|
In all seriousness DM, my children did, except only the occasional extreme SEN, back then (Also in posts). In earlier posts I have mentioned that the NC downplayed mental facts, but this was addressed a few years ago, expecting full table knowledge by Y4 (again) whereas it didn't happen much before Y6 earlier in the NC. There may be a gradual improvement filtering up the system. I don't know how much continuity is maintained in KS3, KS3 has not been overly impressive in my limited experiences. There were a lot of things I did to help children who found it more difficult, primarily working out from unknown to known, so if the 5 x table is well known (hopefully) step from that table. One thing I didn't do was chant tables, and the more recently encounted sequencing of multiples. AFL, each week there was a test of 20. As the children approached a 20/20 score, they always noted which answers were wrong and what the correct answer was, these details noted by myself. I encourage repetition, as they would tell parents/guardians which table was wrong the previous week, and the parent/guardian were asked to ask that question of the child eg whenever they came in the kitchen.I too would ask children difficult ones out of the blue during the week, eg in line or registration. not onerous, a bit of a joke. For each of the 4 rules I created a 100 grid of facts, which screened for unknown facts and patterns. From that theyknew which facts to take as their homework. hey weren't told to "learn their tables" or even a table unless it was really not known, instead their target was to take a few they may have got wrong and see if they could improve their score, working to 20/20 (up to 10x, not 11s or 12s). All class scores were totalled and averaged and a graph of the averages was on the wall. In a class of 30+, all but a couple got 20/20 by Easter and the few that didn't were around 14 or 15/20. .The catchment was a mixed spread, but not like some inner city schools I supply in now. When we did the multiplication topic for a period of weeks, they then found they could do the TU x TU calculations as previously posted, eg 17 x 18 = 17 x 10 plus 17 x 8 thats 170 plus 17 x 8 which is 10 x 8 plus 7 x 8, that's 170 plus 80, 250 plus 56 equals 306 . Or similar thinking. The tougher bit was not the calculation from multiplication facts, but keeping two or three numbers in memory. The high ability could create their own ways of tackling problems like 21 x 25, seeing how many different ways they could do it, investigation fashion. (eg 21 x 25 = (20 x 25) + (1 x 25) or (21 x 25 = (10 x 25) + (10 x 25) + (5 x 25) etc or repeated addition, or something like 21 x 25 = (30 x 25) - (5 x 25) etc etc.They also used grid method for written work, leading to formal presentations. The bright ones could come up with 20+ different sound calculations in a lesson. There were schemes around in that era, eg Fletcher and derivatives of Fletcher, like Nuffield, which were quite effective, although maybe boring in presentation, but provided a base.. DM we are meant to be on the same side, working for our kids across the key stage. as posted I regret the thread became a squabble. Yes, some of the secondary maths started to reach over my head. It's been a while since I did "O" level, and that's as far as I took it, many years ago. I'll close of now with another joke I made in the not too far past Beatles era., I would say that their famous song was not called, "When I'm 64", they really wrote it as "When I'm 8 x 8". It was readily fixed in their minds that way, but time has now reduced it's effectiveness.
|