Online Maths tuition mapped onto NC? Recommendations?

[StarlightMcKingsThree]

I came across a good one that wanted the child to do some proper written 'working out' before submitting answers online, but I can't find it now or remember what it was called.

So I am looking for that, plus others.

I have so far MathsWhizz which we might use but I'd like to find the best fit for ds and for what we hope to achieve.

It's all looking impossible to get ds out of his school anyway now.

I mean it is possible but it will put our family in a whirlwind state once again with agencies and hate mail, behind the scenes blacklisting and possibly idiot lawyers with dubious tactics.

Forgive if I've the wrong end of the stick but I have a stinkin cold today.

was it you Star who said school had rated your son on the higher P levels for maths? If so that would correlate to a maximum Mathswhizz age of about 4-5 (from a long ago conversation with a an EP who possessed a brain). If your son is scoring aged 8.3 on mathswhizz, then he SHOULD be working on lower KS2 level work - say NC levels 2/lower 3.

If I haven't got totally the wrong end of the stick then you need to be having a conversation with the school around differentiating his work to allow him to demonstrate his TRUE mathematical ability DESPITE his language issues. Language and numeracy should assessed independently - how is a task for the the numeracy expert and the SALT to establish.

They should also be working to narrow the language "spike" so that he can perform in numeracy tasks by working on the language skills that are holding him back specifically, just as I am working on the auditory processing deficits with my lad at home.

Someone clever like Maria can turn the above into nice diplomatic "carrot speak" for you, but I wouldn't let it go! You have the evidence sitting on maths whizz for you to print out to verify the sense of your argument.

Don't give up on the school till you've had that discussion. Praise em to the mostest for their language work and ask nicely if they can now focus on this as an urgent priority.

Boch I'll figure out the rest of your post in a minute (not you, me, I think I'm also coming down with something. Perhaps you gave me your cold!?)

Anyway. DS got mostly 1s for his Maths. I asked why not 2s and they started by saying that he won't be capable of that by the end of the year and when I protested said that he probably would.

Which would put him on level. However, when he was much younger he was years ahead, not approaching 'on-level' iyswim.

He's on p levels for science which is probably harder to measure, and to be fair I haven't, but which also to me appears to be his strongest subject. Scientific enquiry and testing is his THING.

Hi Boch, Read it now

I know what they will say. They will say that of course he can achieve that score at home with 1:1 support (ha, if only they had an inkling of the reality of this zoo) and that computer programme maths is an isolated skill and the fact they aren't seeing that in their classroom is because of his inability to generalise, or use his knowledge functionally [insert popular ASD excuse here]

Sorry. Don't mean to be so bloody negative.

I asked for targets so that I could see where ds is, where he is going etc. and what his next steps are.

The response:

-to explore light and dark

I could go into school and explain why this is not helpful to me and not what I asked but I really think they've provided what they think I wanted to know.

DS doesn't have TIME for me to go that far back into the basics.

That is EXACTLY it zzzzz. He IS melting with tiredness. He spends 10 bloody hours a week in a taxi.

I haven't the heart to make him learn much when he gets home though he sometimes asks too. Plus I am tired in the 4-7 window, and trying to make dinner etc.

The thing that is upsetting me most is that he keeps trying to write stories. Not even stories, books. I cannot help him. It is too arduous a task at that time. We both need to be refreshed and have some peace. His 'books' are atrocious, but yet he is SO keen.

Sure, but all the other kids are around then. We do some stuff, but I think HE (and me) need holidays for down time, building childhood memories and fun together.

And in the summer we camp with basic facilities, a lot. I suppose I could change that but it would be such a shame. More imo of a shame than taking him out of school.

Pah!

Anyway. Got a list of much better home school groups today which made me feel better, though I still have the problem of actually getting him out.

The stupid thing is, I have met 2 people today with children out of school as they reached crisis point there. On Friday I am meeting two more people. I am starting to suspect that my area is full of out of school children and that is the real reason for being refused, even though I, unlike the other parents, am trying to do it with permission.

God, I'm such a moaning mini at the moment........

Starlight - re: science, even as a scientist, I'm going to put myself out on a limb and say that it's not one to worry about. If a curriculum could trully spiral, a science curriculum can. My first proper "Science" lesson was when i was 10. I have a 1st in Chemistry. Primary Science is quite trivial and somewhat contrived, to be honest.

Just to clarify, if you do any science with him, it's because it's bloody good fun. Not to meet any specific targets. I just "do stuff" with DS1 without matching it against any curriculum.

I wanna grow things and cook things mainly.

Oh, and do the life cycle of an alien, 'The Novel' !!!!

Thanks our.

It's a good approach. I probably learnt more science watching my dad in the garden and in the garage with his motorbikes, than I did until 3rd ye year 9.

You can make jelly with him. Introduce the idea of particles! Particles are great fun because you can think of the smallest thing imaginable, then they're smaller!

Science at this age should simply be exploring the natural world, how and why things work/look/sound/taste the way they do. Coming up with an assumption of what will happen and then testing it out to see if that assumption was correct. (Will pastry taste better if made with butter or lard, will peas grow best in salt, sand, soil, water?).

It should tap into that innate curiosity ALL kids possess until the darn system beats it out of them.

Periodic tables & formulae etc can come later. The "Charlotte Mason" approach will take them far further than the NC both in depth and breadth in the primary years than the NC. imho the current primary NC sanitises and takes a lot of the fun out of science unless you jazz it up a bit.

Star in relation to the Maths, have the school just given him a lazy arsed overall mark? Or have they marked the individual areas?

For example, ds pure maths, simply maths based on figures would make him a 3a possibly low 4. However when it comes to maths problems he struggles to pull out the numbers because the words confuse him, he also gets anxious on mental maths tests as its fast and he's panicky even though the questions are well within his grasp.

His score for maths at NC level is 3c. His score for maths problems is 2b and 2a for mental maths, with pure maths at 3a/4c. I found this helpful in doing more targeted support rather than trying to cover the whole spectrum of maths, because its too much especially for a child travelling 10hrs per week.

I do think school are being a little dismissive in their outlook here, as they're saying by the end of such and a such he will have aquired more language, and by some sort of osmosis this area with improve as a result. In my experience of SALT ( 8 NHS ones and 1 private) I've never heard of them putting markers in the sand for language, with my ds they've been more cautious in their targeting.
Also as someone said up thread, numeracy and language skills are very different and should be viewed and assessed as such. I remember the days when my ds had a good grasp of adding and subtracting and counting but no significant verbal skills? I'm a bit miffed by that tbh.

FWIW we use MyMaths through the school subscription, I've not used any others to make a comparison, but like that its very visual.