please be totally honest here

[oxocube]

DS is 8 and struggling with maths which has become much harder in his year 4 class. This is typical of one of the 'problems' he has for homework. Is this typical of yr 4 maths and do your kids 'get it' or have to be led through, step by step?

"We are going to have a bake sale. We will make 20 cakes and each cake will be cut into 12 slices. If we sell each piece fo 25 cents, how much money will we raise?"

All opinions welcome. TIA

Does he do them step by step or look at the whole thing and painc?

That looks about right for Y4. Biggest problem I've found with DD (also Y4) is she doesn't write down her workings, so you can't even see where she's gone wrong (which she usually does, sadly). I think if you can encourage him to write it out, he might "get" it better IYKWIM.

I'm not a teacher, but it seems pretty tough, some of the 11+ maths questions are at about that level, so it's good going for year 4 imo

I always used to find 'visual clues' helped with teaching multi-step problems - so I would draw pictures of cakes, and dividing them up, etc.

I can't draw for cr*p so it would amuse my class no end and seemed to help them understand what I was talking about!

I'm a visual learner myself and find drawing things helps me understand stuff.

ds1 is doing year 4 maths and this looks normal to me
he also understands better with visual clues

How is his literacy?

If you asked him to do 12x20, and then 240x25, would he be able to? Easily, struggle a lot?

Because if he can work out 12x20, or 240x25, then the difficulty is one of comprehension. Decoding the message.

Actually seems quite an easy question for Y4.

mrz, how long would you expect a child to take to solve it?

As long as the child breaks the sum down into manageable chunks I wouldn't see a problem with this for year 4.

I break down the equations with him but he can't see himself the logical steps. Eg when I explain that first we need to do X and then we do Y, he can do the actual calculations, albeit slowly, but he doesn't seem to have any idea of how to break down the question. He is youngest in his class and although his reading is good, the overall presentation of his work is poor, as is his concentration. Am chatting with teacher and he is getting extra help for maths.

Thanks everyone

I think these word questions confuse a lot of people, the core of the question is hidden amongst all the unnecessary verbiage. It takes a while to get the hang of it

can you make the cakes out of playdough and cut them up so that he can visualise it?

US standardised tests have similar questions for 16 year olds, slightly harder, but it is the word aspect that gets people, they don't know where to start to break it down into its components. Eventually it will click as he does more and more of them

The thing is that it is algebra, so he needs to get used to looking for components.

Could you get a bunch of highlighters?

So the sentence would read:

We are going to have a bake sale. We will make 20 cakes and each cake will be cut into 12 slices. If we sell each slice fo 25 cents, how much money will we [raise]?"

Then he could see that he has

20 cakes

But the cake stall will sell the cakes in slices, so he has to work out how many slices.

Each cake has 12 slices.

12x20=240

Each slice is 25c, so

240x25=6000

To tidy up, we know there are 100c in a $, so the answer is $60.

I think its about typical for year 4, but may take some time for your DS to get used to this sort of question. My DD (now yr5) struggles with wordy maths problems and used to need a lot of help but she's getting much better with practice. I agree that a diagram is a good idea.

I think lots of children struggle as soon as a simple maths calculation is put into a problem form. Given the calculation 20 x 12 x 25 most children wouldn't hesitate.
The new maths curriculum places an emphasis on problem solving at all levels.

mrz, for 11+ they would have about 1 minute to answer that question, is that about the same time as a y4 student would take?

Uh-oh, my DD is Y4 and I think this looks hard! She could handle one part or the other, but would panic if given a 2 part question atm. Although she's not a maths superstar, she is working at around level 3A/B, so is on target for a level 4A/5 at the end of Y6.

If I was teaching it and asking how many dollars I would say 4 slices cost $1 so I would teach 12/4 x 20 cakes

Pretty typical for our year 4's homework. but in pounds.

where are you? is that year 4 or 4th grade? how old is he?

It seems Ok for year 4 if they're confident at maths.

Personally I would ask him to work out how much they get for 1 cake, then multiply that by 20 (or by 10 then x2 if x20 is tricky).

oh duh now I see USA - I am sure dd was doing similar in yr 4 (age 8/9) but found it hard as they have to learn to use the breakdown shown by Lou up there ^