National curriculum levels for maths

[dalziel1]

DS (year 7) just showed me a practice test he was doing for maths. he was stuck on a couple of questions and I offered to help. Big mistake because they were not easy!!!

You need to think and try to fit various bits of maths knowledge until you reach the one that works. Staying calm seems to be very important so that you can focus on thinking through a solution. that seems a lot to ask of a child who was at primary school only one year ago.

The paper said KS3 tier 5-7 and I was wondering if its normal to set this for an 11-12 year old child?

The range of level 5-7s is about right for the end of year 7....

Problem solving in terms of having to work out what maths you need shouldn't be too tricky either; in fact they focus on it a huge amount at primary school too. (Well they should, if they've been well taught!)

It's not unusual for Y7, although it is a level of paper we would set for our brighter mathematicians.

My Dd's Maths class did tier 5-7 and 6-8 ....her knowledge at 12 yrs old is beyond my knowledge already ...its good that they do challenge the able children ...all Dd's class are level 6 to 8 as they come to the end of Yr 7 ...only a couple of level 8's which is amazing in a very average secondary school.....

a level 8 when they are only 11 or 12! Where do they go from there? GSCEs age 13?

preferably not dalziel - there is so much more to maths than sats levels and gcses. A good school can really develop the depth of understanding of maths without rushing them through exams.

Do you mean some sort of applied maths? Or complex numbers/ real analysis/ topology etc?

At ds's school they give them tests where you just keep going until you can't do them any more-they are told very clearly they are not expected to be able to finish it. I think they go up to level 8.

Not sure how you can get to level 8 in year 7 though- unless you came into the school at the top of level 6....

DS's problem is that he has low self-confidence. If he hits a question that he can't do, then he gets upset and convinces himself that he is beyond useless, which obviously impacts on how well he performs in the rest of the exam.

He's in the top set, working in the top third of the top set, so he's very able but if he makes a mistake or hits a question that he was never taught how to do, he just crumples. Its completely debilitating for him.

He really needs to get over this but I have no idea how to help him. He was in floods of tears the other night because he didn't know what the origin or a locus was.

Tbh he needs to have more experience of failure then, to build up his resilience. Does he do anything like sport or play a musical instrument where getting things wrong and then overcoming that with practice is routine?

There are schools that are building failure into their curriculum because of this issue, a google search might come up with some advice.

He's obviously been doing he same sort of test- some of ds's classmates found it difficult at first, but now in year 8 they all seem to enjoy it- comparing notes afterwards about how far through the paper they got.

Unfortunately, no, he doesn't do anything musical. He learned to play a couple of instruments at primary school, was adequate at it and stopped as soon as the mandatory lessons ended.

He did play football but, not very well, and he seems to have drifted away from that too (he only trained, wasn't part of a team).

I've always just let my children choose what activities they want to do out of school (subject to the obvious restrictions, of course). Maybe I've made a mistake there...

He certainly does need to learn that his first attempts to do things will not always be good enough (that's one of the disadvantages of primary school where they get praised irrespective of what they've done or how hard they've tried).

dalziel - look at the UKMT website for challenge and olympiad work. They run national competitions for able mathematicians and the more you look into it the more there is even within without needing to know more maths outside of the gcse curriculum - you dont need to get into complex numbers or topology or anything like that. Its about having an understanding of maths in a really deep and fundamental way.

Also he might like nrich - which explores maths in a very gentle but interesting way.