Dispatches programme about children learning maths

[ItNeverRainsBut]

Anyone watch this Dispatches programme on Channel 4 last night?
The Kids Don't Count

Quite shocking that when they gave the teachers the test aimed at 11-year-olds, they scored and average 45%!

well done coldtits !!!
Now you've got the bug, there'll be no stopping you

just out of interest, which method enabled you to see it the best?

just to beat it to death, one final way of looking at the problem of 1/4 divided by 1/2 is the following :

8 divided by 2 is the same as saying how many twos does it take to make 8 which is the same as saying what number do you have to multiply 2 by to get 8, and the answer is 4 (i.e. 8 = 2 x 4)

1/4 divided by 1/2 is the same as saying how many halves does it take to make 1/4 which is the same as saying what number do you have to multiply 1/2 by to get 1/4, and the answer is 1/2 (i.e. 1/4 = 1/2 x 1/2)

because you put it into real numbers.

i'm honestly not that awful at maths once the concept is in, it's just getting it in my head that takes the time.

great stuff, everybody can get it, if it is explained in different ways. Different people prefer different ways. Once the concept is in your mind, with a little bit of practice, it never leaves you. All the concepts can be learned, it is just a stepping stone process. Well done because that was a question that many teachers in the programme got wrong.

Yay! Well done coldtits. Perseverance pays off. I think that that is what kids have to learn: if a.n.o. can grasp it then I can too and I will do it.

I struggled with co-ordination when I was first learning to drive and then, one day, I thought to myself that there are millions of drivers out there - if they can do it then so can I. It's second nature now.

You see we aren't going to get very far with this fractions stuff as the language is getting confused.

Like for exampe someone has pointed out that 1/2 divided by 2 is a different question to 1/2 divided by 1/2. It's all getting confused.

Like saying "get half a pizza and divide it in half" is not the same calculation as 1/2 divided by 1/2. etc etc

It's easiest to do it all written down longhand, the format of these text boxes does not lend itself to calculating with fractions

Well done coldtits, glad someone could help you .

Oh bollocks didn't read the thread properly and see it worked! Yay for claig & coldtits!

And again, sorry if this has already been mentioned but it's the inconsistencies that make maths so hard to grasp. I noticed in the programme the following:

Written on the board by the female teacher replicting Mr dunn's cup method:

1/4 + 1/2 x 3 = 1 and 3/4

I was shouting at the telly that she was wrong and the answer was 2 and 1/4.

Then I realised that it depends on whether you mean:

(1/4 + 1/2) x 3 = 2 and 1/4

or, as she meant:

(1/4) + (1/2 x 3) = 1 and 3/4

But how the hell are you supposed to know as a ten year old in a test which way round it is?

Later on, the camera went to a sum that only only one fifth of the teachers got right, and it was this:

4 + 2 x 5. Well, based on the above calculations the answer could be either 30 or 14! So 50% could have got it right, yet wrong!

Formulae do something funny to my head. Is there a good book or should I just get a school one from Smiths?

It's not inconsistent, you always do the multiplication first using the BIDMAS rules - brackets, indices (e.g if you are squaring or cubing a number), divison, multiplication, addition, subtraction. Year 6 should have been taught that.

the children need to be taught precedence rules such as BODMAS or BIDMAS etc. Basically multiplication takes precedence over addition. So
1/4 + 1/2 x 3 = 1 and 3/4
because 1/2 x 3 has to be done first, and then you add 1/4 afterwards.
Similarly
4+2x5
multiplication takes precedence so first you have to do 2x5, and then you add 4 afterwards.

LaTrucha, I would try the library first, that's the best way to see which style of book suits you best. Apart from that there is loads of stuff for free on the net, but it is takes time to find what you are after.

This is a good site with free primary level maths books
www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm
but it is a bit hard to find exactly what you are after. They have something on formulae here
www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/book7/bk7i16/bk7_16i1.htm

What's wrong with bracketing things? That is much easier to my mind, you don't have to remember any rules of precedence. Also it's fine for simple formulae but when you get trickier and expressions are very long surely it could be cumbersome?

What's wrong with brackets?

Y6 sats fast approaching for us - the kids have been practising in exam conditions since October

badgermonkey - what do you mean by always doing the multiplication first? So in the first example I used would you not add the two fractions together first then x the total? Because that seems far more intuitive to me than adding the first fraction to a multiple of the second fraction!

And in the second example (4 + 2 x 5) my intuition would be to add the first two digits then x the total, as well. So assuming the correct answer is 30, and not 14, that makes the first example that the teacher did wrong! So which is right in each case? Hope you can follow this - I'm barely hanging on. Need a large gin.

Sorry claig - just seen your post explaining precedence. Doesn't seem intuitive at all to me - no wonder I was crap! I prefer the brackets....

It's not necessarily supposed to be intuitive, it's supposed to be unambiguous! In maths you can't have 4 + 2 x 5 being something different to 2 x 5 + 4; they have to be the same thing (or the whole of mathematics falls apart!). If they have to equal the same thing, then here has to be a rule which says whether you do the multiplication or the addition first.

What's wrong with brackets though?

Surely this is just another thing which has to be learnt by rote - as there is no logic behind it - and thus another thing to turn people off maths?

Plus when they start doing more advanced calculations, they will have to unlearn all this and learn how to use brackets instead, unless things have changed at a higher level as well?

God I sound like such a luddite.

Still I don't like it.

Just wiki-ing and have realised that this BIDMAS thing comes from computer programming, where obviously multiple brackets would be cumbersome.

And of course I did all of my qualifications before computers were widely in use.

Nothing wrong with brackets! You can choose to use brackets or not use them - the point is that if you don't the expression is still well-defined and has an answer.
You can always write 4 + (2 x 5) = 14.
It just so happens that 4 + 2 x 5 = 14 also. The brackets are optional.
If you want to do the multiplication and addition in a different order, though, then you have to use brackets - not optional
(4 + 2) x 5 = 30

Although it looks like something you have to learn by rote, there is actually an underlying logical reason why it has to be multiplication taking precedence over addition, rather than the other way round. This, however, is to do with fundamental principles in mathematics, and is most certainly not Y5 maths!

You are of course perfectly at liberty not to like it!

Pretty sure that bodmas and bidmas were around long before computers became widely available. I was taught it by my dad some 40y ago and he'd learnt it at school.