Maths but not Maths!

The children hated maths at school. The children hated maths. Most children seem to hate maths.

I had read as much as I could get my hands on about learning, and teaching primary age children, and one of the things that had really stuck in my mind was when I read that the reason most children don’t like maths is that, within the National Curriculum, they are moved on too quickly. They are not given time to get to grips with the basics, and therefore have no hope of understanding the foundations of any other mathematical applications. It’s a bit like being taught where the accelerator, brake and clutch are in a car, and then being expected to cope out driving on the road.

Although my two children are eighteen months apart in age (2 school years), I was quite certain that neither had a confident grasp of their times tables. With this in mind, I decided to focus purely and simply on times tables, for however long it took. I wanted to get the children really confident with their tables, which I firmly believed would stand them in excellent stead for further maths applications, as and when the time came. So, for the next ten weeks or so, our weekly four maths lessons were spent practising our times tables. The key, of course, was to think of as many different and interesting ways to do this, to avoid total and utter, mind-blowing boredom (for us all!).

The most straight forward system I used was to give them twenty or so sums each lesson. These sums involved multiplication and division, all based on the selected times table (eg for a week we did 4s and 6s, then moved onto 7s and 8s etc). Another tip I had picked up from my reading was that we shouldn’t force our children to know everything, so, against my better judgement, I allowed them to use a number grid to answer the sums. BRILLIANT! Performed time and time again, over a period of weeks, the children began to use their number grid less and less, without even realising it. They also weren’t afraid of doing the sums, since they knew they could look the answers up if they so needed. Eventually, they stopped automatically getting out the number grid. Occasionally they will still reach for it (I think, if they are feeling particularly lazy!) and I now discourage it, although I would judge each situation as it arises, rather than a blanket “no more number grid” rule.

We ended up with a combination of written and oral maths – challenges and quizzes (often rewarded by sweeties) and, their most prized activity of all – the “Times Tables Challenge”! This activity developed out of a simple task of getting them to complete a blank times tables grid. After a while, just for a bit of fun, I said I would time them. The idea was that the next time we did it, they had to beat their previous time. Before they knew it, they were both completing a times tables grid (1 through to 12) as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I don’t compare their times – Hannah is just a bit quicker than Jonah at the moment – the most important thing is for them to improve their own time. The best thing for me is that they actually ask to do this challenge – WOW!

Be a bit different!

The next issue I wanted to tackle was their inbuilt dread of “maths”. Even though they were grudgingly enjoying the activities, they still groaned when they saw “maths” on the timetable. Taking this into account, when I was devising the timetable for our second term, I made a policy decision to ditch “maths” and call it “numeracy”. This was much better – strangely enough, “numeracy” isn’t half so bad as “maths”!!!

Time to move on

Once I was happy with their ongoing progress with the times tables, I began to move on the four basic functions – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Again, I was aware that within the schooling system these are spread out right up to year 7, but it seemed logical to me to tackle all four before we moved on any further. Since neither child had proved to be a particular prodigy at maths, I felt it was justifiable to start them both at the beginning and work upwards together.

Addition, as you might guess, was fairly easy. I made it as interesting as possible, by designing “big sums” (based on an idea from another book I had read). We even had special A3 sized art books in which to write out “big sums”! These sums were all addition, but presented in such a way to make them interesting – I would write them in a circle/snail pattern, right the way around the page; we would use huge numbers and work down to single digit numbers … and so on. Then I set the children to designing their own big sums for each other to do (the best part about this is that without realising it they do double the work, because not only do they have to work out each other’s sums, they have to work out the answers to their own in order to mark their sibling’s work!).

Being well on the way to mastering our times tables, we next tackled multiplication – both “short” and “long”. As you would expect, normal multiplication proved no real problem, having now got to grips with the 2 to 12 times tables. To be quite honest, long multiplication was not that much harder for them – all they really had to learn was how many 0s to start with when multiplying right to left (ie units, tens, hundreds etc) – and the rest was, as they say, history.

We stayed with times tables, addition and multiplication for a good few weeks, ensuring that the two of them were happy and confident with what they were doing. That’s not to say that they always got everything right – of course they didn’t! However, they were able to learn from their mistakes because they understood the fundamental procedures involved in what they were doing – they could suddenly see that 7 x 8 was 56 and not 54, which is why the entire long multiplication sum had worked out incorrectly; they understood immediately when I showed them that they had neglected to put down two 0s first, when multiplying in the hundreds column. In short, they were not disheartened or despondent upon getting little crosses against their sums – they were more annoyed with themselves for their seemingly “simple” mistakes!

Keeping up with the Jones …

One of the biggest worries I have, particularly with regard to maths (sorry, numeracy!) is that we are not covering things that their peers are covering. I am confident that they way we are working is the best – and we are certainly achieving great results – but I know I need to ensure they have covered certain topics… I do have to keep reminding myself why we opted for home schooling in the first place – not so as to produce to genius-type children who, on comparison to all their peers, are supremely clever (this is, of course, a tempting prospect) – but to create an atmosphere whereby the children are happy and confident about the whole learning process. They don’t feel stupid, or undervalued if it takes them a little time to get to grips with something and, hopefully, they will view their education as a part of their whole life process, rather than a compartmentalised, somewhat isolated part of their world.