teaching of Maths

[teachersaspirations]

hi
my dc has come home with exercises in how to work out the HCF (highest common factor) & LCM (lowest common multiple)
when I asked them what they were used for, they didn't know
and the teacher has not explained why they are useful
(this has happened with more than 1 dc in different years)
why is maths being taught like this?

It's not always easy to give a meaningful, "real world" context for a topic.

Sometimes it might be better to teach an efficient way of finding the LCM and then pose a problem using it - I like the decorating example mentioned. Alternatively, it is possible that a teacher will teach LCM, then will link back to it when talking about addition of fractions.