3 more than this number, etc. Using number bonds that she knows (to 10, or to other numbers) is useful. She really needs a solid foundation on this before she will understanding multiplication well. Then with division, use physical number lines as well - how much times can she jump 2 before she gets to 10 or 18 or whatever, seeing it as 'blocks' of numbers that fit into a bigger number.

I agree with trying something like numicon, it really helps to have a visual reference.

My DS (has SEN) really struggled with even basic number skills. He was way below everyone else and only learnt to count to 10 at the start of year 2. Just after Christmas that year Maths clicked and he was moved up to the middle Maths table. Some just take a bit longer to get there.

is she understands math concepts with objects but not in written format, then better to seek senco assessment. Trust your instinct, nobody knows her better than you!

Primary teacher and SENCo here - definitely worth screening for dyscalculia. I wouldn't go for an assessment unless the screening indicates problems. If you don't have confidence in the school/teacher, you could consider a private tutor (not a centre) with a SEN specialism to spend some time with her. That's one of the things I used to do, and I worked with a girl who wasn't diagnosed as having dyscalculia until y6 but always found maths really hard, having very little number sense and also couldn't remember days/months, tell the time, work out change, or reason things like 'I'm taking away so my answer will be less than I started with'.

Timetable is learned differently here in UK. We covered it by 2,4,8 to show the pattern. Follow by 5,10 again pattern of numbers. Group the 3,6,9. Finally 11,12.
Focus for 2 weeks holiday daily and no other school work which take time and distraction, plus marshmallows treats for correct recall.

My son was very similar at that age. We were going through lockdowns too so homeschooling and it was extremely frustrating. It took him till y6 to learn his 7 and 8 times tables and to be able to tell the time. Mental maths is very difficult for him and he still counts on his fingers sometimes!

I would see how she does in end of year assessments. My son was in booster classes for maths in y3 and y4 as he was lower end of standard level however, when they started doing end of year assessments they noticed that he wasn't finishing all the questions because each question takes him a long time but the ones he did he mostly got right.

He was given extra time in SATS and was only a few marks off greater depth for his maths. He got greater depth in his reading and SPaG. He's in year 7 now and is being assessed for ADHD/ADD. He did struggle with his reading and writing in Reception too though. He's also disorganised, easily distracted, fidgets and forgets things a lot.

I would see how she does in her assessments. Speak to the teacher at parents' evening about it, mention dyscalculia and see what they say. We looked into a tutor as well but didn't end up getting one. You've got 3/4 more years until SATS/secondary so still time to get support in place for her. It might not be SEN as people say but it doesn't hurt to explore it. Not exploring it will hurt if it is SEN.

The CGP 10 minute weekly workout books helped us!

Given that she is in the focus group so is receiving extra support and is being given plenty of parental support at home you also need to consider what testing will accomplish. Let's say you find out that she has a particular weakness of difficulty with maths. Well you already know this. What would you do? What you are already doing.

The point being that you are supporting her.