Are you able to teach your children maths GCSE?

[Fallinginlovewithmaths]

DD is in year 11 and doing foundation maths; she has a tutor but I am sitting down to practice with her/ do the tutor homework every day.

I mostly let her get on with it but I am realising I need to get more involved. The problem is I didn’t do GCSE and not even native English, didn’t grow up in the UK.

I am looking at conversions for instance. I learned this with a rule of 3; but the methodology they use here is different.

Are you able to support your child? I don’t want to confuse her 😬

How do I help her? She works well with the tutor but seems to get a bit stuck at home.

Exactly. We did try when she was little too; doing homework, reading, took them on lots of holidays, culture, etc. Everyone got different interests.

I’ve been teaching Maths at various levels for over 40 years, and have some dyscalculia training. I have read many related posts on MN by @Octavia64 and noblegiraffe. I’d trust anything either of them says on these topics.

AFAIK there is no one method all secondary Maths teachers in England must use for any topic. I imagine some schools may mandate one, especially if they have non-specialists teaching Maths or teachers at the start of their careers, but I might not use the same as the teacher in the next classroom. I’d also teach a topic in a different way depending on the class, eg if it were top set or bottom set.

My general principle is that if an individual student has been taught a method which works for them, then they should carry on with that.

I’ve learned a lot from my students’ prior knowledge over the years, and incorporate that in my teaching.

tbc

The pass rate is set by one part of the government.

grade 2 material is addition subtraction multiplication and division with whole numbers and decimals and negatives.

in all honesty the maths at this level really is the sort that many people use pretty much every day.

the other topics at this level are things like adding and subtracting with money and measures (eg metre and kilometres) plus things like working out area of simple shapes.

they’re commonly used.

My husband can and did help them, he had to read the books though to get back up to speed. I couldn't if I tried.

We both have A-level or international equivalent in maths 🤣

I am not an expert and just getting a bit more involved; however I think there are many topics there which I really don’t use on my daily life.

The thing is, you don't know what you will need in life until after you have done GCSEs and tried or otherwise to master the maths.

Rounding & estimating - useful all round to see if something 'is about right'. (Useful for 'House of Games 'distinctly average' round too.)
Percentages - very useful for money off, sales, interest rates etc
Ratios - useful for cooking, but also making up feed for animals, carpentry etc
Trig - potentially useful for carpentry etc
Areas - for working out pain needed, grass seed
Mean/Median/Mode - useful for understanding news paper articles when they talk about 'average earnings etc'
Unit conversions - again for cooking, following recipes, seeing if you have enough space for something whose size is measured in mm but you measure in cm.

Yes there are some esoteric things still in Foundation tier, but not many.

Interesting. DS2 can do higher level maths with ease (A star in maths an A in further maths at A level) and now doing MEng degree but can’t do lower level maths to save his life. Still doesn’t know times tables etc and simple primary level maths. He is autistic with ‘genius’ level IQ. I remember listening to an interview with a maths professor who didn’t know her times tables but schools put huge emphasis on this. It’s a very poor determining factor of mathematical ability at a higher level.

Isn’t that just every subject though? Can’t remember the last time I had to analyse a Shakespeare sonnet, or define an oxbow lake.
Still covered them at school.

And why do you blame yourself for your child taking the wrong calculator to school. She should have made sure she had the right equipment for the days lessons.

People who are good or very good at the logical aspects of maths can sometimes manage without rock solid timetables recall. However, if you struggle with the reasoning aspects of maths knowing multiplication & division facts is very helpful. You cant always extrapolate from what works for those with a very high aptitude for maths.

To the example the OP mentions:

“Jamill rides a motorbike
The motorbike uses one litre of petrol for every 14 miles
How many liters of petrol does the motorbike use to go 168 kilometers
use 8 kilometers = 5 miles.”

Is this foundation level? It’s two problems, converting miles to km, then connecting miles and litres.
Here is my usual teaching method for lower sets when solving direct proportion questions. This is sometimes known as the Unitary method, because it involves finding one unit first.

Divide by what you know
Times by what you want

Solution in photo, when it loads, because it’s easier than typing it on my phone.

On the topic of multiplication tables, or times tables, when I did my teacher training for Maths in the pre-calculator days I found I hadn’t needed those tables in the previous few years, in college or sixth form, and I’d forgotten them. They soon came back, though.

Since Covid I’ve only been tutoring for A level, but multiplication tables are still useful. I’d advise any parent of a child up to age 16 to practice mental arithmetic with their child, matched to whatever level they are at. It can use time when you’re waiting for something else to start. You can alternate, with you asking them a question and then them asking you an arithmetic one.

With regards to whether a parent feels competent to teach their child, I once tutored a home-schooled boy in what’s effectively Further Maths GCSE. His parents both have degrees from Oxford and his mother is a science teacher, but she felt she wouldn’t be his best teacher for Maths beyond standard GCSE content. He is very good at Maths, though, which I imagine was a significant part of their decision.

