Maths help for parents of children aged 5 to 11

News from mathsblog.co.uk: memory 4 teachers!

I know that a lot of the readers of this blog are teachers, so, if you are a teacher in the UK you might have heard about the Memory 4 Teachers project. The project has been developed, in association with LEAs and Teacher Unions, to support teachers and educators by funding the provision of 750,000 USB memory sticks across the UK – yes, that includes Scotland and Wales!

The sticks have a capacity of 2 GB but are not just empty memory. They will include some great free educational resources and access to some of the best educational sites; from what I have heard the content is going to be really worthwhile. One interesting point is that the memory sticks come with a lifetime guarantee which means that teachers will be able to use the sticks forever.
I believe that the launch of Memory 4 Teachers is due to coincide with the Bett Exhibition in early January.
It is easy for a teacher to register for his/her memory sticks. Just click the link below and complete the online form.
Teacher sign up for memory 4 teachers

Mathsblog supports Number Day 2008 December 4th.

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Number Day 2008 is just a month away! Teachers, if your school is not already taking part then why not download your free Number Day Resource Pack? You should already have been sent a pack through the post. Parents: why not ask your school to take part?
The Number Day Resource Pack contains everything your school needs for a successful event, and the money your school raises will help make a real difference to children’s lives. (more…)

News from Mathsblog.co.uk
Internet access for low income families
The Government is beginning to put into practice its scheme to ensure that all school age children have computer access at home. They are piloting the scheme in Suffolk and Oldham in February by providing grants to pay for one computer, software, internet access and 3 years’ technical support. It will be aimed at those families on income support.
Jim Knight, Schools Minister says that having home access to the internet is fast becoming essential. He goes on to say,
“Schools are revolutionising how they educate faster than many families realise.  There is no substitute for good classroom teaching but day-to-day school work is increasingly web and computer based - and it is clear that students get better results where technology is used effectively at home to study, research and communicate.”
By the autumn of 2009 it is hoped to have the scheme operating nationwide.

Don’t be surprised if your daughter seems to be doing better at school than your son!
It has been a fairly well known fact that girls do better than boys at all levels of education from the age of the first SAT tests at 7 up to higher education.

A new report has just come out which suggests that this is true at an even younger age. A study from the Institute of Education in London (part of the Millennium Cohort study) says that girls are two months ahead of boys in verbal, non-verbal and visual skills at the age of 5. They even suggest that girls are doing better than boys at the age of 3! (more…)

World Maths Day 2009 info from mathsblog.co.uk
World Maths Day was a huge success last year, with over one million students from over 150 countries taking part. Altogether 182 455 169 questions were correctly answered. Wow!
Whingate Primary School was the top UK school with 170 139 correct answers. Well done to them! You only need to see how their maths SAT scores have risen over the past few years to know what an effect this event can have!
There is nothing else in the world quite like this and it can act as a great stimulus for children to improve their mental arithmetic. The students play against each other at mental arithmetic games in real-time across the globe. Each correct answer gains one point.
Next year’s event will take place on Wednesday, 4th March 2009 and schools will be able to register in February 2009. This might seem a long time away but if schools are going to enter it might well be worth thinking about it now, make sure the date is kept free and start practising that mental arithmetic!
If you are a parent with a child who loves quick responses to mental arithmetic why not go to your school and suggest they enter? It costs nothing!

For more info go to worldmathsday

After a couple of months in beta mode urbrainy.com has fully launched today. Aimed at parents of children in their early years it provides a whole host of colourful maths worksheets. Plenty are free but if you want the full 1000 + then there is a subscription of £10.00 for a year - pretty good value, I think, and the site is nice and bright.

They have let me publish some of these maths worksheets recently and I will hope to do so again in the future. Here is a typical sample of four pages about ordering numbers.

Order 3 small numbers

If you are interested in how mathematics has come about and all the wonderful developments in science that have come from maths, then this is the series for you.

Starting on Monday 6th October at 9.00pm on BBC 4 it takes a journey through the past and around the world, to Egypt, China, India, Russia, The Middle East and more.

It shows how maths was crucial to the success of all the great civilisations. After all, without maths there would be no time keeping, no money, no cars, no planes, no electricity and indeed you would not be able to read this on a computer screen.

It brings us right up to today, with examples such as prime numbers, knowledge of which until recently was of little practical use, but now nearly all our security pin numbers etc are based on prime numbers.

Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford leads us on our journey and there are a number of supporting interactive games etc at Open2.net to go with the series.

Tiffin Boys’ School, a well respected private school, has cut the amount of homework given to pupils. The students used to do anything up to 4 hours a night, but the head teacher, Sean Heslop, says that this is too much and the quality of the homework set was poor; often ‘repetitive’ or ‘mechanistic’. He has cut the amount to 40 minutes a night, following the lead of some other well known public schools.

Homework is not complusory, but the government likes it and recommends that all children of primary school age should be doing at least 30 minutes a night, rising totwo and a half hours for older children. many teachers hate it, seeing it as a pointless ritual of giving and marking mundane tasks just because they have to.

I agree with the head of Tiffin when he says,

” If there’s one way to put students off learning, that’s the way to do it.”

Homework has always been a difficult issue for many parents, far better if they spend some quality time with their children pursuing other interests.

It seems that our schools are not teaching maths as well as they should. Ofsted reports that although test results have improved, understanding of the subject had not. Put simply, teachers are teaching for the tests.

Not a surprise really, when schools are judged on their test results. But now comes the weird bit; when you look at the figures:

“The effectiveness of work in maths was judged to be outstanding in 11%, good in 44% and satisfactory in 40%”

To me and you that adds up to 95% of lessons being satisfactory or better. But, of course Ofsted don’t count ‘Satisfactory’ as being good enough.

Chief inspector Christine Gilbert said: “The way mathematics is taught can make a huge difference to the level of enthusiasm and interest for the subject.

“As well as developing fluent numeracy skills to deal with everyday mathematics, children and young people need to be able to think mathematically, model, analyse and reason.”

She added: “We all benefit from the advanced mathematics that underpins our technological world”

Hard to disagree with that.

News from Mathsblog.co.uk: Free cookbook for children
One of the best ways of improving children’s knowledge of the metric system is by using practical activities. Cooking is an excellent way of getting to grips with grams, ml etc. So it was good today to see the government encouraging young children to learn to cook by publishing a cookbook that headteachers can order and distribute free of charge.
The recipe ideas have all been nominated by the general public as those which all children should be able to cook and include such delicacies as  cheese sauce, beef curry and cottage pie. Good to see that they are using metric units, but I would like to see a few raisins added to the coleslaw recipe.
They are also available from the teachernet site in pdf format.