Why don't they use textbooks anymore?

[Titsywoo]

DD had some homework last week doing sequencing and the nth term. I'm pretty good at maths but had forgotten all this so was trying to help her and looked it up online. Figured it out in the end but she kept going on about 'the magic number' and adding a number at the start of the sequence. At this point a bloody textbook would have helped hugely as she was confused and I had no idea what she was going on about. Nothing online about it.

Obviously she will have to ask her maths teacher but we could have figured it out and I could have explained it to her with a textbook. I'd buy one but no idea what is relevant to the current curriculum .

And yes I know she needs to do it herself but sure;ly if I can help explain a concept I should?

You don't mention what year she is in, but assuming still primary, have a look on the school website, which might mention which maths scheme they use, or as the teacher directly.

Some schools hold information sessions for parents, understanding that terms and methods may be quite different for their children than they were taught themselves. As the session held at DDs school about 40 parents attended, a good dozen of them had done maths in some form at uni, but were clueless about how to go about their DCs homework. It wasn't that they couldn't get the answer, they just saw that they were approaching it using different language from their DC, so weren't able to help.

Has the school got a mymaths login? Most do, and that would be what was recommended as it has lessons covering the whole curriculum.

The 'magic number' she is talking about is how to find the number being added onto the nth term, by going back one in the sequence

E.g. 3, 5, 7, 9.... Is a 2n sequence because it goes up in 2s. To find out what to add onto the 2n, go back one position at the start of the sequence (so take away 2 from 3), this gives you '1'. So the sequence is 2n+1

4, 9, 14, 19... Is a 5n sequence because it goes up in 5s. Taking away 5 from the first number gives you -1 so the nth term of the sequence is 5n - 1

You tube it, there are so many maths tutorials. It is like having a spare maths teacher but you get to choose one you like. Try

I was thinking this at the weekend! More about secondary school history but I am a bit at the complete lack of textbooks. No wonder publishing is going down the tubes.

There are plenty of textbooks, they're just a bit shit. My school hasn't bought any for the new GCSE (being sat in June) yet because the first run are so dreadful, and full of mistakes. We forked out for a load of KS3 ones a few years ago - big mistake, they barely get used because they're crap.

I think it's partly to do with cost. I'm an MFL teacher.

We buy enough textbooks for one each all of our GCSE and A-level students (but not KS3 anymore). The GCSE textbooks are £20 each and the A-level ones are £30 each so if we have 500 GCSE students and 25 A-level students then that's over £10,000.

The textbooks are often, as noblegiraffe says, "a bit crap" and in MFL they also get out of date quite quickly - until this year our year 7s were learning how to say "floppy disk" and any reading exercises (especially at A-level) about politics or statistics are obviously not valid for very long. Therefore I generally prefer finding resources online. I suppose that wouldn't be the same in maths though.

For maths, my maths teacher colleagues always recommend the CGP revision guides. You can get a KS3 one on Amazon for less than £5 and it should be the most recent version.

Or rather, "a bit shit" not to misquote you noble

The CGP revision books are good for the basics. Dd has them for all her subjects. School sold the Science one to us. She does need to google for further detail for hwks though. Youtube tutorials also good

Too expensive. We can't afford them at all in one of my departments!
Oh and the text book for the new GCSE RS that started in September won't be ready until at least November

Doh! Just noticed this is in Secondary! Apologies OP. Good luck.

the private schools use textbooks

therefore i guess it is about budgets... ?

They are a bit shit, always have errors in them and very expensive. They are easy to lose if lent to a student, they get out of date quickly.
We use online textbokks which are not exempt from the errors but much cheaper, cannot be lost and in my subject are slightly less shit.
Dont be swyaed by private achools usuing them, that may only be to placate the parents who expect textbooks.

We don't give students textbooks as they lose them however they have an online login to all our science ones at KS4 and they have Doddle an online platform for all subjects