Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School I'm concerned that DD's teacher can't math

Topically, top of the BBC education page is
Sums facts 'not needed for maths success' Primary school pupils can do well at maths even if they do not know simple sums by heart, research suggests.


I haven't read the research, and the BBC article is comical in some ways, but still. May be worth someone waving at some recalcitrant teacher.

Ha, I found the study! http://www.ioe.ac.uk/Study_Departments/PHD_dev_basic_calculation.pdf

I went looking because I wondered how they determined that the kids didn't know their math facts, particularly when they concluded that *none* of the 259 kids in the sample knew all the addition / subtraction facts by Year 3 or 4. Is that analogous to US 3rd-4th grade (so 8-9yos), or US 2nd-3rd grade (7-8yos)?

The paper itself is not particularly enlightening, but the conclusions I draw from it are:
- The skills needed to be good at math class are not identical to the skills needed to be good at timed drill
- Kids are imperfect.

English school (Scotland is different) goes Reception, Yr1, Yr2,... and children start Reception the September they're 4. (Yes, it's crazy - some children do their pre-start settling-in visit while still 3. Scotland's cut off is a few months later so the children can't be quite so young when they start. Reception is supposed to be still child-led and play-based, but whether it is so varies; in reality, most do learn to read and write that year. In England your child does not have to be educated until they are 5, but you can't start them in Reception a year late - if you don't send your summer-birthday just-4yo to Reception, your maximal delay alternative is to have your just-5yo enter Yr1.) So Yr3 children are 7 when they start in September and will turn 8 before they start Yr4, Yr4 children are 8 and will turn 9. Not quite sure how to translate that - you have K, 1st, 2nd,... so it's tempting to match up K=Reception, 1=1st,...; but at least some US children seem to start K later than English children start Reception. So I guess the answer is "it's in between".

For most of the non-California USAian schools I've come across, a kid who was 7 by the end of August / first part of September would be a 2nd grader.

Update: After two weeks of school, I am much less concerned about this.

DD is feeling competent, rather than bored, in math. There's a lot of variety in the math they're doing, so a worksheet might have 3-5 problems in each of 4 topics, rather than 20 problems on one topic. DD also likes the fun methods her teacher uses to make sure everyone understands the concepts. (Today, they watched what I think from DD's description was this video on place value: )

The science lessons this week were on plant stems, demonstrated with a "celery stalks in food dye" hands-on project.