Category: Helping a Struggling Maths Student
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My Struggling Maths Student is Struggling No Longer
Over Christmas I noticed a revolution going on. It was occurring so quietly, lead by my calmest and quietest child, but a revolution none the less. This radical change I speak off? L11, who absolutely, definitely, nothing was ever going to change her mind hated maths with a passion, had decided it’s not so bad […]
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Investigating Quadrilaterals: Angles and Tessellations
The first thing I wanted to do was have a look at angles. Although T11 has done lots of work with them, the girls have not. I showed them how to measure angles using a protractor. They practiced measuring the angles in different shapes. Once they were really comfortable with the basics, I asked them how they might go […]
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Helping a Struggling Maths Student: Quadrilaterals – Part Two
Discovery goals this week: Revise the quadrilaterals of last week Go over the nets of a cube ensuring each of the 11 nets are found Discover the formulae for the perimeter of all the quadrilaterals which are parallelograms and be able to explain why the formulae work Discover the formulae for the area of the quadrilaterals […]
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Helping a Struggling Maths Student: Investigating Quadrilaterals
Goals of this week’s maths fun: To discover the shapes and names of all the quadrilaterals To be able to recognise each of them as plain mathematical shapes and as shapes in everyday life. To sort, classify and display their findings relating to a bag of quadrilaterals To discover and fully understand the terms 2D and 3D […]
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Helping a Struggling Maths Student: Learning Without a Curriculum and Using a Maths Informationary
I’m not entirely sure I have what it takes to do this. This being teaching Maths without a curriculum. It seems a bit daunting. Bearing that in mind, it was important for me to be working within a frame work of sorts (the national curriculum). I’ll not be teaching from it, but will use it […]
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Helping a Struggling Math Student: Utilising a foreign number system with a base 4
Please excuse the terrible photos. The children are rehearsing a play they have written and are intending to act out for my birthday. The living room has been turned into a theatre complete with scenery, stage and moveable curtains! It was therefore very dark when I took the photos!! The children discussed first what base […]
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Helping a Struggling Math Student: Creating their own Number and Place Value Systems
What better way could the children investigate ‘what numbers are’ than by designing their own number system, followed by a number board which illustrated their own place value system? It was, as ever, very interesting to see how each of my children’s minds work at understanding something. T11 understood and seemed to put together a logical yet fairly […]
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Helping a Struggling Math Student: Introducing Place Value
I have used two books to go over the concept of place value. The girls are certain that they do understand. I am not so sure. Whilst they do usually get long addition, subtraction and multiplication correct, there are occasions where it seems they have forgotten everything they have been taught. This tells me they may […]
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Helping a Struggling Maths Student: What’s the point?
If you have been reading my blog for very long you will know I have one strong maths student, one average and one weak. I stopped using all curriculum with the twins to attempt to rectify this. I can now with a certain amount of confidence say that I have three potentially strong maths students. […]
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Helping a Struggling Maths Student: Pascal’s Triangle, Magic Triangles & Number Bond Games
Practising Number Bonds using Pascal’s Triangle I thought I would have a fun frivolous lesson as both L10 and C10 seem to be handling any number bond related question I threw their way. Pascal’s triangle is a triangle of numbers made up of lots of number bonds: The whole triangle fascinates me and I knew it would feature heavily […]