I got a B in GCSE maths. However I am now early 50s and find that they teach things very differently now to when I was in school. I can sometimes help DC, but not always.

The school has signed up to mathswatch, which has videos ( sometimes they help, orher times they don't).
Year 10 and 11 the school has also suggested using maths diy for practice questions.
Bbc bitesize can be helpful too

Direct and inverse proportion.

the example given is simple direct proportion so about grade 4.

if given algebraicslly it’d be grade 5/6

you can get more complicated types eg something is in direct proportion to the square of something else etc. that’s definitely grade 7/8

grade 4 and grade 5 questions are at the end of the foundation paper and at the start of the higher paper (the so called crossover questions because they are on both papers)

https://corbettmaths.com/2019/09/02/direct-and-inverse-proportion-practice-questions/

Yeah, I was never able to help mine. I tried for a couple of months and failed miserably. We have ended up going with an online course that has recorded videos and walks him through it. It seems to have been working so far, as he went from 45% at the start of the year to 77% on a quiz last week. Hubby tried as well, and it was pointless, so I am happy that we found that. It does need your child to be disciplined, log on and do all the work, so it might not be a solution for everyone.

I’m doing okish so far. There have been times where I had to learn and understand something myself in order to be able to explain it to her in a way that works. A few times I’ve shown her a different method as it made more sense.

I also know the rule of 3. Did you have two versions of it? Simple and complex?

The fraud Jo Boaler who is an extremely controversial figure in maths education?

I have very little time for her.

You are more polite than me.

Entering a grade 2 kid for the Higher paper is a silly idea and would result in that child getting a U after being sat in the exam hall for 4.5 hours staring at papers that they have no chance of answering.

Come on, let's be real: who in their right mind will let a DC sit Higher tier GCSE with no chance of passing just to get a U? What I meant is that one should at least give it a try; if after studying Higher tier for some time and mock results look shaky or it's just too much to handle, one can always drop back down to Foundation anyway. There is nothing serious to lose.

The way I see it, the OP's DD missed that key Year 5/6 phase due to Covid, which covers the earlier stuff on the Foundation papers. But the later topics aren't necessarily harder; they're just deeper, and they naturally build on or loop back to those earlier concepts anyway. She might actually prefer conceptual problems over primary school arithmetics. At worst, by tackling deeper concepts, she can end up practicing and mastering the basics much more effectively.

This is a method I use with my DD all the time: diving a few levels deeper to help unpack and understand the lower-level stuff. I'm not saying it's a guaranteed win every single time, but does keeping her stuck grinding basic Foundation papers guarantee a lift from grade 2 to grade 4, even if it is a safe approach that most people do? I say this running the risk of being accused again of being patronizing—maybe so, but I just hope my thoughts are somewhat helpful to the OP.

I got a U twice in O level maths and supported dd through gcse statistics and maths with a tutor.

I think it helped I was as confused as she was.

I think at the least you will be helpful for marking her answers from the back of the book to hi light her weak areas to the tutor.

DD managed a B in both.

I think I could probably have managed a C/D myself by the end.

@Fallinginlovewithmaths, to give you an idea of what methods are used now, looking at Dr Frost (he is a real person) is helpful as he uses walkthroughs of questions. They are available free on YouTube - just type in Dr Frost and the topic you want to look at. CorbettMaths is also good. (I’m not paid by either of them by the way!)
Practice of topics your DD has gone through is important as it helps to shift the learning from short to long-term memory.
She might also find it helpful to colour code practice papers she has done. Red - really don’t get it, Yellow - kind of understand it, Green - I can do this and understand it. It would be sensible to tackle the yellows before the reds.
She can also use this strategy in the real exams to give her the confidence to tackle questions she can do, knowing it’s ok to leave the ones she finds more difficult until later, when she can go back through her paper.
I hope at least some of what I’ve said is helpful.

The later topics are harder. To suggest that they are not is madness.

Suggesting that pupils on a grade 2 should be allowed to just try the higher tier and see how it goes is wasting a huge amount of their time. Maths is a spiral curriculum that builds on an understanding of previous topics. If they don't understand the previous topics, they don't really have a chance on the later ones. It's not like science where you might learn some more details, it's more like trying to teach someone who can't ride a bike to do an wheelie.

Thank you

Can I suggest downloading the Maths Unlocked App and have your daughter complete their diagnostic test. It doesn't take long but what it does is prioritise revision rather than expect the full curriculum to be revised. There are other revision tools on there too.

Will have a look. Thank you

My mum was a math genius and her work was very math like you.
I struggle with very basic math. I got a foundation Standard grade ( with a lot of hard work so quite literally the best I could do) I still remember when she tried to teach me. Tears on both sides with door slamming on both sides.

We laugh about it now 🤣